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Tag: thoughts

  • Sabbatical Reflections from 2019

    As I prepare to head off on sabbatical later this year, I realise that while I posted my plans for my first sabatical, I didn’t actually share my reflections publicly on return. Instead, I posted on one of the many internal websites that we have at Automattic. Re-reading it recently, I thought that it was worth pulling this out onto my own blog for posterity. Below is what I wrote up back in June of 2019 for my colleagues, after going back to work (nb. that it has been slightly amended to remove references to a8c specifics).

    Hello. I have returned from the sabbatical oasis. In many ways it feels pretty good to come back into fold, as no matter how great the sabbatical is, it still feels strange to be outside of the everyday Automattic community. That said, it is also a bit of a shock to the system; feeling akin to turning on a bright light in a room after you’ve been lying in the dark, so please bear with me over the next week or so while I catch up and readjust. It will take me a bit of time. 🙂

    Before I went away, I was pretty disappointed that I would miss RightsCon in particular, as it is always a fairly motivational time. In retrospect I am glad I didn’t go, as it would almost definitely have limited what I got out of the block of time away.

    As is customary, here is a recap with some details of what I got up to, as well as some general reflections, and thoughts about what coming back means. I had wondered about whether I should hold off on this until I had been back for a bit, but changed my mind. It is also a bit longer than I anticipated, so you have been warned!

    Sabbatical observations

    • The first week I slept a lot, and felt guilty about it because I wasn’t doing very much, and didn’t want to waste the time. I realised though that my body was clearly just catching up on rest, and winding down to actually shut off properly. It doesn’t just happen instantly.
    • My life is usually so packed and rushed all the time that being able to just take the space to breathe and not rush things was great.
    • As part of that, I realised how many commitments I have outside of work, and how much time and energy they take up.
    • This also helped me realise what exactly I was spending my time on, and reassess things accordingly. In other words, cut down on commitments that were taking up a disproportionate amount of energy and space – as well as to make room for other things that I had been neglecting. I offloaded some responsibilities to other people, and didn’t feel the need to always stay up to date or in control of things as I usually would.
    • The first week I spent in Tokyo (which was just the second week of the sabbatical itself) was especially good. I was on my own, which I had been a bit apprehensive about, as I don’t really enjoy totally solo travel all that much. As it turned out, it was the perfect way to really begin the sabbatical properly. I would literally spend full days just walking for hours and hours, speaking to nobody, taking in everything. I didn’t have to be anywhere or do anything or look after anybody or answer to anyone. It felt like I had gone on some kind of silent retreat, and it was brilliant. Genuinely relaxed and free.
    • After three weeks things began to feel weird, as it was about as long as a significant holiday – but I knew I wasn’t going back any time soon. That caused some cognitive dissonance, which wasn’t completely unpleasant.
    • I realised that it was okay to have days where you don’t do much. You don’t need to be doing things constantly to make the best use of the time. That said…
    • I found myself breaking into a routine a couple of times – where I would just go to the gym, go to band practice, etc – and I didn’t want that to happen. So… I took the opportunity to say yes to things that I wouldn’t normally ever have time to do, or would put off (see more below).

    What I actually got up to

    Before I went away, I outlined the things I wanted to do over the three months. It really boiled down to allowing more time for the things that are important to me in life that I never usually get to focus on. Making music, reading, writing, travelling, and seeing friends. I deliberately kept them fairly broad to avoid tying myself into specific things and feeling bad if I didn’t get round to them. As it panned out, there were some things I didn’t get round to as much as I would have liked, but there was always something else that took its place. For example, I didn’t really play much guitar – but I did end up starting a new band and learning bass. I didn’t make much electronic music either, but I did rediscover a love for film photography, and developed a whole bunch. So it is swings and roundabouts. Either way, I felt like I made the most of the time I had as best as I could, which is what’s important.

    Some specifics of what I did:

    • Spent a full month in Tokyo, which was amazing.
    • Bought a bunch of really nice cameras I had wanted for a long time, and learned lots of things about them.
    • Shot lots of pictures, mostly on film.
    • Started developing again, learned a bunch of new things, and processed 50 rolls in total. Also got a new scanner to replace mine… which was over 10 years old!
    • Shot on motion picture 500T film for the first time successfully (a bit more of a complicated chemical process than regular film).
    • Flew in a private plane across Scotland. Yes, I got to have a go at piloting, and no, I would not do it again. https://allmyfriendsarejpegs.com/2019/05/23/an-evening-in-the-sky/
    • Discovered lots of new music, and went to a lot of gigs – including a great multi-venue festival in Tokyo.
    • As well as continuing with my old band, I started a new one called Hog Wild, and spent a fair bit of time practicing with them, and writing some new tracks. An example here: https://soundcloud.com/hogwildband/matchbreaking-not-a-love-song
    • Did a few DJ sets, with varying levels of success. Lessons learned include always having a backup audio source, and checking that your laptop charger is actually plugged in properly.
    • Visited my parents in Canada, and spent the time touring vineyards, drinking cider, and lying in the sun with a book.
    • Went to the Islay whisky festival. Camped in the rain, and got a very nice exclusive bottle of Laphroaig. https://allmyfriendsarejpegs.com/2019/06/22/islay-whisky-festival-2019/
    • Posted and worked on a whole load of blogs (13 or thereabouts published)
    • Made time for some old friends I hadn’t seen in a long time, including a weekend down south. https://allmyfriendsarejpegs.com/2019/05/19/a-long-weekend-down-south/
    • Drove a friend’s band down to London to play a gig.
    • Read a whole pile of books (around 16), and enjoyed being able to just read for hours at a time because I enjoyed it again, as opposed to cramming it in for ten minutes before falling asleep at night.
    • Spent some time doing some legal academic work… including speaking on a panel in Edinburgh which was discussing defamation law reform in Scotland and meeting some friends from Twitter who were in town for a conference. I also finished off my second journal article, which I found out today has been accepted for publication by the European Intellectual Property Review.

    In total I spent over half the time away from Glasgow, which I think is pretty good going. There are things I would like to keep up, and things I would like to start doing which I never did, and that’s actually okay. One of the points I had to keep reminding myself of was that the sabbatical isn’t the be all and end all – and not everything needs to be completed. There will be more time off in future!

    Coming back

    This is the trickiest part. Coming back from three months off is always going to be difficult, not least because of the catch up and changes to routine that are involved. Fears over how or where you will fit in are (apparently) normal, as are questions about whether you’ve fallen behind, and what the future will look like. I am personally very pleased and grateful that I’ve been able to take the time off at this point in my life; to spend it on existing, thinking, and creating. I am also glad to be able to come back to a community of people that I have a lot of respect for.

    Over the next week or so I am going to take the time to gradually get back into the swing of things. Clearing out my e-mail inbox and pings will take a wee bit of time, but more importantly, I want to get a feeling for how things have moved on while I’ve been away, where the team is at, and where I can best contribute – including whether or not my role should shift to focus on different areas. I’m looking forward to the challenge.

  • Planting a Digital Garden

    One of the cool things about working at a place like Automattic is that you are part of this global network of inspiring people that often think deeply, creatively, and publicly about expression. Unfortunately, it is incredibly easy to become blind to the verdure, as a result of the daily obligations that our busy roles require.

    Over the past couple of days I decided that the thicket of ‘low priority’ e-mail notifications I had allowed to build up was becoming unreasonable – even by my standards – and that I urgently needed to wrest some kind of control back. As I hacked through the undergrwoth, I came across some posts on my colleague Cheri’s blog talking about the idea of a ‘digital garden’ – which immediately sparked some kind of mental wildfire.

    What is a digital garden?

    So what the heck is a digital garden anyway? I am well aware that it may sound dangerously twee, but bear with me, as I think there’s something to it. There isn’t a specific definition that I am aware of, but if I had to boil my understanding of it down to a simple summary, it would be:

    An open, personal collection of perpetually evolving notes and other media, which eschews attributes commonly associated with blogs or other platforms such as presentation via chronological order based on publication date.

    That’s quite a mouthful, but effectively what this describes is an approach to a website that has an assortment of different snippets on various topics, loosely organised. Kind of like a personal Wikipedia, or a public notebook.

    The concept isn’t really new, even if the nomenclature is – and it actually strongly reminds me of the way that personal websites used to be, before the web became more structured, and often siloed through the use of social media timelines. An important element of such a thing is the reliance on contextual hyperlinks, to tie pages together in a much more organic and idiosyncratic way, as opposed to rigid categorical linearity.

    Reimagining blogs

    One of the things that we know people struggle with when it comes to blogging is how to keep their site active. Commitments to a regular posting schedule quickly fall by the wayside in the face of internalised pressure to have something ‘worthwhile’ to say, particularly when the output has to be the finished article. Even with the best of intentions, disillusionment can often follow, with the process becoming more of a chore than a liberation.

    Despite my love for – and involvement with – blogs, I too feel this sense of inadequacy keenly. That should be self-evident purely based on the date of the last post I made here, which was over 9 months ago. However, I also currently have 71 drafts in progress over on my main photo blog allmyfriendsarejpegs. While I am constantly writing and updating, the nature of these and my own perfectionism means that I am often stuck in a constant state of false progress, working on articles that will potentially never see the light of day.

    Preservation, not Presentation

    I find fascinated by the possible reconception of blogging that the idea of a digital garden brings. Removing the finality of publication, as well as the perceived need for time based updates means that you can focus purely on the act of writing and collation – as opposed to chasing what effectively amounts to a kind of news update or dated diary.

    Over the past couple of years I have struggled with a declining interest in photography – something that used to be central to my identity. As part of an ongoing period of reflection on that, I’ve come to realise that part of the reason may come down to a gradual change in why I take pictures. I think that I have probably become so concerned with getting the right shots for an eventual, theoretical blog post, that I no longer enjoy or engage with the process itself. In other words: my preoccupation with the final presentation of the work has supplanted the reason for participating in its creation in the first place.

    As I’ve begun to explore this revelation, I’ve consciously shifted my approach away from a concern with the eventual presentation of content, to one of preservation, where I take pictures or shoot video to capture moments purely for the sake of doing so itself – not thinking about what I will necessarily do with them later. That simple adjustment has completely transformed my way of thinking, and reinvigorated a lot of the passion that I once had in these kinds of expressive actions.

    The notion of planting and growing a digital garden which is more concerned with the ongoing as opposed to the culmination strikes a chord with me partly because of this understanding, and is one that I find incredibly exciting.

    The Plan

    Going forward, I am going to experiment with the idea on this site. As far as I’m aware, there aren’t any specific themes or established methodologies for doing so with WordPress, but it seems like fertile ground on which to explore.

    My plan is to:

    1. Move the date-specific blog portion of this site to its own dedicated area.
    2. Create pages for specific ideas, notes, and musings that come to mind, as and when they do.
    3. Replace the home page with a splash which will help people navigate this brave new world.

    There are some challenges of course, including the fact that page updates won’t necessarily produce any kind of notification to readers, and it will be difficult for folks to track what is new. However, I am keen to embrace the chaos, and kind of like the idea of things sprouting up naturally in what may end up as a tangled, inter-connected suffusion. For that reason, I am not going to implement any specific automated systems of categorisation and sorting, as that would spoil some of the magic.

    Irrespective of how this turns out, I am looking forward to breathing new life into this site, and perhaps feeling a bit less terrible about paying the annual domain renewal fees for something I rarely update.