Asides
-
May vinyl challenge and the importance of communities
It is Mental Health Awareness week this week, and this year they have the theme of community. As the Mental Health Foundation states: “Being part of a safe, positive community is vital for our mental health and wellbeing. We thrive when we have strong connections with other people and supportive communities that remind us, we are not alone. Communities can provide a sense of belonging, safety, support in hard times, and give us a sense purpose.” Which got me thinking about a current activity I’m engaged in over on Instagram. I run a vinyl account there (I know, male mid-life crisis alert!), and every year there is a May Vinyl Challenge, where…
-
Look ma, no hands!
I’ve been at something of a blogging impasse recently, stymied by my own self-censorship. I was going to say something about the new AI start-up Matter and Space and in particular what I perceived as a bit of white saviour complex in their promo, but a) Audrey digged deeper than I would and b) it’s not really my place to comment on it. After turning down a prestigious invite to the UN recently (because of travelling to the US), I also wanted to say something about the difficulty of hosting, attending and bringing people to open ed conferences in the US, but again, that’s not my story now and so…
-
What type of blog am I?
I took part in a Reclaim Hosting session as part of the blogging community yesterday. Maren ran the session on How to Get Your Blogging Mojo Back and Lee Skallerup Bessette gave a fascinating talk on her blogging history. One topic she raised was a thorny one that many of us have wrestled with in the blogging area. And that is, whether to have specialised blogs or an all-encompassing one. Lee talked about how she had established different blogs for swimming, knitting as well as ed tech. Jim Groom stated that he made a decision early on that his blog would be a big messy bucket for everything he was…
-
Don’t go west
Maren and I had booked a trip to New York in May as our wedding present to ourselves. Neither of us have ever been there and we had a fun itinerary lined up. Last week we cancelled it. We were going to meet up with friends, and missing out on this is the part that hits the hardest. The reasons for cancelling are muddled but contain elements of the economic boycott, safety concerns and ethical considerations. On the economic side, this seems like a practical step in response to Trump’s trashing of trade agreements. Safety wise, although planes seem to be crashing with increased regularity, and the current border control…
-
Room 101 for 2025
Maren celebrated the 101st episode of her podcast recently, and I was the invited guest. We riffed off the idea of Room 101. If you don’t know this it borrows the idea of Orwell’s Room 101 which contains your biggest fear, which was converted into a light entertainment radio and TV programme where people nominate pet peeves to go into Room 101 so we don’t have to experience them anymore. Going into the new year we volunteered what we would like to put into Room 101 for 2025. Here were my options: Anything “bro” – I was watching the US coverage of the election back in November, and I knew…
-
6 Things on My Mind
When I was planning to leave the OU, I began planning lots of mini-projects for myself. This was driven partly by an anxiety that without the structure of work I’d find myself watching Facebook reels for hours, or rearranging my sock drawer on a daily basis. As I don’t play golf m(and have no desire to do so, or own a motorbike, I needed to fill the time I reasoned. But I quickly found myself with a list of twenty or so activities I wanted to undertake, from becoming a coffee nerd to starting a newsletter on Georges Simenon’s Maigret novels. I still might do these, but I then began…
-
The Misery of narrative
I’ve been re-reading Stephen King’s Misery recently. For those of you who don’t know the story, it features a writer, Paul Sheldon, who after a car accident finds himself in the isolated house of his “number 1 fan” Annie Wilkes. Wilkes is psychotic, and becomes enraged when she reads the latest of his Misery historical romance books, in which he has killed off the main character. She tortures him and forces him to write a new Misery novel, just for her. It is foremost a great horror novel, but it also acts as an obvious allegory for the relationship between writer and their audience and their own work. From a…
-
A lucky man
Now that I’m coming to the end of a a substantial phase of my career, which while not exactly earth-shaking, has been successful on the terms I would wish it to be, I thought it would be instructive to reflect on the role of luck in this. This is not an exercise in false modesty, where I’m hoping you’ll respond “no it’s because you’re amazing Martin” (let’s agree that I’m amazing), but in any success however moderate, there is an element of chance. “Luck” is probably the wrong term, it’s more something like “a beneficial confluence of personality, time and context”, but “luck” is a convenient shorthand. I think there…
-
Lost about lost men
Like many of you I read the article in Washington Post about men being lost. I don’t disagree with Christine Emba, particularly the point about men behaving weirdly, and I don’t bring any expertise to these thoughts beyond 50 odd years of being a man. But I don’t get why men are lost? I get why grifters such as Jordan Peterson want to push the idea of a crisis in masculinity, their careers depend on it. But in reality, what’s lost is the restriction of having about two different ways of being a man, replaced with myriad possibilities. While I do understand it will be different if you live in…
-
Niceness is nice
I watched some of Glastonbury on the BBC last weekend, and like many people one of my favourite acts was Rick Astley and the Blossoms doing a whole Smiths set. It’s difficult to explain to people who have grown up in an internet age, how important groups like the Smiths were in the brash, money obsessed 80s. But then Morrissey has become increasingly right wing and it just means there is a shadow hanging over any listening experience now. But it’s impossible not to love Rick Astley, and so you could enjoy this set guilt-free and marvel at just how good those sings were. This is not a Smiths post…
