Weeknotes #42
I started writing a thing about last year. I stopped. No one needs another end of year review. Implicit in feeling the need to write some sort of 2025 wrap up is a decision to commit to doing weeknotes again. And in a serious & dedicated way - not just as a way of recording the things that happen, but also a way of making connections between stuff too. As a way of prompting me to look more deeply at things which are interesting. Whilst I might have neglected writing here, i’ll have posted more words online this last year than in any other, but writing for the newsletter with Matt is a very specific sort of output and it’s not as stimulating to other ideas as I might always like.
The 2025 wrap would have read something like this: long, quick, tiring, invigorating, challenging, exciting.
All at once.
Reading a load of year notes across the christmas break there is a prevalent sense of highlow: of the overwhelming nature of the last year as a result of it embodying a sort of bothism. It’ll go down as one of the most memorable and successful, but also challenging and frustrating years of my life.
That might be 2025. Or that might be as a result of my particular circumstances. The specific reasons why are less important right now, but there is change afoot. And that is a positive thing, even if it’s been difficult to wrestle with.
In the last few months of 2025 I’ve tried to adopt a new relationship with my mobile phone. When I’m outside - e.g. mobile - I treat it like the extrememely compact, powerful computer that it is. When I’m at home, I now treat it like a landline. Which is to say, it lives in a fixed place in the house (either in kitchen or upstairs on chest of drawers) and I have to go to it to use it. This has drastically reduced my screen time, reduced the amount of time I spend scrolling mindlessly and is slowly starting to allow me to rehabilitate myself. I have read books at a more significant rate since making this change. I find myself being more intentional with the digital content I am consuming and long may that continue.
I am very conscious that my media consumption has contributed to the sense of overwhelm i’ve felt in the last year. Accordingly, the stuff I’ve found myself drawn to is characterised by a certain slowness. Some recent highlights include:
Obsolete Sony - a chronicle of now defunkt japanese technology. In depth analysis, social commentary and beautiful photography. For anyone like me who yearns for the comfort of a minidisc player, this is for you
Weaknotes by Alice Barlett - slice of life updates delivered in an always amusing way. I find other people’s week notes a source of interest - it’s a pliable format and in a world where ‘blogging is dead’, they represent a weird sort of nutritious snack that is different from the sugar-rush of the tiktok or instagram feed.
Russell Davies’ new blog is fully operational - and alongside Afternoon Slow - and WIP - the stuff he’s putting out i provides a new perspective on things adjacent to creativity, technology and media. Consistently experimental, innovative and thought-provoking.
The Archers. My guilty pleasure. If such a thing exists.
As much as I’ve enjoyed using Substack to write a weekly newsletter, the more I’ve spent time actually staring at it as a platform and trying to understand how it works, the more I realise it’s slowly pivoting into something resembling classic social media. That is to say, not social and instead focussed solely on the extraction of attention from it’s users. The idea that we are what we eat is true of our media diets as much as our actual diets.
