A mixed week in which I had a sense of improving my mental condition, yet at the same time realising I’m not there yet. It is also clear that two habits are key to me currently. One is checking my calendar(s) early in the morning or the previous evening, and not to rely on the assumption I have things well enough in mind. I every now and then forget appointments, by not reminding myself in time. The other is interstitial journaling. I’ve learned the past weeks it very much helps me checking in with myself multiple times a day as well as making switching between tasks way smoother, reducing procrastination enormously. Whenever I do it during the day those days feel much better, whenever I don’t I easily feel I’ve lost my time to unknown things. (Interstitial journaling is jotting down after something things such as what I did, what I think/feel about it, what I think I’ll do next)

This week I

• Attended the launch of the national normalisation committee for data spaces, data governance and cloud/edge, at the NEN in Delft. This is the national version of the European CEN-CENELEC JTC25 normalisation effort on the same topics. The JTC25 is acting on a request by the EC to take up standardisation work as part of the implementation of the Data Act and the Data Governance Act. I was at the launch representing a client, and because I think this is an important piece of work.
• Given the tight timelines for the work above I wrote a decision document for the client and discussed it with them, to decide whether to participate in this at the national and European level, and with which experts from the organisation. To be decided early in the next week.
• Had the weekly client meetings.
• Discussed an already approved funding proposal supporting the use of ActivityPub in the Netherlands with a team who are positioned to do the work. It is needed to redefine the tasks involved as the context has moved on from when the funding was approved in 2022. It wasn’t disbursed nor acted upon before. In my role as treasurer of the Dutch activitypub foundation I’m aiming to give this a push, also because it is a path to a larger funding possibility later on.
• Had a good catch-up conversation with Boris Mann, longtime blogging friend. He was on European time, and we talked about his work, our views on tech, the cycles and generations we see in tech activism and development, and how our roles in it are shifting as we are now the people with decades long experience (which is different from back in the early 00s when we were doing these same things)
• Made a basic html form to locally interrogate the Hypothes.is API for annotations for a term, tag or specific URL or by a specific user.
• Finished up the bookkeeping for the 2023 personal business tax returns for E and me. All checks done. One final element to add, and then ready to fill out the tax forms.
• Did some gardening, pruning, removing the irrigation system for the fall and winter, removing the parasol stands etc., brought the birdfeeder back into use. Much still to do but taking it in small pieces.
• Forgot an appointment for an interview for a magazine, because I didn’t check my calendar in the morning. An easily preventable mistake.
• Spent a day at the office.
• Discussed a draft memo with a ministry to get a better sense how it will be used before the next iteration of the draft.
• Did some nonfiction reading that I enjoyed. For many years I find it hard to make time for it, but here too taking it in small bites, such as 30 minutes exploring the structure and main points of a book, is helping.