Where the hell have you been?
A newsletter of updates, interests and a potential joke to play on a mate
Hello again, dear reader.
In case you're new here, I'm Alastair Johnston and you're receiving this newsletter because you subscribed over at my blog or via a link from Substack. I'm grateful for you giving me some of your time and attention and hope I always inform or entertain you here. If not, please feel free to unsubscribe, I won't be offended.
Firstly apologies for things being quiet for a while, a combination of being made redundant from my old ‘proper’ job, choosing to use some of my newly acquired free time to actually live and have adventures with my son over the summer, followed by the slight knot in my stomach and occasional 2am wake up wondering if I’ll ever find a new job, added to spending a lot of time on application forms to try and secure a new job… yep things have been a bit different. And this sapped energy and affected my writing. But I’m back now, raring to go again and wanting to say how grateful I am for you sticking by me and not unsubscribing or cancelling your paid membership or hurling abuse and calling me a lazy b’stard.
This newsletter is going to be a bit more like the ones of old. More chatty, less formal, less of an essay and more of me just eagerly sharing things that I’ve found interesting with a great group of people who often share my curiosity. I want to get back to a more informal style of this newsletter. Although Substack is a good service, I find that using it sometimes pushes me to adopt a more essay style of writing here, which I’m not sure is an honest reflection of me and how I communicate. So bigger stuff will go on my website / blog, with this serving more as a letter to a friend. I hope you don’t mind.
Anyhoo, “so what’s going on Alastair?” I imagine hearing you saying…
Seeing as you asked,
Bookstack
I was made redundant from my ‘real’ job in July. To be fair, I kind of chose redundancy as due to my having been employed for some time the redundancy payout was quite a lot. Enough for me to take a couple of months away and do all of the dad adventures I’ve dreamed about when an employee. As well as adventures, I read a lot more. And having read more, I thought I’d better update my bookstack with some recommendations from the reading pile. Over there you’ll find one particular book I cannot praise enough (and have mentioned before) – Boyd Varty’s The Lion Tracker’s Guide to Life (pictured above) I’ll write a full review on my website soon, but suffice it to say, if you’re thinking about life changes like I was/am then you’ll find a holistic and nature centered approach from reading this story.
The joys of job hunting
I’d been employed in my last job for 9 years! I was a bit rusty in the job market. So I’ve been forced to go back to LinkedIn and update my profile, engage with conversations, ask for recommendations and so on. Although I dislike the platform, I’ve found it easiest to treat it as a video game. Play hard, find out the rules of the game and use tactics and hacks to increase engagement. Avoid enemies, such as the initial scam/spam requests that hit my inbox using obvious AI messages, to connect with distant HR ‘experts’ in places such as Nigeria, who I’m sure were ready to relieve me of sums of my hard earned cash.
I also noticed that on Linkedin,
Many people
Write updates and posts
in this strange,
single
line
format.
Nope, can’t understand it either. Just be human I say.
Photography
Whilst having the aforementioned summer adventures, as often as possible I swapped my iPhone for a 35mm film camera. And the results have been really interesting. Using film slowed me down and I took fewer photo’s. But when reviewing my scans a much higher percentage of these photos were good or memorable. The lack of instant review on a screen enabled me to take a picture and then just get back to what I was doing. I was less distracted and much more present.
I’ll write a bigger post soon on film photography, but until then I would really recommend you giving it a go. Pick up a cheap, used film camera from a charity shop or eBay. Pop in some inexpensive Kodak Gold film, snap away, send the film for processing. Then wait. And the wait will act as a marinade, deepening your anticipation for when the results come back.
On arrival, look at your images, smile and then maybe repeat. Trust me, it’s so much more fun than phoneography. And if you’d like any recommendations of cameras, technique, film or processing, just let me know, happy to help or advise.
Flip Phones
I re-watched The flip phone manifesto:
and suggest you do to. We’re losing something with smart devices. I’m about to make personal changes.
Digital photo’s and climate change
I’ve often thought that the criticisms of paper tools and analogue photography are incorrect. Many times I’ve been told that digital is better for the environment, saves trees and chemicals. But no one seems to factor in the energy from all of the out of mind ‘cloud’ services in data centres. This piece though took a deeper look. And it seems that all of our online ‘stuff’ particularly the rubbish such as hundreds of un-deleted crappy photos and videos are causing physical environmental impacts. So film and paper still rules!
Blog
More people need to blog. To create individual, human, honest narratives in the face of centralised horrible social media and AI generated guff. If you’ve thought about it but weren’t sure where to start, maybe consider Bear. It’s just lovely and simple and elegant. If I was starting from scratch I’d probably use something similar. And a shout out to a random Bear Blog user, Robert Berming, to illustrate the loveliness of personal blogs as an example of what I’m talking about.
Slow cooked chicken thighs
Autumn is on the way, and thoughts move to warm, wholesome, cheap food. A few days back I made this slow cooked chicken in a honey and mustard sauce for dinner. Plopped it all in the slow cooker and left it to do it’s thing. Served with a bit of rice, it was amazing. All the family loved it and my 12 year old gave it a solid 9/10 so it’s a keeper.
Would you sponsor a rando?
Finally, a little bit of fun. One of my best mates is Phil. A talented photographer, cyclist and all round good egg. I’ve known him for over 35 years! He’s doing a sponsored skydive to support his local hospice. I will be sponsoring him, but in an act of pure mischief I thought maybe I’d play a nice prank. This is what I thought.
What if Phil, had a good friend who he affectionately called “Big Al”. What if said friend (that’s me) happened to secretly share Phil’s sponsorship page on his newsletter, and some of his readers who wanted to do a bit of good happened to sponsor him, but in their messages just added “Big Al sent me…”? What if on seeing these strange messages from random internet people, he couldn’t, for the life of him, work out why this was all going on…
Would that make you chuckle as much as me?
That’s it for now.
Be kind and live well!
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