I wrote in the first issue of my newsletter, about what I think life will look like after the pandemic, and I also touched on my personal situation. But I thought I’d go deeper on that today. Specifically on the main reasons why I don’t want to go back to the office.

Firstly, the time spent commuting is too high. Or at least I’ve come to get used to not having a commute, and I don’t particularly want to go back to losing three hours of my day, five days a week. There’s so much more stuff I could be doing with my time.

The next big reason is because I can. I'm a software engineer, and can do my job fairly easily, anywhere in the world. I just need a computer and an internet connection. The past year has proven that I am capable of working from home. Although, I'd obviously prefer to do it in a better scenario, where I'm actually able to make use of my extra free time more.

Then there’s the benefits of having just that extra bit of friction between other people and myself. We have the typical communication tools which we use, so we can talk to each other, and we have regular video calls within teams, but it’s not as instant as physically talking to someone. Some people may find this to be a negative, but I find that it lets me get on with my work. Rather than someone interrupting me when I'm in the middle of something, I can get back to them on my ow schedule.

Adding to that, there’s a whole host of reasons why I find my house more comfortable to work in than an office environment. I’m lucky to have a dedicated room for an office, so I can go there and focus on a task, I can sit downstairs on the sofa and do something less intensive, and just generally move around and still work. I can listen to music as loud as I want (very loud), which is something that is happening a lot more recently. I can talk to my partner throughout the day if she’s not working, and I just feel like I’m more present. Because lets face it, no-one works at 100% for the whole working day. Because sometimes the work is simply menial and doesn’t require deep concentration, other times you’re in a presentation and can relax a bit, or maybe you’ve just finished a big task and you’re having a small coffee break. Whatever the situation, I’d much rather do any of that in my own home.

The final reason is my cat. He’s grown pretty attached to me over the past year, spending quite a lot of time in my office with me, and even getting involved in video calls. I’m not sure how he’d cope if I was suddenly away for 12 hours a day.

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This post is part of the warmup week for the March Blogging Challenge, the theme today is Top 5.

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Photo: (Anna Dziubinska / Unsplash)

I've just been playing this game for quite a while and it's really fun. The idea is that you get shown a video of a certain area, and you need to guess where it is on a map.

You can choose to play Worldwide, limited to a specific continent, or a few specific countries. I've been playing with Europe, since I've rarely travelled anywhere else. Obviously, I'm pretty good when it comes to the UK, and other popular places throughout the rest of Europe, but I certainly have been surprising myself.

Play City Guesser.

The pandemic has been with most of us for around a year now, and with the number of cases going back down, and the rapid vaccine rollout, there actually seems to be some light at the end of the tunnel.

Some say COVID-19 will be with us for a long time, others say forever. I suspect that it will live on as a seasonal virus, similar to the flu, and other types of coronavirus. However, I’m not an expert, so I’ll leave the thinking on that one to them.

Instead, what I have been thinking about is mainly what is life going to be like after the pandemic. Once the various lockdowns are ended, and we’re set free again. Free to go “back to normal”.

Except, I don’t expect anyone truly expects we will go back to life as it was before the pandemic. Instead, I think instead of going back to normal, we will be going forward. Forward to a life where we apply the lessons that we have all learned over the last year.

The Lockdowns

I can only speak from my own perspective, and with the context of the UK’s experience of the virus and various lockdown measures, but I think I can say one thing for everyone - It’s been one hell of a rollercoaster ride. We’ve had different levels of restrictions here in the UK, some stricter or more localised than others. They all felt different.

When we first had a lockdown, the entire nation seemed to get together and had a real sense of community spirit to try and pull through the lockdown. It was a novel thing, being locked inside our houses. And if you weren’t someone that was immediately affected by losing your job, your business not being able to operate, or worrying about family members who were more vulnerable to get the virus, there was a sense of “fun”.

I don’t mean to say that not everyone took it seriously, or that they didn’t care about the health of others. But there was a little sprinkle of excitement on everything. Everything was different, so we were all experiences new things at the same time. Whether it was working remotely, gathering online with friends and family, spending more time with our family members, and just generally exploring our new world.

After the lockdown ended, and the first wave was over, it was just about summertime. “Non-essential” shops were reopening, we were told to go out and eat at restaurants, and everyone was making use of their free time and exploring nature. A few people had holidays, but at least the people I know, kept within the UK. It wasn’t normal, but it was a sense of freedom.

Then later in the year, around October, we started to get new restrictions seemingly every week. Some were applied nationally, others based on tiered systems. Because the restrictions weren’t always as strict as the first time around, there was a more relaxed feel. And to be honest, I would say that around this time, not everyone was paying attention to the rules.

While there was a short national lockdown in the latter stages of the year, there was Christmas to look forward to. So it wasn’t all negative. Until, of course, the rules were tightened just before Christmas.

Then in January, it was announced that we would be entering a third national lockdown. This time until February. This was obviously driven by more strains of the virus, the expected seasonal increase, and also a few people that did mix over the Christmas period. In relative terms to the first lockdown, it’s not that long at all. But I think this time around, it’s hit people the hardest.

But now we have the new vaccines being rolled out, and the UK seems to be doing a pretty good job at it. At the same time, talks are beginning to happen regarding easing the lockdown measures. It’s starting to feel slightly positive again. We’re beginning to think about life after lockdown. Not life returning to normal, but instead taking everything we’ve learned over the many highs and lows, and looking at our lives with a fresh perspective.

What Happens Next?

I think the big thing that we’re all contemplating now, are our priorities. Maybe we valued work too highly, we didn’t see our friends and family often, we didn’t make full use of our opportunities, or maybe we just got too comfortable and forgot what was important.

Work

The biggest change will no doubt be related to how we work after the pandemic. Some have people have continued like normal, some like myself have been lucky enough to be able to continue working from home, but others might not have been able to. And since for some it’s not guaranteed that work will be the same after the pandemic, there’s obviously going to be some major shifts.

For the people that have continued working like usual, they might now be asking if that job is still right for them. Maybe during this period, they’ve learned that it’s not for them?

And even if while working from home, your job is essentially the same, it might have unearthed some thoughts about how you want to work in the future. Is remote work something you like? Are the benefits of your job still worth it? Do you really want to go back to commuting for hours a day? Or after this experience, are you simply ready for something else?

As for everyone that hasn’t been so lucky, where they’ve either lost their jobs or just not been able to work, I think there will be a big chunk of them that have used this period to analyse where they want to go in the future. Because if you’re someone that has been on the edge of a career switch, this may have been the unfortunate but possible helpful nudge in a better direction.

I’ve certainly seen a lot of small businesses starting recently. Mainly from young people who aren’t working, and want to fill their time, and also see if they can make some money. I can’t say they’re innovative businesses, most of them are either small-scale handcrafted goods, personalised hampers, or just plainly reselling goods in various selections with a branded logo. At least from what I’ve seen, I don’t imagine most of them will last that long, but I bet some of them will.

And if you have been building a small business recently, or have had a “side hustle” going for a while, this might be the time to really try to make it a main source of income?

Work-Life Balance

Even if you don’t want to switch to a new career path, or make changes to the way you work. The balance between work and personal life will certainly have been tested for a lot of people. I think a lot of people will have realised that seeing their family is important, and simply enjoying life can be more important than working as much as possible.

Because what is the point of work if you’re not able to enjoy your life? In my mind, work is meant to enable your life, not become your life. Some people are happy with their life becoming their work, but I personally don't get it.

Travel

Similar to the work-life balance question. Now we’ve all had a period of not being able to travel, as soon as we all can get back to travelling around the world, I think a lot of people will be doing so. Like most things, there will be an initial surge, but after a year of little to no travelling for most people, I bet a lot of people are just itching to get on a plane.

Community

Although I think it hasn’t been as strong recently, over the whole pandemic, there has been a bigger sense of community spirit. Whether it’s by following the new restrictions, supporting friends, choosing smaller local businesses, it does feel like smaller communities are pulling together.

I think this is great. Because I think when we think of ourselves as simply being part of the UK, it’s hard to feel as connected to one another because the scale is just too high to comprehend. (It’s also why I think large social networks have issues, but that’s for another day)

But by being part of your local community, you can feel like you’re actually part of something. And it’s a lot easier to make a difference. For example, buying from local bookstores instead of Amazon, going to local events, and maybe even providing something back to the community yourself?

Myself

As for myself, I’ve been lucky enough to still be able to work remotely. It’s not totally new to me, since I used to work at home every now and then anyway. But those experiences always feel like one-offs. The company wasn’t ready for full-time remote work, everything was about being present in meetings, gathering near a whiteboard, or physically pairing with someone. So when the company decided to make everyone work from home (which was weeks before the UK actually went into lockdown), it was a big change for a lot of people.

Admittedly, as a developer, I can do the essential parts of my job with just a laptop and an internet connection. But there were some early teething problems with meetings, working closely with people, and also some technical issues due to our internal network and having all of our servers accessible over the VPN. Most of that was resolved in the first month or so though.

Since then, I think that while I wouldn’t say we’ve gone full-time remote working since there is still the mindset of going back to the office eventually, I would say that we are working very efficiently. And when I talk to other colleagues about this, we really struggle to come up with major reasons why we need to go back. I assume some executives in the company will be thinking similar things too since we rent multiple floors in an expensive building in central London, there are the added costs for facilities management and all of the little extras, and also I think a lot of us are simply more happy being at home.

There are a few things that I like about being in an office environment, I like physically being able to turn around and talk to the rest of my team, I like physically being in meetings, and I really enjoy being in London every day. But I don’t think those benefits outweigh the money or time spent on my commute. On average it takes me 1:30 to get to/from work. So if I want to be back home by a relatively normal time, I need to leave my house at 6:30 to start work at 7:30, I’d finish at 16:30, and be back home at 18:00. 12 hours of my day for 8 hours of work. I’m just not sure it’s worth it anymore.

As for my personal life, there are some things that I want to start changing. I haven’t exactly been seeing my family that much, I don’t have a history of supporting small/local businesses, I’ve not taken any interest in my local community/town, and I think I’ve generally placed work above everything else.

But since work has been taking up a significantly less amount of my time, I’ve been seeing what it’s like to be able to actually do things every day. Because if work takes up 12 hours of your day, and you sleep for 8, then that only leaves 4 hours every day. So in a sense, this lockdown has actually been less restrictive for me. I’ve gained more time in my day, and I’ve been slowly getting used to it.

I’ve not quite come up with the answers yet, but here are the questions I’ve been asking myself recently:

• Do I really want to travel to a city every day?
• Is being in the office worth the time and money spent on the commute?
• What local businesses can I support by using them instead of big corporations like Amazon?
• If I am to work remotely permanently, what other changes am I able to make to my life?
• Should I try to work for a more remote company?

I’m interested to see how the pandemic has affected other peoples lives, and if you also feel like there are some changes you want to make when “normality” comes back around.

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Photo: (Miguel Sousa / Unsplash)

Mike Rockwell:

The problem with insular bubbles isn’t just that you’re surrounded by people that share the same world view. It’s also terribly problematic that every time an opposing viewpoint pokes through, it’s re-told and framed through the lens of someone that already disagrees with it.

You can’t expect to understand the argument unless you actually listen to someone that believes it whole-heartedly.

Absolutely. To understand something, you need to listen to someone who actually has skin in the game.

A weird thing popped into my head earlier. That I think games are now, what war used to be for technology.

We all know that a lot of science and technological advancements of the past were driven by war. To create weapons, to break communications encryption, achieve space flight, and loads more.

But what drives technology now, or at least consumer technology, are games.

Sure, not all improvements are because of games. But why do we have powerful computers? Mainly, the power is to play games. And a lot of extra stuff gets achieved along the way.

The most common marketing example of the power of smartphones is showing a game demo. Because games constantly sit on the edge of whats possible. They encourage technology companies to push boundaries.

Right now, the next step is Virtual Reality. But that's just a stepping stone to the real destination, Artificial Reality. That's where I think we will see the next major technological breakthrough. But what's pushing VR? Games.

It doesn't exactly mean much. But it's interesting to see that games are a fundamental part of pushing technological advancements. Both as a reason for advancements as with more power can come better games, and as a marketing tool that can be used to help push the development of a product, as in VR and AR.

Something I’ve been thinking about a lot recently is perspectives and the benefit of owning your perspective.

Myself and many others, regularly fall into the trap of generalising an opinion before making it public. Not only because of the risk of not havingareelcomed opinion, but because you want to be relatable.

I fall for this a lot myself, and it’s something I’m trying to actively combat going forward, but it’s the lack of an honest perspective in my writing. Sometimes instead of saying my opinion or discussing a topic purely from my own perspective, I generalise.

Maybe it’s because we want to try and overcome our biases because that way you won’t seem better or worse off than other people. But I personally believe that personal biases form part of our perspective, and hiding from them is dishonest. We should always try to be aware of our own biases, as it can help us understand the world from other perspectives. But we shouldn’t try to hide them.

I write this not to put people down for trying to make their content relatable, but instead to encourage people to show their true selves more. Truly lean into your perspective, because that’s where the value is.

When I read someone’s writing, I find it much more enjoyable if they make it their own and put their honest perspective into it. Because, although I might not relate totally to an opinion, it’s fascinating to see how other people view certain topics.

That’s probably where I think it becomes more than just showing your perspective to readers because it may interest them. It enables much more than that. By sharing your outlook, you’re opening yourself up to others. Which helps everyone keep a bit more of an open mind, and reinforces the fact that not everyone thinks the same.

There might be the risk of offending people, but that shouldn’t necessarily be a sole reason to stop doing something. Because by taking that risk, you’re expressing yourself. You might not necessarily be right about something, and you might not even agree with yourself in the future. But that’s fine, because opinions evolve, and perspectives shift.

However, to enable that, we need more open dialogue, and for that, I think we need to be honest with ourselves and our audiences.

What a headline.

Zoe Kleinman, reporting an incredible story about a digital photo gallery owner's various experiences with Facebook banning his adverts for seemingly impossible reasons:

The Winchester-based photographer's other banned ad images include:

• a neon sign featuring the word "disco", on the grounds that it was promoting alcohol
• a set of tramlines in Reims, France, which Facebook said went against its ticket sales policy
• a Hong Kong skyline, rejected on the grounds that there was "nothing for sale" in the photograph itself

• a firework display, blocked for promoting weapons

  ripples on a pond for selling "adult products"
• another "overtly sexual" photo, of a high-rise office building

At one point, his entire account was suspended from placing any ads at all.

I don't know what there is to say about this. Apart from it being absolutely hilarious for reader, but surely massively annoying for the business owner.

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Photo: (Mike Hall / NORTHWALL GALLERY)

I’ve been using Craft for a few weeks, but around a week ago I had the thought of using it to write blog posts. I’d already found it a great app for collecting information, links, and images, and was working well as a research tool. But I wondered if this could replace iA Writer for my blog writing.

I shortly discovered that Craft has no functionality to publish to Ghost blogs, which is what my blog is run on. That stopped me in my tracks. But only for a short period, since as you may already know, I ended up looking into the Ghost API myself, and writing a small iOS app with Shortcut actions to manage uploading images and creating posts. So that got me back trying out Craft again.

Writing in Craft

I find the act of writing in Craft to be very enjoyable. I like how I can use a lot of the typical Markdown syntax, but also have it presented in a way where it looks like a final piece of writing. Rather than in an intermediary language that will then become a blog post later on.

While you could say that there are a lot of formatting options in Craft, it is still relatively minimal and doesn’t introduce a ton of distractions.

There are four fonts to choose from, two options for page width, spell check, cover image, and few extras in the form of page formatting. But for the actual style of your text, you have the various levels of headings, bold, italics, list, checklist, and you can even have a block of text appear as an embedded blog or a quote. So it all seems pretty normal. Although you can change the text colour of a block, which seems a bit novel for a notes app for me. I think that could be a bit useful when organising content, or even just using a nice colour, but I especially like how it doesn’t affect the Markdown export.

I must admit though, there is one feature that Craft has that I absolutely love. Embedding documents within each other. There are various formatting options, but essentially they appear as cards inside a document.

I’ve used these a few times for more general research writing, but I see these as being pretty useful when doing more long-form writing, as it allows you to manage a structure easier. So I don’t think I’ll need to use embedded content or linked documents when writing the majority of my blog posts, but it’s good to have.

Using Craft as a Research Tool

I think even if Craft isn’t used as a tool for writing a final version of a document, it’s an invaluable tool for gathering research and organising your thoughts. Like I said at the start of this post, I’ve been using Craft for a while already for this very purpose. I have a document for interesting things I find, where I usually store a link and a few thoughts, so I can reference it later if I want to either look further into a subject or even write about it.

There’s a lot more to Craft than just text and images too, with the support for various types of content embeds, linking documents, and the modular design of cards, it can really serve as a hub of information. Couple this together with third-party apps like Spark that allow you to generate URLs for specific emails, and you can put together a document that can serve as a central point for a project.

I have a document like so for my app Text Case, and also my upcoming newsletter. Because while I want to keep different pieces of writing in different documents, I appreciate a level of organisation and I find it a good tool for planning.

Exporting Your Writing

When it comes to taking your writing out of Craft, I must admit there’s room for improvements.

There are a few options for exporting a document into various formats, like Markdown, PDF, Textbundle, and MS Word. But that obviously requires you to then move that content manually into your blog.

Along with simply exporting a document into another format, there are options to send your document to another application. So when you’re finished writing, you can send your document to an app such as iA Writer or Ulysses to finalise any formatting, and then use their built-in publishing tools. It feels like a workaround, but it’s still definitely possible. I have my custom Shortcut actions, which means I can publish directly from Ghost. But there are times where I think using iA Writer as a middle-man is useful, especially when dealing with things like HTML embeds.

I have found that Craft doesn’t support the HTML syntax I like for blockquotes, so right now I’m writing posts that include those in iA Writer. Although I’m still using Craft to collect the links and notes for those posts. It’s not a complex format, I just prefer to use a parent figure element, which contains a blockquote for the actual quote and a figcaption for the author and title of the quoted document. I suppose this could be fixed if there was an option to embed raw HTML in a document, but for now, I have to write that elsewhere.

Final Thoughts

I find Craft a delight to use, and writing becomes a joy when using it. But with the limitations of certain HTML elements and lack of built-in publishing tools, I can’t see it becoming my sole writing app. At least until those things are remedied.

But alongside using Craft to plan personal projects and keep notes, I find it an invaluable tool for research. It may seem trivial, but having a place where you can throw a bunch of content in a single place is super useful, and at least for myself, it removes so much of the friction when it comes to writing. For example, for a potential link post, I used to start with an article or quote, and then have to start from scratch. But with my current collection of links, thoughts, and related content, it’s really easy to then create a blog post.

I can say for definite that Craft will stay as part of my writing workflow, and I’m open to it taking up a bigger chunk, but that responsibility relies on the people at Craft. Let’s see what they can come up with next.

I don't keep up to date with upcoming series, so this one took me a bit by surpise. Although a very welcome one. At least from the trailer, it looks like it's going to be a pretty good show. This comes at a good time, becasue I was actually thinking of cancelling my Disney+ membership, since I've finished watching The Mandalorian.

I'm sure this series will lead right into the next MCU film, so it will definitely be worth checking this out.

It’s not been long since the major update to Text Case was released, introducing things like custom flows and complex formats. But it’s already time for another update that will bring a long desired feature, macOS Services.

macOS Services

All 48 formats can be accessed on the macOS app via the Services menu.

They apply the format directly to the selected text, which means no extra action is required. And since they are services, you can add a custom keyboard shortcut to them!

Unfortunately, I do need to add a caveat to this: It appears there is an issue with Catalyst based macOS apps where they do not support app-based text replacement services, where the services work up to the transformation happening, but the Catalyst app not taking the result and replacing the text.

New Formats

It’s not just a macOS update for Text Case, as all versions of the app now receive another 11 formats:

• Title Case (Guardian)
• Bold (serif)
• Bold (Sans-serif)
• Italic Bold (Serif)
• Italic Bold (Sans-serif)
• Script
• Gothic
• Letters in Squares (Filled)
• Letters in Squares (Outline)
• Letters in Circles (Filled)
• Letters in Circles (Outline)

Tweaks

• Small Caps now only applies the transformation to already lowercase characters.

Bug Fixes

• Fixed Copy to Clipboard button.
• Fixed the bug where certain HTML elements would be omitted in the Markdown to HTML format.

Download

This update is available right now for iOS, iPadOS, and macOS!