Weeknotes 139

August has finished. Ideally that would trigger the transition from “taking time off” to “thinking about work”, but despite mounting economic anxiety I’m not ready yet. This brings me back to more or less exactly where I was two and a half years ago which is either reassuring or pathetic depending on your worldview.

Anxiety aside, it’s been a peaceful week of resting, reading, thinking, bike rides and spontaneous lunches.

I saw Knower on Friday night. They put on an excellent show of the correct (i.e. relatively short) length, although the mix wasn’t great and the audience was full of, erm, annoying nerds.

Then I spent most of Saturday at Interesting, a good afternoon of varied talks — Anne, Charlotte and Janet were my favourites — which all seemed to connect somehow to mental health and mortality, whether by accident or design. I was tired from the Knower gig so I had less energy for it than I’d have liked. Luckily it’s fine to simply sit there and listen.

It was lovely to see so many friendly faces again, some at a distance, some close up, and odd to be back in Conway Hall for the first time since [checks the Photos app] 2017. Five years ago I’d probably have gone to the pub afterwards and made the most of the opportunity to see everyone at once, but this is 2022 and by the time it all wrapped up I was ready to retreat to privacy.

I’m pretty sure I avoided catching COVID at either event and I’m relieved about that.

Going to Interesting made it obvious how badly my conference attendance & socialising skills have atrophied since 2020. I basically can’t remember how to do it.

But also, more generally, the weeknote habit really sucks the oxygen out of catching up with friends. People mostly already know what I’ve been up to, and that eliminates the element of surprise or novelty. Arguably it’s good to have the incentive to talk about something other than basic facts I’ve already shared with the rest of the world; I’m just not very good at it any more.

The number of people who mention my video game streaming in face-to-face conversation is completely out of proportion with how few actually watch when I stream. Maybe they’re dipping into the recordings afterwards, or noticing that I tweet about them? Actually they’re probably just being polite. Anyway, that reminds me I should finish Stray regardless of whether anyone’s watching, so maybe I’ll do that next week.

Homeland is becoming increasingly ridiculous in season six. I’m sticking with it.

The first two episodes of House of the Dragon are fine, I suppose? It’s mercifully simple and feels appropriately Game of Thrones-y in its tone and presentation, which is probably the best you can hope for. It’s nice enough so far but feels inessential.

The Last of Us Part I looks good. I can tell I’m going to enjoy playing it in the future.

Although it’s not been long since I moved to a cheaper mobile phone carrier, Paul tipped me off about an even cheaper one, so in the spirit of economising I ordered a SIM card and prepared myself to switch.

Annoyingly the new SIM arrived on the same day that my old plan renewed for another month, so now I have to sit on it for a few weeks and try desperately to remember to switch before it renews again. This may take some time.