The big news this week is that Yvant finally became an official co-operative: Yvant Cooperative Limited (link to our FCA listing). This is exciting for us, and a long time coming. We've been working towards becoming a worker co-operative for the better part of a year. Throughout the journey we spoke to a lot of people from existing co-operatives, did a lot of reading and research, and had a lot of help. We're grateful to everyone who contributed, particularly to Siôn Whellens and his team at Principle Six.

The fallout from co-operative officialdom was there was lots of admin to do; domain name changes, email address updates, website changes etc. I spent a large chunk of my week up to my eyeballs in admin of this ilk. It's easy to underestimate the amount of work to do when you change domain; and we're ony just starting out and a team of three.

I set up a shared pass password store for the (technical) team to share secrets internally. It's working nicely. I followed using password-store with an alternate directory.

On the business development front I've been tapping into the ClimateAction.tech Slack channel, reaching out to climate focused companies posting in #jobs. Even if nothing comes from these 'cold calls' it's nice to be in conversations with like-minded people and organisations. I had a call with a US based climate company looking to build mobile and web platform. Details are vague at this stage; it was more a meet and greet.

School drop offs and pickups were a pleasure. Frost blanketed the surroundings most days, and blue the sky (for a change). Each day my son reached out his hand - wrapped up in red woollen gloves - grabbed hold of mine, and we walked to school chatting about superheroes, pets, and other important things in the life of a seven year old. We'd say goodbye with a hug and a fist bump, and go about our days. My daughter was also a delight this week, greeting me with excited smiles and a hug at the end of each day. Pure heaven.

I'm learning to down tools more when the kids get home. In recent times I've slipped back in the habit of trying to just finish off a few things. On Monday those things took me all the way through to dinner and I missed out on my opportunity to focus solely on them. This was a wake up call. For the rest of the week I made sure I put my work to the side until they went to bed.

Our new neighbours are in full renovation mode. Lots of loud drilling and banging. It's at times like these you wish you were in a detached house.

Volleyball is back on. I really missed this over the Christmas and New Year break. To get stuck into a sport like this is balancing for me. For the hour I'm there I'm 100% focused and forget about everything else that's going on.

Finally I really got stuck into Org Mode this week, particularly Org Agenda. It's amazing. A bit fiddly to set up, but when you've got guides like Org Mode - Organize Your Life In Plain Text, well, others have done the hard work for you. The best bits thus far: being able to capture tasks and notes that pop into your head super quick without changing context. I still feel all over the place with so much on my plate, and I'm still only learning Org and its keystrokes, but I can already see how much it will contribute to my productivity after a few weeks/months of using it. I got so much done this week.