Dearest readers,
I’m truly sorry that you’ve had to endure three full weeks without any Head Voices. I’ve been in full-on Crisis Mode(tm) for the past weeks, doing my best to complete a number of projects, most prominent of which has been the brand-spanking new TU Delft first year CS course TI 1100-a. During Crisis Mode, all but the most critical of tasks have to spend some time on the back-burner. Almost like the adrenaline-fueled mammalian fight-or-flight response, when even one’s digestion is temporarily halted in order to divert all energy to for example bounding over trees whilst evading some sharp-toothed predator, even my GTD processing more or less came to a stand-till. TNR’s pomodoro suggestion, however, was a life-saver. There’s nothing like a succession of 25 minute periods of being completely in the zone for flattening mountains of work. If you’re not continuously zoning yet, I can’t more firmly recommend giving this a try.
In any case, here I am, a slightly debauched weekend drawing to a close (thank you L and friends!), joyfully writing a special anniversary Weekly Head Voices. Photo taken of the magical entrance to Lowlands, taken by my mysterious and resourceful friend fpixel.wordpress.com
TI 1100-a (which I plan to write a detailed blog post about; the short version: All TU Delft CS first years spend their whole first week doing a single project-oriented course, which I, with much help from my friends, completely redesigned during the past months) concluded with, as far as I could surmise, some success. Fifteen groups of enthusiastic students demonstrated fifteen working augmented reality music instruments in a room packed with 140+ people, and much fun was had by all. With this more or less concluded, I still have more than enough to do, but the decrease in shoulder-weight is considerable and very welcome.
Reaching slightly further back in time to a different slightly debauched weekend, I was one of the 55000 exceptionally privileged human beings spending three life- and humanity-affirming days in the third week of August: Lowlands is not so much a music festival as a fantastic and sizeable post-human community that meets once a year to enjoy each other’s happy presence. I had the further privilege of also being in the company of a slightly smaller group of exquisite friends. Hello there exquisite friends! Due to our still-strict policy of What happens at Lowlands, stays at Lowlands, I’m not able to give you much more information than the photo of the main festival entrance above. Please do note the huge “Welcome Home” sign at the centre, it’s quite telling.
Those of you who’ve been with this blog for slightly longer, might remember that the very first edition of the Weekly Head Voices was posted directly after last year’s Lowlands. This means that the WHV has now lasted one whole year! Astute readers will note that the actual frequency of my posts might dictate a name-change to Bi-Weekly Head Voices, which is nice (it has “bi” in there!), but is still not going to happen.
Whatever the case may be: Happy birthday Weekly Head Voices, I wish you very many happy returns!
On the topic of happy returns, and my hobby of somehow managing to string together disparate paragraphs in an almost convincing fashion, the animal that houses my consciousness also turned one year older in week 34, three days after Lowlands. I’m not mentioning this so that you can send me presents (although these are always welcome, especially if they’re gadget-related), but rather to dwell briefly on the unexpectedly fabulous day. In spite of the deadline-related stress dominating at that stage, being the happy target of a day-long deluge of such positive facebook messages, texts, email and telephone calls was just beautiful, thank you thank you thank you! I really do love being the gregarious human that I am, right in the middle of this information-age.
Alright boys and girls, it’s now time to get some rest, then to wake up bright and early, and then, then to continue on your life mission of creating value.