I miss the Christmas I enjoyed as a kid.
To me it was all about family and being together. It wasn’t about decorations, lights, food, toys and gifts. It wasn’t commercial. I would probably be happy with a lump of (smokeless) coal. As long as my family was there and we were all healthy and happy.
Forget the handing out of (wish)lists and Amazon vouchers. Forget having to deal with packed town centers and inflated prices. Forget having to pay for packs of over-priced postal stamps.
A mince pie by an open fire. Playing family games and forgetting to watch the royal speech. Marking everything you intend to watch in the only copy of the Radio Times you’ll buy this year and then promptly forgetting to watch anything as planned. Having a drink or two after the kids have all gone to bed as the embers die down in the open fire and the Christmas tree lights twinkle. Remembering all the good things that happened this past year whilst ignoring the bad. Making resolutions.
So that’s the Christmas I intend to enjoy this year.
Merry Christmas all!
Category: people
Gig economy
I’ve started watching this YouTube channel called London Eats. Not sure why. Maybe because I find it relaxing?
This guy zooming around the capital in the dark making food and parcel deliveries on his electric bikes and scooters. It got me thinking about the gig economy. How these workers don’t have a traditional employment contract, but are paid a fee per job.
After four hours of work this guy earned less than minimum wage and called it a good night. How? Less than minimum wage? Is the gig economy a way for employers to hire cheap labour? The apps these workers use must take a cut of the profits although they do offer meagre bonus payments if you work harder, faster, completing more deliveries within certain time periods.
The London Eats guy augments his meagre earnings by filming his shifts and turning them into quality viewing. He also confesses to having a day job so his shifts only need to be a few hours. He also sells swag from his channel and has sponsorship from various companies. So he’s making ‘his gig’ work. But I’m curious how others are faring from this industry, being paid per delivery.
I guess it’s nothing new. In my youth I worked for a company that paid me 1p for every flyer I delivered. If I could deliver one a minute that’s 60p an hour! Sounded great as a kid needing to augment his pocket money, but even with inflation an adult wouldn’t do it. Explains why so many of us were school age delivering those flyers. Child labour.
The gig economy is here to stay. It makes sense for the employers as it’s cheap labour. And as there appears to be no shortage of willing workers it must be profitable enough for some. Or maybe they just like working when they want to, being by themselves travelling around the city listening to their tunes going door to door, having no in-person boss.
Hustling
Instagram is full of people pushing products and trying to show complete strangers how amazing their lives are, but there are some nuggets of wisdom on the platform. I don’t post myself, I just have a sock puppet account I use for OSINT purposes, which if I’m honest I may also use just to browse.. on occasion.
One thing I’ve learned from Insta is how much some people really hustle. By hustle I mean work hard at promoting their brand, their products, their whole reason for being.
For example just look at The Rock or Mark Wahlberg. They both post multiple times a day pushing their products and movies. If you didn’t have Insta you may only hear about their occasional movie and catch a snippet of news about them and probably think they have it easy, make a movie, collect the millions, repeat, right? With thanks to Insta you can actually see how much they are hustling. Up in the early hours each day hitting the gym, then promoting their clothing / alcohol / sports nutrition products, then doing interviews and photoshoots, followed by attending events for further networking opportunities. It looks exhausting!
These two are constantly hustling. And they are not the only ones. Check out Arnold and Stallone. Both in their 70s still hustling like crazy. Like a duck swimming we have this picture of these celebrities in our minds that everything is easy for them on the surface, but Insta pulls back the curtain and shows us how crazy active these people are underneath, working at maintaining their image and brand.
Take a look at sports personalities and fitness models. In the gym multiple times a day, promoting their classes or courses, doing photo shoots and training videos, attending events and working hard to promote both their image and what they are selling.
It may be full of cat videos but there are still nuggets of wisdom on Insta.
Don’t ask do
Sometimes you just have to make decisions, take the initiative, go with your gut. Don’t live a life in the shadow of others, asking what they are going to do, what are their plans, what are they going to wear, what time they are planning to turn up, and so on. Be the leader, the doer, the ones others follow.
Create your own mantra.
Take action, make decisions, don’t wait on others. Don’t ask, do.
There’s nothing for you in the past
There’s nothing for you in the past. It’s worth repeating that to yourself once in a while. There’s nothing for you in the past.
Many of us spend way too much of our time thinking about things that happened in the past. How we could have done this or that. Maybe if we made this decision, or chose that job, or that friend. Or maybe we reminisce on the good old times. Ruminate on what it would be like to bring something back, or to revisit something again.
It can become self destructive and can hinder both your direction in life and your mental health. Stop living in the past and live in the present. The past is a lonely place full of memories where nothing can be changed. Move on with your life, focus on the present and the future.
Thoughts on LinkedIn
Musings on LinkedIn.
I’ve been using LinkedIn for many years and I keep changing how I use it. Below are just a few of my notes on how I’ve made use of the social network for work and networking.
– You don’t need to get to 500+ connections. There’s no game or points that you win if you do.
– You don’t have to connect to everyone you meet. Quality over quantity!
– If you’ve connected to someone and the only way you can contact them is through LinkedIn and they don’t respond to any messages over a period of 3 months, remove them as a connection. If you can’t communicate with them or introduce them to anyone then what use are they? Unless you want to follow their posts that is. Quality over quantity.
– People change jobs. Sometimes often. If you are using LinkedIn to connect to people in a certain field or industry and a connection changes to something you have no interest in, consider dropping the connection. It may sound mercenary but this is LinkedIn not Facebook.
– If you want certain people to reach out to you or be reminded of your existence without appearing to reach out first, look at their profile. LinkedIn will tell them you looked and your name will appear in their notifications list.
– You can silence spammy connections.
– You can subscribe to interesting newsletters and unsubscribe when they become boring.
– You can follow interesting people and companies and unfollow when they cease to provide whatever made you follow in the first place.
– LinkedIn is not for stalking but it is useful for OSINT.
– People post too much information. People leak sensitive data!
How do you use LinkedIn? Any tips?
I see you
Many many years ago I went to a Commodore Amiga scene party. My friends and I were setting up when I heard someone mention that a particular graphics artist well known in the scene was sitting at a nearby table. At the time I was an aspiring graphics artist myself and admired his work. I went over and introduced myself. I may have gone a little fanboy on him if I’m honest.
I returned to my friends and one asked “Who was the guy in the wheelchair you were talking to?”. I turned around and looked over and sure enough he was sitting in a wheelchair at his computer. I hadn’t even noticed. Not that it mattered. All I saw was talent and I wanted to meet the guy.
I recall this event now and again as it serves to remind me that the physical stuff doesn’t really matter. It’s all about who you are inside and what you can do with what you have.
Road rage and wing mirrors
I enjoy driving. Especially out on country roads away from the major roads, towns and people. Lately though I’ve been encountering aggressive drivers. People driving angry, not realising that they are taking their anger out on other road users, using their vehicles to intimidate and cause accidents.
On one occasion a young lad tried overtaking me illegally but didn’t make the overtake and got real angry as if I had somehow slighted his manhood. He followed me home aggressively driving, mimicking trying to swerve into me or rear-end me to try to make me crash. I slowed but he refused to overtake. I had a forward-facing dash cam but not rear and I think he knew that.
He became really dangerous and the police became involved but it was my word against his as the police will do nothing without dash cam footage as proof. How have we got to the point where people can use their car as a weapon and unless you have video footage nothing will happen to them?
On another occasion an oncoming driver in my lane took out my wing mirror but it was night time and my dash cam only caught their headlights. I learned the hard way that in such circumstances insurance companies will claim against you. Even though it was not your fault, insurance companies need someone to claim against so they penalise you for making a claim. They will repair the damage but they will class it as a fault on your insurance history and will increase your future premiums.
It seems that the only way to combat these scenarios is to fit 360 degree dash cams with night-vision and anti-glare technology. Either that or take public transport.
Real friends vs acquaintances
I’ve been thinking a lot about friends recently. Thinking about the difference between real friends and acquaintances. A friend, to me, is someone you’ve hung out with, had beers or coffee with while discussing life for many hours over periods of time. people that you invite to parties etc. Whereas an acquaintance is someone you’ve met, maybe you worked with them, were introduced to them at a party, or just connected to them on LinkedIn after meeting them at a networking event, and have retained some form of connection.
I tend to keep in touch with both, otherwise you tend to lose contact and an acquaintance then becomes someone you knew, once, long ago.
I’ve been thinking more and more about the definition of a true friend, a real friend. It’s rare for us to have more than a handful of these, if any. My mother (and grandmother) used to say that if they didn’t make a regular effort to keep in touch with their ‘friends’ then they would lose touch altogether. But is that the definition of a friend? A true friend? If you are the one that has to do all the work to keep that connection alive, and if you stop you will never hear from them again, is that friendship, or just networking?
I realised that I had become the third generation in my family that carries out this process of ‘maintaining friends’. So I took a look at my list of ‘friends’ and wondered: if I did not reach out to any of them for a long period of time, would they even notice? How many would reach out to check if I was ok?
I’d already decided that I needed a digital detox for a while and decided to combine it with the following experiment: I would not contact anyone for 6 months and see what happens. I included literally every person I knew – family and friend – in this experiment.
My immediate family reached out in the first week of course. After a month three friends reached out to see if I was ok. Two more after about two months. Then one at about the four month mark, but only because they wanted something and not to see how I was. That was it. Five people out of about 600+ across my socials and contact list in 6 months.
I discussed the experiment with various people and I learned that a lot of them generally have an immediate circle of very close friends and family and everyone else is outside of that, and that they can be generally lazy in terms of keeping in touch with those outside, but that doesn’t mean they are any less of a friend despite no contact for a period of time, even years. It’s just that they don’t view friendships and contact in the same way that others might.
For me it was a useful exercise as it allowed me to re-focus my effort to be close friends with those that want to be in regular contact and will reach out if you drop off the grid for longer than usual. It doesn’t mean I’m now less of a friend to everyone else, they are just in a different circle. Let’s call them acquaintances.