Weeknote 0014

  • I asked her to marry me, and she said yes!
  • There’s a bit more texture to that: I asked her to consider it and she didn’t have to answer straight away. But she more-or-less did, having stipulated that she would not wear a big white dress. Call me old-fashioned, but I’d far prefer she wore lots of outfits of her choosing throughout the course of the marriage; each one different from the one the day before. And whichever one she chooses for the first day, I’m okay with it.
  • This took place over a lovely lunch at Takumi in Birmingham, where we enjoyed the finest fare since we were in Japan.
  • With institution comes legacy. Marriage comes with a whole bunch of patriarchal bullshit. So in the coming months will be thought and effort to weed all that out and define how it’ll be fit for us.
  • This weeknote will be slightly delayed in posting, as there are still some people that we’d rather tell face-to-face. This is supposed to be “this week, I learned”, not “this week, you found out” 😆
  • Had a couple of positive work moments, all of which have offered surprised and learning opportunities. One client has all sorts of considerations upon their decision-making, and the courteous thing to do in those instances is present a choice between a safe approach and a more radical one. And would you believe it, they went radical. It’s great when they feel the confidence. Another client asked for a couple of specific proposals, both of which point to some interesting and impactful outcomes. And a third client agreed to some proposed outcomes, if not the process to get there, so that’s pretty close.
  • I’ve been doing a ton of research into workplace ED&I: specifically, how to allow people to think about inclusion as more than just getting a better mix of genders and skintones sitting at desks. I learned the term ‘wellness-washing’ to describe the kinds of short-termist approaches to inclusion that lead to tokenism and fruitbowls. I also learned the term ‘frozen middle’, whereby insufficient focus is placed upon giving those with marginalised identities the experience necessary for them to advance, or the power to influence change. Plus I codified my thoughts around psychological safety which, it turns out, has much more research around it than I anticipated.

Bass notes

[In which Mo learns the bass guitar]

  • It’s going to be a while until the bass comes back. As I’m asking Andy to fit a drop-D tuning mechanism to a short-scale bass, he has views about what strings it’ll need and has asked me to source a custom set. They’d take two weeks to make before Andy can continue the set-up, and the specification process was far from straightforward. So against his advice I’ve asked for an off-the-peg set. If it’s dreadful, I’ll look into it again.