Category: stories

River Taff Meditations… and the joy of working radio

At the start of the year, I shared my intention to find more joy in music and radio. Music is a great way to brighten up busy days, especially at this time of year. The days are long and grey, the sun is only slowly making a return to early mornings and evening after work. I don’t know about you, but I can use every bright spot I can find just now.

Now, plenty of us listen to the radio or to music as we work, so I don’t think you’ll be surprised to hear that I, too, love a few tunes to cheer up my Monday mornings. In my case, I have a couple of different ways to enjoy music at my desk:

There’s background beats and meditation music to start with. Whether I listen to Lou Reed’s Hudson River Meditations, the sounds of rain against a window or lo-fi background beats, a calm soundtrack is usually part of my daily routine. My dog Posey settles down in her basket next to my desk as soon as she hears the low music start to flow through my office. She knows that this is the signal that I am going to be lost in spreadsheets or working on a new course design for a few hours.

Then there’s listening to albums and playlists. I usually prefer to listen to vinyl on my record player, which is about 4 feet from my seat. There’re some practical advantages to listen to records rather than digital music: I need to get up every so often to flip the record, which is good for my body. Also, the play time of the record is limited, rather than endless as it would be on a digital platform, prompting a break from work to decide what next to play. I might walk downstairs to get another record and make some tea. It’s a healthy disruption.

I do also listen to digital music, usually playlists, and that can be an excellent way to find the right soundtrack for a particular time of the week. Fridays for example I often listen to beach/holiday themed playlists.

Commercial radio is rarely my choice of listening, mostly because I find the disruptions of talking annoying, but I do love indie internet radio.

Talking of radio, I am a big fan of working radio, playing and sharing tunes with colleagues, and I am very lucky that the folk I work with at Reclaim are into this, too. Cue a lot of afternoons of random tunes on our in-house radio station. To me, it’s a fabulous way to connect with folk across timezones. Especially if you are all distributed across the globe, radio can be a powerful way to connect.

For this blog post there is a special podcast with tunes that you can listen to on Spotify. Alternatively, I have listed the songs in the show notes for the episode so that you can listen along on the platform of your choice. Enjoy!

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06/02/2024
Sunrise blogging – career transition 3 months in
It’s January, it’s early and I’m feeling inspired. Time to reflect on my career transition three months in.

As I type this I have to pause frequently as it’s morning and each dog needs their cuddles. We’re arranged all together on the sofa, so I alternate the hand with which I type. The dogs are an important part of my life, and this new chapter. They are the best work life balance motivation and constant companions for this home worker.

Back to business.

I’ve read two books recently that have inspired me to think about this period of transition in new ways. First, Working Identity: Unconventional Strategies for Reinventing Your Career by Herminia Ibarra and now Chasing the Sun by Linda Geddes.

I loved Working Identity and learnt a lot from it. The things that resonated most with me: the importance of making a transition through practice, the reflective prompts included in the book and the overall affirmation that transitions need time and it’s important to give yourself permission to need time and to allow yourself some grace while you go through it.

This last one is particularly important to me just now, as I often get asked what I am doing, if it was worth it leaving my previous employment and if I have my next chapter figured out. My answers to those questions are: not quite sure; definitely and no, not at all. I am in fact trying out a number of things, and I don’t know the shape of things and it feels like a huge win. In a practical way I make enough money to pay my bills, I work 4-5 days a week and I do worry about precariousness but this transition is living up to and exceeding my expectations. It feels scary in the best way.

The reflective prompts in the book are a really useful starting point for taking stock and I especially like the way they are phrased. My favourite ones at the moment are:
- Moments of increased clarity about what you no longer want in your career?
- Physical symptoms that clarify pros and cons of options you are considering?
- Saying no to something you know is the wrong choice.
What these prompts help me understand is that I can’t plan or think my way through this period and onto the next chapter. Instead I need to give myself time and opportunities for practice. It reminds me a lot of my years in art school. I found art works in the same way. It’s a process, a practice that can turn ideas into reality. It feels good to have a narrative to share when you leave a long term job, and over time you re-tell the story again and again and each time it changes a little until you have new narrative that makes sense in the new context.

This emphasis on practice links nicely to the things I have made more time for in recent months: yoga; meditation, walking the dogs, being outside. The being outside bit is what prompted me to read the other book, Chasing the Sun.

Reading a book about the sun in the darkest time of year is no coincidence. I am seeking inspiration. And in this book I feel like I found plenty. It’s been useful to learn more about the science of sunlight, its importance to health and well-being, particularly mental health. There is a lot of research into the link between sunlight and depression and SAD that I found interesting. Getting outside during daylight hours already felt important to me before reading the book, but I had no idea how many different aspects of my life and my body could be impacted by it. Thankfully dog walks make it necessary for me to spend at least an hour outside each day and I average around 4-5 miles of movement a day. I even found that my watch can now estimate the time in daylight I spent each day. Not sure its figures are particularly accurate, but it’s an interesting idea.

Overall, my efforts to improve my mental health are definitely paying off. It’s anxiety rather than depression that’s been an acute struggle for me in the past, and even though this had already improved in recent years, in the past three months things have really changed for the better. What was once a constant noise in my life has receded into the background and only alerts me occasionally not to ignore my feelings. All the things I am doing, and more importantly how I am doing them, work together to make a shift in the right direction. Result!

Finally, I sat down in early January to review my plans and strategy. Here is what I found: My business plan for 2023 had four goals, relating to generating income, establishing a working business, and to find and enjoy a better work life balance. I managed to hit all the major goals, with only one timeline shifting a bit beyond my plans, which I am very happy with. The plan for 2024 has a few more goals, but also less detail. At least for now.

Life has started to take on a new rhythm. While each week or month looks different from the last and there are a lot of new things to learn, my days have started to take on a more uniform feel, with more calm and more outdoor time and exercise. Here’s to seeing more sunrises in 2024.

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10/01/2024
Festive Karaoke. Reclaiming online fun…

I love being online, and I love the communities I am part of online. As someone who relies largely on the internet to sustain long distance relationships with family and friends as well as collaborating with work colleagues on a daily basis, I am very invested in my corners of the web.

It takes a lot of effort however to keep those spaces good spaces to be in, on platforms like Discord and Mastodon, as well as this blog – my own domain for the past twenty years. In one of my favourite blog posts of the year, my partner Martin Weller reflected on the fragmentation of social media landscape to the tune of 70s disco tracks.

For me, the ‘secret sauce’ that keeps the network I am in truly fun, inspiring and genuine is the work happening in and around open education. From the OER Conference to working across various Open Education initiatives and group publications like this one from earlier in the year (Openness in Education as a Praxis: From Individual Testimonials to Collective Voices). For me, for the past 10+ years that usually involves the folk from Reclaim Hosting, the people who help you (and your students) get – and keep – a domain of one’s own. Incidentally, I have been digging into the archives and came across this gem of a post, from 2014, in which Jim Groom recounts how:

…we are still hoping to team up with Audrey Watters and Kin Lane to start realizing the vision behind “Reclaim Your Domain” as an extension of the Reclaim Hosting environment. Not just commodity hosting, but a space to synch, archive, and own your social presence around the web, while at the same time developing crucial web literacy skills.
Over 1000 Reclaims

Domains have been reclaimed, and ten years into the making there is no sign of letting up – Reclaim is thriving through technology as well as community. The community bit is the part I am especially excited about, and getting to work with the team that makes a packed calendar of events happen is a privilege as well as a lot of fun.

So this month, as we near the end of 2023, there is a whole host of activities to get involved in, as well as a very special session of festive karaoke, which is happening on December 22nd!

You’ll be able to watch the show on Reclaim.TV or listen in on Reclaim Radio… and if you let us know that you’d like to join us, then you can sing your festive favourites to your hearts content.

Me, I live in fear of karaoke, and unfortunately there’s a lot of evidence of how true those feelings are on YouTube. However, there must be a song by The Cure that I can co-opt as “festive”, and I am really looking forward to joining in, and reclaiming a bit of online fun before I head off into the holidays.

See you there!

05/12/2023
Reclaiming Halloween Radio
Earlier this week I got to join the folk from Reclaim Hosting for a spooky radio extravaganza! Across a couple of different timezones and radio stations, Reclaim Radio and DS106Radio, we ROCKED the airwaves.

I love radio as a medium to have fun for virtual teams. It’s super engaging, not screen based, it’s synchronous and at the same time gives everyone space to do other stuff whilst listening. It’s also, when you have a team as capable as this, a pretty easy thing to do 🙂

When we started planning for this, we offered different ways to get involved:
- Share your favourite halloween tunes and we’ll play your tunes
- Get on the radio with other Reclaim folk, chat about what you are working on, share scary stories.. And have fun!
- Get on the radio as a host, spin up the tunes and invite special guests to chat with on air.
Not everyone wants to hear their own voice on air after all, and the whole point of doing something like this is that everyone can join in and have a bit of fun without feeling that they need to commit to a whole hour.

Here is the programme we ended up with as a result:
- 8:00am ET – Halloween Tunes with Meredith
- 9:00am ET – Scary Special: Jim & Maren
- 10:00am ET – Pumpkin Hour with Maren & Meredith
- 11:00am ET – Halloween Tunes from the team
- 12:00pm ET – Old Time Radio Hour: the Scary Stories of Suspense
- 1:00pm ET – Radio Roundup with Amanda & Pilot
- 2:00pm ET – Halloween Tunes with Jason
- 3:00pm ET – Scary Tech (and Non-Tech) Stories with Amanda & Jason
- 4:00pm ET – Halloween Tunes with Taylor
- 5:00pm ET – Fright Night: Tunes from the Infrastructure Team
The weird and the wonderful

What I loved about the radio day was the variety of things that happened: from Italian horror movie soundtracks and The Cure to low-fi listening tunes, and from vintage story telling to news about what’s happening across the community, it was simply awesome!

Folk joined in as they started to listen to the programme, saying hi on Mastodon and Discord, and sharing pics and stories along the way.

I loved the radio shows on DS106 radio during the dark days of 2020 and 2021. Obviously my personal favourite was the Sunday Special that I was part of with Anne-Marie Scott and Tannis Morgan, but although a lot of fun was had, and at the time fun was a very scarce ingredient in life, it was very much radio of its time. Pandemic times.

I remember hearing Jim and his family broadcasting from Italy, and us listening here in Wales, feeling like we were able to connect despite the long periods of lockdown.

Our spooky Halloween radio show this week helped me reflect that whilst we still need to connect, and share and be present with each other, it is a huge relief to be doing so in context less dominated by the pandemic. We’ve learnt to value opportunities to have fun and be together more, I think, than we did before 2020.

Just like the excellent GIF game that makes the Reclaim Roundup a must read each month, the radio brought together all the weird and wonderful scary tech (and non-tech) stories and tunes for a day to remember.

What you didn’t see

Part of my work with Reclaim as I see it, is about finding pockets of space and time in which this team of people who work so hard and who practice such heartfelt care about all they do, from answering support tickets to developing new products, get to have a moment to take a breath and revel in their achievements.

Reflecting on success, feeling proud…, those things can be a lot harder to do than moving on to the next task, or pick up the next ticket. Just like in every other organisation I have ever worked with, here, too, is a never ending list of things to do. There is always pressure, always more that could be done, and new, exciting ideas on the horizon. I love seeing those glinting in the distance.

What I have also learnt, however, is that there is ALWAYS something glinting on that horizon, and ALWAYS a long list of tasks and that it’s up to us to make the time and hold the space to say “YAY! WE ROCK!” every once in a while.

I missed some of the Halloween fun (because timezones), but the next day I spent some time looking at the chat behind the scenes, the chat you didn’t see, and I was thrilled to see folk sharing photos of their front doors, ready for trick or treating, the chat, the banter and the GIFs. Those moments are what makes a team thrive, and they are what makes the memories that we will still recall long after the routine of weekly meetings is forgotten.

It was a privilege and an awful lot of fun to be part of our Halloween Radio programme, so you won’t be surprised to hear that there might just be some more in store come the end of the year. Maybe there will be an opportunity to make a song request, or send in edtech holiday greetings… whatever we decide to do – I hope to see you on the airwaves.

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02/11/2023
Happy Hybrid Halloween… or the spooky side of virtual working.

It’s my third week as a hybrid organisation of one, and I am enjoying the new working routine! It’s very busy and also tiring to have so many new things to deal with each day, but it’s very much what I was expecting.

What I am missing at times is of course the colleagues I have worked with for many years, and in a more abstract sense, a bit of fun and interaction that comes with being part of a team. From the research I have done about hybrid working and virtual teams, I know that it takes a lot of effort and intention. So I set about making my own fun.

Regular readers will be very familiar with Posey, my dog, who for the past three years (well, nearly) has kept a faithful vigil next to my desk. Together we get through long conference days, difficult meetings, research reports and course design. And Posey is a dog who knows how to make her own fun. Sometimes just by rolling round on the carpet in the sunshine, or with her favourite cuddly toy.

But back to Halloween and hybrid working. In case the connection seems tenuous, I think Halloween is a good example of the kind of thing that in a co-located working environment is hard to miss. Cafes and canteens may have seasonal treats or pumpkin flavoured everything. There is likely to be talk of trick or treating… plans for the holidays and so on. Interaction like the ‘Secret Santa’ gift exchange is hard to replicate when you are in a team that’s distributed across the globe or when, like me, you are a team of one.

The ‘spooky’ side of home and hybrid working is that it can often feel quite lonely or isolated. Sometimes you don’t talk to another human being all day, and when you finally step away from your desk it’s dark outside. Days can easily blend into each other into one long grey slog.

Marking days like Halloween or a change in season provides me a bit of inspiration to have some fun, be silly and join into activities that I wouldn’t usually, and which can make my day more memorable.

This year, I am organising some radio with the wonderful folk at Reclaim Hosting, as part of my work with them. Get ready for Reclaim Halloween Radio on DS106radio come October 31st! I have some small decorations in my office as well, some autumn blooms and a small pumpkin and… fun tights to wear in orange and purple. Some of you may roll their eyes here, but those of us who appreciate those things will understand. In my mind, everything that helps inject some fun into my day is fair game.

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24/10/2023
Running. Trials and tribulations.

I have been blogging about getting back into running for the past two years. This journey back into running has felt really tough at times, and at the same time I am well aware that it doesn’t signify in the face of what many others face daily, especially in these often gloomy times.

This is blogging as personal record keeping, and as such only really of interest if you are prepared to suspend the ‘so what!?!?’ instinct for a while.

The story so far

In 2021, I blogged about reclaiming my morning run, and making my way back to running… little did I know that shortly after I wrote those posts I would have to stop not only running but exercise all together for a long while. Then in December 2022 I tried to get back into it again… and now, six months later I have (I hope) finally reached a new milestone.

Rather than blogging about hoping to get back into running, I am now actually running. Phew! and YAY!

Last month I ran 5k for the second time this year and now I am back to running 3-4 times a week, slowly working my way up from 5k to 10k and beyond. I’m blogging about this (admittedly unimpressive) achievement not because of what I did, slowly plod along for 3 miles on a sunny Sunday, but because of what it represents to me: this run was very hard won.

At the start of this year I finally recovered from a serious, year-long shoulder injury. It took far more time, money and effort to restore my shoulder to normal mobility than I ever imagined and once I was able to get dressed on my own again and attend a gentle yoga class, I assumed the job was done. I felt ready to return to my usual activities.

As I’d kept working throughout most of the year that I was injured, taking some days off for hospital treatment and physio, and kept doing lots of things as normally as possible, it didn’t really sink in for a while how much strength, flexibility and fitness I’d lost overall, or how much physical confidence.

Fortunately I can afford to keep going to see my physio every 4 weeks, and with his help I started the long journey back to being able to do things. Obviously day to day activities were the main focus of my recovery: being able to get dressed again on my own, getting things from kitchen cupboards.. being able to walk the dogs on my own. Being able to travel for work, carrying a laptop case and so on. Physical exercise however did and continues to play an important role as it helps not only my body but also my mental health.

Running, which has long been my most effective coping strategy for a stressful and demanding week, started 30 seconds at a time. Then a minute. Then two.

After 3-4 months, over the course of this spring, I got used to doing 30 min of exercise again. A big achievement. Although my phone unhelpfully reminded me that by every measure my efforts were ‘below average’, it meant a lot of progress for me. My yoga teacher was a big source of encouragement and helped me find some joy in moving my arms and legs, tentatively at first, fearful of pain and injury.

Brief rant about sports bras

Although I appreciate the sentiment that all you need for running is a pair of trainers and to head out of the door, my experience as a curvy middle aged woman has never really lived up to that. Anyone who’s ever wrestled into a sports bra with a 5 hook fastening at the back will appreciate that the combination of a shoulder injury that reduces mobility + getting back into running is not fun. I am still waiting for the promise of technology and design to deliver the hype that every single new overpriced sports bra promises for me and all the other people frequenting chat forums on chaffing and avoiding bounce.

Mind AND matter

I’ve always run for primarily my mental health, finding calm and release in the ritual of heading out in the mornings. In my most anxious years, I ran nearly every morning, capturing serene sunrises in all seasons. I also ran to raise money for the cancer charities supporting my mum’s recovery from lymphoma, and gradually half marathons became an achievable goal. Running felt empowering and gave me balance, as well as a connection to the outside world that I have missed a lot during the past few years when my weekly milage was low or nonexistent.

Once I got some fitness back and managed to get out of the door regularly, I was expecting things to get easier, but my body and my mind were not happy to cooperate. I had every ache and pain in the book after just minutes of running and a sense of fear and panic that was not helpful at all. A mile seemed entirely unachievable.

After a few weeks of being stopped in my tracks by this mental block, I tried a different approach: I tried a running meditation, headed out and had only one goal: run slowly for 5k and don’t stop no matter what. Slow down if you need to (I did) but do not stop. And… it worked. Mind AND matter, with a lot of help for the mind.

Now, a few weeks on, I am back to a regular routine, a very gentle one, but a routine nonetheless, for the first time in a long time and it feels great. I am back to listening to music or just letting my thoughts wander, enjoying the feeling that I have a bit of my morning all to myself before another busy day begins.

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16/06/2023