This is my second week of not ‘working’ after finishing a DevOps contract on 1st October. Now that I have some time on my hands, coinciding with my business partner Ivan, we’re revisiting setting up our Co-operative. It has been a slow and frustrating experience. Just when you think you’ve made some progress and decisions you discover there’s a fresh set of hurdles to overcome, decisions to make.

On the Co-op front, I did a lot of reading and research on how to manage/operate an international team of remote workers, international payroll, whether to re-incorporate as Limited by Guarantee vs remaining as Limited by Shares. I reached out a few experts in these areas. When you embark on explorations like these you inevitably discover some valuable resources. This week it was the We Are Open Co-op, their Wao of Tao pocast, and the writings of one of their founders Doug Belshaw.

I’ve been sharing an office at Desg for a couple of months now. It’s nice to get out of the house, and I really enjoy the ride across town, especially as the weather has been fantastic this Autumn. However now that I’m not working in and income-earning sense (just yet) it will be hard to justify continuing. In the interim I’m going to invest in a better home working setup (desk riser and better chair), and I’ve booked a trial day at Rabble Studio, which is significantly cheaper than Desg, as a potential replacement.

I’ve started using/learning Emacs. I’m a long time vim user, not as primary code editor, but for day-to-day, quick-fire editing and scripting, remote file text editing etc. Although I’m not a power user, I’m reasonably comfortable with vim. But there’s something intriguing about Emacs. I’ve always been curious, particularly after watching friends do amazing things with org mode. Watching Evil Mode, or, How I Stopped Worrying and Love Emacs finally convinced me to give it a try. I’m avoiding Evil Mode for now, preferring to learn from scratch and master the basics. Progress is slow as the muscle memory isn’t there yet; some things I can do in a split-second in vim can take minutes to research and do in Emacs. But I’m slowly getting there.

On the exercise front, I’ve worked myself into a nice little routine of late. I’ve only missed two days so far this month. I’ve been using Overcoming Gravity this year. Three times per week, same routine. I’m really starting to notice strength and size gains, and have made a couple of progressions in the last few weeks. I’m now doing L-sit pull-ups (I hit 8 last week) and have started the pistol squat progression (up from full squats). I also hit a 35 second hand-stand, up from my previous best of 28 seconds.

I went and saw The Book of Mormon (for the third time) with some of the other dads in my street on Thursday night. It is so funny; one of the funniest things I’ve seen in my life. I’d happily go and see it again, and again. The boys loved it too, all very happy with the night out.

My daughter went to West Midland Safari, her first big school day trip. She’s been excited about it ever since school went back, and by the sounds of it the day didn’t disappoint. It’s surprising what a little peer pressure does to us; she went on some rides I never thought she would be brave enough to go on.

Finally, it was our 11th wedding anniversary on Saturday. Where does the time go? I couldn’t think of anything steel (the traditional gift) to get my wife that didn’t seem like it was for the sake of it. Instead I booked us in for a couples full-body Thai massage; always a hit. We also spent the night at the hotel we got married in, courtesy of a £200 gift voucher Em had recently received in recognition for the great work she’s been doing lately. We read books, drank champagne in the sun, had dinner in the hotel restaurant, and just generally relaxed and enjoyed a bit of kid-free downtime.