What Have I Done in the Last Three Months and What's Next?
Last Three Months:
Following on from Approach to Life Post Redundancy, where has the last three months gone? Life is at a slower pace and filled with: doing more around the house, bit more exercise, catching up with people, helping out (a bit) in the allotment, going on holiday (!), doing alot of thinking (and then writing), and more recently beginning to explore my options & experimenting with some bits'n'pieces.
Month 1: "Poof", Gone!
- Redundancy, instant disappearance ๐คท, back briefly, then gardening leave.
- Dealing with settlement, checking legal bits, understanding finances. This really dominated this month
- Very drunken ๐น (but lovely) leaving do
- Catching up with family and friends - reactions varied from ๐ to "woooo you're free! ๐ฅณ ๐"
- Started helping out at The Flower Bank - a great social enterprise in North London, who are thankfully also really very patient given that I know nothing about floristry
- A weeks adventure in Abruzzo, Italy on a Rewilding Experience in the Central Appenines. I'm all for rewilding and conservation, but I'm not much of a "nature boy", so very much in at the deep-end. An amazing experience all round, you can get a good idea of the week from this short video:
Month 2: Exploring a Bit
After final termination ๐ from Ocado Technology there was a bit of financial wrangling: checking payment, organising money and planning for the year ahead. And then I started to explore options & possibiities:
Money
- Could I earn small bits of money via things like Outlier.ai and Usertesting? Answer yes, but, it's small beer and pretty tiresome.
- Rather wonderfully, the lovely people at Refined Practice had a bit of work which was great ๐ ๐ and for which I'm very thankful.
Brave Starts
I signed up to Brave Starts early May: it's a fantastic organisation for folks aged between 45-65+ who are looking for a change in their career/life. Apart from multiple helpful workshops (run by members), one of its great strengths is that it provides an instant community. If like me, you're suddenly without that sense of belonging & peer support it does go some way towards filling such gaps. So this occupied a good chunk of my time this month, meeting people, doing exercises and workshops, and thinking quite a bit. All very helpful.
Brave Starts also lead me to:
- The Fore - funding organisation for micro-charities in the UK. More on The Fore in month 3.
- Dynamic Boards - listing of non-executive-directorships.
LHH
Spent a bit of time engaging with LHH which Ocado Technology provides access to for six months as part of the "settlement". Moderately useful, e.g. did a personality profile via Quintax which was quite interesting, if only how different it is from Insights (used alot at Ocado Technology)
Other Stuff:
- Continued with The Flower Bank
- Wondered about trying to find paid coaching/mentoring work (as I did really enjoy this), but it seems a flooded market with many practitioners having completed year long training courses, so I put paid coaching/mentoring on the backburner for now.
Month 3: Holiday and Starting to Experiment ๐งช
The month began with a holiday in Italy ๐๏ธ ๐ฎ๐น and a weekend watching cricket ๐ with friends. After that:
- Bit more work with Refined Practice ๐ช
- Final final bit of ๐ธ from Ocado Technology followed by checking monthly burn-rate.
- Life stuff: boiler troubles, car MOT.
- Bit more thinking about NED (non-executive-director) roles and Dynamic Boards - decided not to apply right now, rather put my energies elsewhere at the moment.
- Got on the mentorship program at The Fore! ๐ - this I am very excited about
- Really starting to experiment with technical things:
- And thinking more about what's coming next .....
What's Next? What Do I Want? ๐ค
I happened to watch โHow to Tame Your Advice Monsterโ - Michael Bungay Stanier whilst browsing (I am a moderate fan of his as he writes short easy-to-read books with big letters and simple concepts), and it asked two simple but useful questions:
- What is the real challenge here for you?
- What do you want?
It was the second question that really grabbed me, so after thinking this is where I got to:
- Be Creative: See what I come up with via ThreeJS, ChatGPT, and maybe Google GenAI stuff. Do silly stuff that makes me laugh (I've done silly stuff before) So far .... Acid House Starfield with Grooving Smileys and Zuck Ping!:
- Fitness: Keep fit.
- Money: Do some work where I can (e.g. if Refined Practice have more work)
- Volunteering: The Flower Bank, The Fore.
- Use/Maintain Existing Skills: The Fore, creative stuff, Refined Practice, Brave Starts, maybe NEDs (via Dynamic Boards)
- Environmentalism: e.g. Heat Networks! (PDF Link)
- Keep Trying New Things (particularly where I'm not an expert)
- Italian: Continue trying to learn it.
- Cooking: Do more cooking.
So that's where I am. I'm probably not going to continue documenting the months in such detail, but put my energies into the things above.
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