My journal has moved to jonathanwrotethis.substack.com. You’re welcome to continue following my adventures there. | Continue reading
After being invited out for dinner on Friday night, I found myself caught between a rock and a hard place. While I love spending time with friends, I haven’t spent much time with my children recently – and after my eldest daughter asked what I was doing that evening, it really wa … | Continue reading
I surprised myself this morning. After scraping myself out of bed I pulled on some running shorts and wandered downstairs. A few minutes later I was out in the morning air, setting off on a familiar route – deliberately slowly. The first kilometre came up within seconds of my usu … | Continue reading
I surprised myself this morning. After scraping myself out of bed I pulled on some running shorts and wandered downstairs. A few minutes later I was out in the morning air, setting off on a familiar route – deliberately slowly. The first kilometre came up within seconds of my usu … | Continue reading
I’m sitting in the dark of the junk room, lit by the glow of a desk lamp. Taylor Swift is quietly filling the room with wistful songs while I tap away at the keyboard. The clock will tick past midnight in a few moments. Here we are again. There’s a feeling of melancholy in the [… … | Continue reading
There is a term used in computer science – “bootstrapping” – describing the process by which a computer starts itself – essentially bringing itself to life by lifting itself into the air by it’s own bootstraps. I did a pretty similar thing this morning. After the better part of t … | Continue reading
After the properly scary events of yesterday – which curiously seem like several days ago now – my body seems to be rallying somewhat. The pain in my shoulder, side, and arm has gone. I just have a snotty nose and occasional cough to deal with. A good friend checked in on me afte … | Continue reading
On the last day of our holiday I could feel either the same bug I had before going away making a comeback – doing an encore of sorts – or an entirely new bug caught on the aeroplane making it’s presence known. Given that I had two days at home before returning to work, I […] | Continue reading
You find me sitting in the bar of the Hotel U Prince on the edge of the old-town square in Prague, watching the hours tick down towards the arrival of our car to the airport. We had hoped to walk over to visit some of the gardens near the castle today, but the weather had […] | Continue reading
After taking quite some time to scrape ourselves out of bed this morning (or rather, after it took my other half quite some time to scrape herself out of bed this morning), we walked across the centre of Prague – through Wencleslas Square – to the National Museum. It’s a wonderfu … | Continue reading
Yesterday morning we were up and out early for a walk to Prague Castle. Given we are staying in the old town, this meant picking out way through the city streets, crossing a river, and climbing a sizeable hill. The guide book estimated 45 minutes on foot. They must have been basi … | Continue reading
You know how you have all the good intentions to do something for day after day, but the moment never seems to present itself? That explains how you don’t know why or how I’m writing to you from a hotel room in Prague, Czechia. I suppose you could call this a continuation of the … | Continue reading
It’s been a week since the last post. How does that even happen? I remember years ago when I would write almost every day. How did I find time? Perhaps I didn’t try to juggle quite so many balls at once. Perhaps I didn’t used to be quite such a gigantic idiot. One of my […] | Continue reading
It’s already Monday morning. I’m playing the age old game of avoiding tomorrow by making today last longer. It’s been a bit of a weekend. The project I’ve been tinkering with during the evenings over the last few weeks kind of collapsed in on itself this weekend – or rather, it b … | Continue reading
How has an entire week passed since I last wrote anything in the blog? I’ve been burning the candle at both ends this week – trying to fit the impossible into each day. Running, washing dishes, folding clothes, tidying up, launching a new website, transferring that website to a n … | Continue reading
After surviving another lap around the local star aboard our collective ball of mud, my other half asked what I might like to do this weekend. I pulled “Bletchley Park?” out of thin air. I had read books about it and watched movies about it, but had never been there. It’s only an … | Continue reading
Today’s writing prompt at WordPress asks “what experiences in life helped you grow the most?”. Good question – and one I might answer differently on any given day. Don’t you just love cold-reading. Grow in what way? Emotionally? Physically? Spiritually? Books, movies, music, plac … | Continue reading
How on earth is it the 1st of March already? Also, it’s been almost a week since the last post on the blog. Again. What is happening? I can’t remember posting this infrequently for years. Ever, really. I’ve been buried at home and at work recently. This evening I finished work ha … | Continue reading
Today’s writing prompt asks “what is the biggest challenge you will face in the next six months”. Here’s where I step back, take a breath, think through if I want to write about this on the blog, and step forwards again. There’s a project at work – that will easily chew through t … | Continue reading
How has it been a week since I last wrote anything in the blog? I’ve been meaning to write something every day – but one thing or another has got in the way and just sitting in front of the keyboard to write has never quite happened. I’m trying to think of anything vaguely intere … | Continue reading
Ever since I can remember, my middle daughter has had her heart set on joining the police. Throughout school she read endless books, and watched innumerable television programmes – and then went on to college where she studied uniformed services – a combined course comprising law … | Continue reading
About seven years ago one of the first federated social networks appeared on the internet. If you’re unfamiliar with the term, “federated” just means “not a walled garden” – plays nicely with others. Where Twitter and Facebook attempted to ring-fence users into a tightly controll … | Continue reading
I canceled my Amazon music subscription this evening, and re-signed with Spotify. While pulling pizza from the oven at dinner time I explained to our middle daughter what I had done – and she asked why. “Because the playlists on Spotify are so much better” The voice of our younge … | Continue reading
There’s something I’ve noticed on Facebook recently – I imagine some of you might have noticed it too – a crafty trick to do with the algorithmic timeline. People are using programming to create groups and pages that use AI to regurgitate news stories, which then get pulled into … | Continue reading
Today’s writing prompt asks what the most important invention in your lifetime is. While it’s an easy question to answer – the internet – it only really makes sense if we go back and look at the story of how computers were used before the internet became widespread. Thankfully, s … | Continue reading
Today’s writing prompt asks us to describe an ideal day, from beginning to end. I would get up and discover the bathroom mat hasn’t been left on the floor after the last person had a shower. I would also find no pile of dirty clothes hidden behind the bathroom door, and the empty … | Continue reading
Today’s writing prompt asks “how do significant life events or the passage of time influence your perspective on life?” I’m going to go out on a limb for this one. I’m not sure I’ve ever been overly influenced by anything happening around me, or to me. While I’ve written in the p … | Continue reading
I logged into WordPress at lunchtime, expecting a writing prompt to appear – only it didn’t, because it’s not January any more. That didn’t stop a piece of the interface from sitting there and not populating with content though – because obviously Automattic suffer from the same … | Continue reading
Today’s (or rather yesterday’s) writing prompt asks what we would do if we won the lottery. I say “or rather yesterday’s” because it’s already gone midnight, and while a thousand and one things have stacked on top of each other today, I couldn’t resist writing something. While wa … | Continue reading
Today’s writing prompt asks “what books do you want to read?”. I’m trying not to grin while writing this – and wondering if I can just write “all of them”. I love books. I’ve always loved books. Ever since I can remember. I wrote a few days ago about having something of a “booksh … | Continue reading
Yesterday’s writing prompt asked what five things we do for fun. I say “yesterday’s writing prompt” because life kind of landed on me like a bag of spanners yesterday. You know the one where you can see somebody needs help, and you’re the best placed to provide that help, but if … | Continue reading
I got followed by somebody on Tumblr the other day – who then private messaged me and struck up conversation. After a few messages back and forth – “love your blog”, “how is your day?” – that kind of thing, they asked if we might switch to an instant messaging application. I agre … | Continue reading
Today’s Bloganuary writing prompt asks what our dream job might be. I can certainly tell you what my dream job was when I was young. I wanted to run a hot-dog stand. Wanting to run a hot-dog stand probably had more to do with me liking hot-dogs rather than anything to do with the … | Continue reading
Today’s writing prompt asks “if you could un-invent something, what would it be?”. I’m not sure I would want to “un-invent” anything. I’m pretty sure that the butterfly effect would come into play pretty swiftly – that any change would manifest and multiply into all manner of una … | Continue reading
I’ve given up trying to take part in “Bloganuary” every day. Life happens. Mayhem happens. What was it Obama said to the woke keyboard crusaders? Life is complicated and messy. Sometimes just getting to tomorrow is an achievement – regardless of the ideals, goals or aims we might … | Continue reading
Today’s writing prompt asks “in what ways do you communicate online?”. The quick answer would almost certainly be “not as much as I used to”. The real answer is somewhat more complicated. I am a member of “Generation X”. I lived through the proliferation of the internet, the worl … | Continue reading
Life conspired somewhat yesterday – causing me to miss a day of the Bloganuary writing prompts. I’ve just carved out half-an-hour amid the usual weekend mayhem to recover a little ground. Today’s prompt asks us to recall a memorable road trip. My mind immediately retreats to the … | Continue reading
Today’s prompt asks “what snack would you eat right now?” – which I think might just set the low bar so far in terms of the writing prompts fed from WordPress’s cavernous bowels (now there’s something to imagine). Seriously – who comes up with the writing prompts? What happened t … | Continue reading
Today’s Bloganuary writing prompt challenges those taking part to “come up with a crazy business idea”. Full disclosure – I shared the challenge with a good friend earlier, and wrote “well it’s either flying pretend aeroplanes” (which I already do), “ or OnlyFans”. I’m not even j … | Continue reading
Today’s Bloganuary prompt asks us to “describe an item you were incredibly attached to as a youth”, and “what became of it?”. I was a child of the Star Wars generation. I was the perfect age for the movies, the toys, and the universe of marketing that followed it. I was five when … | Continue reading
Today’s Bloganuary writing prompt asks “what is your mission?”. Sometimes it feels like my mission is no more than making it through the day unscathed. There are times where the mission is more about avoiding the arrival of tomorrow for as long as possible. I’m not really a “miss … | Continue reading
Today’s Bloganuary prompt asks “What are your thoughts on the concept of living a very long life?”. Quite apart from objecting to the wording of the question (surely it’s “the prospect”, rather than “the concept”?), I’m not sure I’ve really thought about it before. If you could l … | Continue reading
Today’s Bloganuary prompt asks “What could you do differently?”. Oh my word. This question must be out of the top-drawer of cold reading questions. A grand fishing expedition into the human condition. What unanticipated responses might it dredge up? What dark corners of each resp … | Continue reading
Today’s Bloganuary prompt asks “If you had a freeway billboard, what would it say?”. Where do I start? Let’s start by railing against the question. The term “freeway” only exists in North America as far as I’m aware, and “billboards” are only really common in the Americas, and In … | Continue reading
Today’s Bloganuary writing prompt asks “do you spend more time thinking about the future or the past? Why?”. I think my answer will be double edged. I judge myself on the past, but I try to only worry about the future. There’s a famous saying, isn’t there – about concentrating on … | Continue reading
Today’s “Bloganuary” writing prompt asks “what is the greatest gift anybody could give you”. That’s a really tough question – because I don’t really need anything. I suppose I could be clever and say something like “confidence”, or “courage”, but they seem too abstract. Friendshi … | Continue reading
Today’s prompt for “Bloganuary” asks what college(s) we attended. It just so happens that I wrote a huge chunk of my own biography while taking part in NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) a few years ago, and recently re-discovered the text. Short answer – I attended one col … | Continue reading
Today’s writing prompt for the annual “Bloganuary” blogging escapade is “Do you play in your daily life? What says ‘playtime’ to you?”. I do play! I am of the generation that grew up with the first home video games. I remember my parents coming home with an Atari 2600 back in the … | Continue reading