Weeknotes, 10th May

Cultural recommendations in lieu of proper weeknotes, because I'm blocked and procrastinating.

I wanted to have a low-key May. The idea was to take on less work so I had time to:

  • Wrap up some straggly projects
  • Work on my new website
  • Do some product development
  • Kick off some research

However, I haven’t made all that much progress with any of those things yet.

One part of it is that the main client project I have on, which is scheduled for two days a week, is taking up a lot of my mental space. It’s interesting, challenging work, but a good reminder of why day rates don’t always work for me — it’s hard to confine this stuff to a schedule.

The other thing is that I feel incredibly blocked whenever I sit down to look at all these tasks. On the one hand, it’s frustrating. But generally, when I find myself procrastinating, it’s because there’s some underlying thing that needs to percolate a bit. So I’m trying to sit with it.

All this is a long way of saying that rather than work-based weeknotes, I have some cultural ones about things I’ve been reading, watching, listening to and attending recently:

The Persuaders

I finally finished Anand Giridharadas’s book, The Persuaders. It looks at how different activists and movements approach winning hearts and minds in our current climate of intense polarisartion. It was a really interesting read and well-worth a look for people working in campaigning in particular.

Ground

I went to Ground, an event as part of Brighton Festival with my friend Laura this week. This event used a meal and indigenous voices to encourage the audience to think about food, nature and decolonisation. It was a beautiful, though-provoking experience. Not to mention how amazing it was to be eating almost-outside in a clearing in the woods on a sunny evening.

The End of Charity

I’ve listened to every episode of this podcast from Third Sector, and now I want to talk to someone else about it! There’s lots of interesting provocation in there about where the sector is right now, what needs to change, and where it might be headed. I particularly enjoyed hearing from Martha Awojobi throughout the series.

Love Lies Bleeding

I saw this queer bodybuilding body horror magic realism thriller at the lovely Depot cinema in Lewes. Kristen Stewart is excellent, Katy O’Brian is a swole goddess, and Ed Harris’s wig deserves an Oscar of its own. I thought it was pretty great.

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