Reports from an unexpected encounter
I'm back with my roundup of fun guidance & inspiration. I'm feeling better after my tangle with Covid, but we still have a child in isolation. Complicated family jenga in the home space ensues.
That was an unexpected re-entry into New Zealand. After managing to get around the world and back unscathed, I managed to get Covid 6 days after I arrived home. And it looks most likely that it was through Kindergarten or School via one of our younger kids.
Although it was a pretty grotty few days for me, the biggest family challenge was trying to manage a household where some people were testing positive and had symptoms, and others were not. After a few days, our oldest daughter tested positive and developed symptoms rapidly thereafter. So far, my wife has tested negative - we all hope this continues. And we think masking stringently and keeping a distance where possible helped a lot in achieving this. I don’t know how we would have coped if she had fallen ill with covid at the same time as everyone else.
I’m out of isolation now, and re-engaging with activities, through I’ve cancelled a few things and am ramping up slowly again.
However, I couldn't not write this today. I’ve missed you!
This edition is a slightly shorter edition as I ease my way back in. And you can also expect some changes about how Noise Reduction will continue.
Instead of 3-4 posts per week, it’ll settle on 2-3 posts. I was feeling quite frazzled keeping up with the pace of things when I went away, so I’m getting back to a cadence that feels more sustainable. I trust that still works for you too.
The community chat threads will continue too - I’d really love it if you could participate in those - it’s a great way fro me to get to know you a little better, and for community members to get to know each other too.
So, let me kick off: What have you been doing the past few weeks while I have been away / sick?
Just when you thought it couldn’t get any worse …
It seems like every time I’ve been back to the UK since 2015 it’s felt like a complete circus and a country in terminal decline. Maybe that perception isn’t too far away from the truth.
Today, Britain seems trapped between a left-wing aversion to growth and a right-wing aversion to openness. On the academic left, the U.K. has lately been home to a surging movement called degrowtherism, which asserts that saving the planet requires rich countries to stop seeking growth. On the right, the electorate is dominated by older voters who care more about culture wars than about competitiveness.
Did it really spark joy?
If you’ve been reading Noise Reduction for a while now, you’ll know I’ve posted about the Joy Workout before. What happened when someone actually tried to do it?
I need to move this tired lump of meat, but I have never found exercise genuinely pleasurable, which is why I’ve been eyeing up the eight-and-a-half-minute Joy Workout. Some joy would be nice – simple, wholesome Freude, rather than the Schaden variety, which seems to be the only one on British shelves currently. Plus, no one is so busy they can’t spare eight and a half minutes – I spent longer than that looking at the Daily Star lettuce last week.
Designed by health psychologist Kelly McGonigal, the workout combines movements shown to elicit positive emotions and to be recognisably joyful, crossculturally, and is set to a soundtrack “aimed at enhancing positive emotions”. There’s a video to follow, in seven themed sections. I tried it and present my findings in case you, too, seek joy through (manageably brief) movement.
The most visited websites in every country
Although your local mall / high street can feel very indentikit, the internet actually shows some surprisingly differences around the world. Dig deeper here.
Wikipedia is the most visited in 15 of the 38 European countries according to our research. Having become the first-choice online knowledge bank for many – and now, the world’s largest online encyclopedia – Wikipedia has multiplied its potential readership with the addition of foreign-language portals and translations. On the advent of Wikipedia’s 15th anniversary, Pew Research Center revealed that the most popular English-language pages tend to concern current events and movies. Meanwhile, Spanish users tend to read up on sports and history.
Are you actually listening?
Lots of people are dumping their streaming services and going back to old-school ways of listening to music - if an older iPod can be considered old-school, that is. Are you one of them?
“With streaming, things were starting to become quite throwaway and disposable,” says Finlay Shakespeare. A Bristol-based musician and audio engineer, Shakespeare recently deleted his streaming accounts and bought a used iPod on eBay for £40. With streaming, he says: “If I didn’t gel with an album or an artist’s work at first, I tended not to go back to it.” But he realised that a lot of his all-time favourite albums were ones that grew on him over time. “Streaming was actually contributing to some degree of dismissal of new music.” Even with digital downloads, he tended to give music more time and attention.
That’s it for this week - it’s great to be back. Please drop me a line or leave me a comment and let me know more about you and what you’ve been up to - and any feedback on this week’s edition. Cheers!
Hello I’ve been back in Auckland 2 weeks today. It’s been an odd transition after spending nearly six months in the UK. I expected jet lag, but not two weeks on. What is going on? So, I have been asking a few friends about their thoughts on: long covid and sure enough, fatigue or brain fog has been mentioned but not any professional advice just post covid personal stories. I now find myself reading up about post concussion syndrome and long covid as I had that Traumatic Brain Injury in 2021 more than a year ago now. I’ve already had 12 months of fatigue and brain fog Thank you, not again ha! Meanwhile I’m still receiving texts and calls from my mother in the UK re: plumbers and handymen jobs to do. I remind my mother that she has a daughter too, who lives 3 hours away from her.
Sharing is caring apparently.
I need a holiday or a retreat :)
What have I been doing. Still wearing mask in new places, Walking dog, avoiding large gatherings, planning to re-engage with cinema. My Google travel diary shows that over past couple years I've walked around 1/3 of world.