Hi Everyone,
I hope you’re doing ok.
Every December we go to get a Christmas tree and make a bit of a thing about the trip. It involves a walk, some breakfast, tree selection, preparation and decoration. Our house is rammed full of house plants so naturally we have to get a real tree. Tree selection is interesting with my wife pushing for ever taller trees each year and practical me advising on the actual height of our ceiling vs the imaginary height of our ceiling where all trees fit. This year though, after our walk around the Christmas tree farm (the welly walk, the elf walk and the elf hut), my wife pointed out a tree that by my own admission looked perfect… apart from the height. “Go on then” said I. This really surprised her but we proceeded to load the it up on the sled and get it packed in netting for the drive home. We’ve got a BMW Mini. The 2.74m tree looked huge strapped to the roof rack! After standing the tree in water outside for 24 hours (actually it was a week as we missed the day light and then, you know, we were working all week…this story is not strong enough for two weeks) we set about the business of attaching the stand and getting the tree to stand straight. Then there was some trimming to get it to fit (of course there was some trimming). But once in place… wow! What a tree. That evening we lit the fire, popped on some Christmas crooners and had a cocktail while decorating. Come the new year we’ll obviously take the tree down but it won’t end there. We’ll remove the branches and chip them up for spreading on the garden beds and we’ll chop up and season the wood of the trunk to warm our house in a year or two.
I helped a colleague sift job applications for a role they’re recruiting for.
I joined the Men’s network meeting where we worked on what topics we’d discuss in the new year. This led me to do some more thinking about how to improve engagement in the network.
I attended our Spotlight Awards ceremony where one of my nominations made it through to the ceremony although didn’t get the overall award for their category. That’s ok though. I was lucky enough to get nominated and I didn’t get through to the ceremony. Just the nomination itself means a lot to me. It was really great to hear about all the great work people do and, importantly, how they do it.
We’re starting some work on inspecting and adapting how we run projects so I caught up with my colleague who is leading the initiative to get some insight and get a brief on how I can help. The first step is to identify projects that have gone well and some that haven’t, for analysis to see what we can learn.
We ran a bunch of recruitment events for our Digital Department which meant I got to work with a bunch of colleagues that I don’t normally work with from week to week. It also meant meeting people who are interested in the roles we have on offer. I love meeting people so I really enjoyed it.
Our wellbeing officer and co-lead of our Mental Health Awareness network has a regular checkin with network members and this week was my turn. My wellbeing goal was to exercise 5 times per week which I’ve achieved and feel physically and mentally much better for it. It means I finish work in time to shoot to a gym class at 5pm. It means I go mountain biking on a Friday afternoon. And to do that I have to start work early everyday which is when I’m most productive and creative. So it all fits together nicely.
We had a brilliant guest toolbox talk from a colleague over in the DVLA who talked about organisational improvement boards and retro of retros amongst other things. Definitely some things there that we’d like to try out.
On Friday I met with my bro and some friends in Cheltenham for a jam. We tried out some new songs which went surprisingly well. There’s nothing like that mutual commitment with others to drive your own skills forward through practice. Having spent a fair bit of time learning the basics and more with a drum tutor I’m finding I’m now learning how to learn and emulate actual songs (a skill in itself). That only comes through playing real music with other human beings.
Be excellent to yourselves and each other,
Si
