This week started on the wrong foot, as Y fell ill and had a very bad night from Sunday on Monday. As a result I didn’t sleep from the many interruptions to tend to her either. The week did get gradually better after Tuesday, taking better care of myself, and by the weekend I felt much better than last week. Clearing out my schedule, and keeping only the necessary things helped a lot. Leads me to think I should try and be more ‘minimalist’ by default. Meanwhile Germany has announced a strict lock-down again, until mid January. Given the strong rise in cases here in the Netherlands, I am working on the assumption that we’ll have something similar here too as of mid next week, and that Y’s school will stay shut for at least a week into the new year. So I stocked up on the basics again, the third time this year, ensuring we don’t need to go to the shops much for a few weeks.

This week I

• Had our monthly ‘finance and project acquisition’ stand-up, in which I showed the team our financial situation. We’ve done very well this year. Also discussed new projects to land, which is looking good too.
• The treadmill arrived, which I’ve installed underneath a standing desk in our attic space
• Had the weekly confcalls with clients
• Worked on a client’s assessment report about digital transformation for sustainable infrastructure
• Presented the first general results of that assessment report to the client. Will work on the details and deliver the final report early January
• Discussed a citizen science project proposal I submitted earlier with the prospective client. We’ve agreed some changes, I’ll adapt the proposal next week. But other than that it’s accepted, and we’ll start late January.
• Discussed a potential role with a novel client, based on my earlier European work this year. Got asked to write a proposal next week, with a prospective start late January as well. If this happens, then in combination with the project above and existing work, it seems I’ll be fully booked for the next year.
• Did a range of things around the house. Y wanted more Christmas lighting in the garden, so we did that. Replaced the external light next to the front door. Fixed a wooden shelf to the wall in the hallway, for photo frames and things Y makes at school. Seems to me that doing things like that in and around the house mostly consists of drilling ever more holes into your home…
• Spent very little time on writing Notions, against my plans but in alignment with my energy level this week. Next week I will work only the first half and then take time off until the new year, so I will likely spend more time writing Notions in the second half of the week.

This week in … 1901*
Marconi received the first transatlantic radio signal (the three dots of the letter S in Morse code) at Signal Hill, in St. John’s, Newfoundland Canada. It was sent from Poldhu, Cornwall UK.

Signal Hill on Newfoundland, image by Paul, license CC-BY

(* I show an openly licensed image with some Week Notes posting, to showcase more open cultural material. See here why, and how I choose the images for 2020.)