Thoughts

Rook what I made

minceandskirlie

I’m not very arty, but every now and then I see something and think “that looks achievable, I could probably do that”. I do a bit of sketching, I like drawing birds in particular and have seen some amazing printing recently using linocut techniques. It seemed like something that was pretty straightforward and would work well with my basic sketches so I thought I’d give it a go.

One cheap linocut starter kit later and here we are. I’m really happy with how it turned out. I sketched out a rook on some paper until I was happy with the proportions etc. then sketched it out again on a slab of linoleum (seems like most people use tracing and carbon paper to copy designs across, which makes more sense). Once on the lino, you use the cutting tools to scrape away all the negative space, anywhere you want to show as white on the final print. This takes ages. The two small tools in the kit didn’t help, a bigger cutting tool would help with the larger areas.

Final step is to pour out some ink, coat a roller, then roll it over the lino block before placing some paper on top and pressing down with a wooden spoon. It’s so simple. I think I’m hooked. Need to think of some more designs now.

Health and fitness, Thoughts

On Loneliness

minceandskirlie

Let me start this by saying something important, I’m not actually lonely. I have a great family, good friends that I see semi-regularly, and work colleagues I get on well with. In technical terms I’m not alone. I get adequate amounts of social interaction. This article isn’t a criticism of the people in my life or a problem for them to solve. But still… I feel lonely a lot of the time and I think I should talk about it.

It’s strange talking about loneliness. As someone who tends towards being introverted, I’m quite happy spending time alone. Especially when I’ve spent a lot of energy in other social situations or doing something stressful. Time by myself, to spend on a hobby – strumming a guitar or playing a game in peace – lets me recharge the social battery and give me a chance to calm down a lot of the anxiety that I’ve struggled with in recent years. But that doesn’t mean I don’t value time spent with others. I just have a limited well of energy to draw from.

It’s not intentional, or even by choice, but most of my hobbies I now practice alone. I’m quite classically nerdy and have a lot of interests I enjoy – I like video games, collecting Warhammer miniatures, playing music on guitar and mandolin (switching between heavy metal and traditional folk), writing, and dungeons and dragons. For the sake of my physical and mental health I have a few ways of keeping fit that I also enjoy – running, cycling, and more recently, indoor climbing.

Almost universally, I do all of these things alone.

(the exception is D&D where we have a semi-regular online session. It doesn’t work well alone)

Now this isn’t really by choice. Take playing music for example, I spent most of my late teenage years and my twenties playing music in local bands, going to gigs and talking to friends about it. It was a huge part of my life and my social circle. But as tends to happen, you get older, you start a family, work gets more important and it just fades away until it’s not really something you do any more. I still play music, just for my own enjoyment, but it’s not really a big part of my life anymore.

It’s the same for gaming. Growing up we spent most of our time playing games with friends. Slowly as we all grew up and left home, that moved into playing online together. But again, that’s faded away as it gets harder and harder to arrange sessions and by the time the kids go to bed, there’s not much energy or time left to try and get a game going. So I don’t really bother. I still talk about games with some of my friends, but it’s not really the same.

Even the sports I do find time for used to be more social. Many years ago I did Taekwondo and really enjoyed the social part of training martial arts. I was an active member of a running club a decade ago. I loved meeting up two or three times a week in a carpark in the hills and then trotting round a cairngorm nature reserve for an hour or two. It was brilliant. Since we moved house I joined the local club here and have been to a couple of sessions a few years ago, but then the pandemic happened. Now things are more normal, all the club sessions clash with kids activities or their bedtimes and it just isn’t feasible to make it along.

Before we had kids, my wife and I started going indoor climbing. Both of us were terrible at it, but it was something we did together and it was good to push us out of our comfort zone. A few years ago I tried to convince her to take it up again, but instead I find myself going to the boulder wall on my own and struggling in silence for an hour or so. I’ve tried suggesting to friends that they take up climbing so I can do it more socially, but hanging off a high wall, gripping tightly to some small bits of plastic appears to be a hard sell.

Now I know all these things can be social. I realise there are other people at the climbing wall when I’m there. I could even try and arrange social runs at lunchtimes with other people in the office that go running. They exist, I’ve seen them. I’m sure I could talk to them and suggest running the same route, at the same time, at roughly the same pace. I’ve even joined discord servers for the video games I like where they have regular online sessions, which I could join in. But that introvert part of me just doesn’t know how to do it and then thinks I’ll just end up letting people down when I can’t make it.

I’ve got into the position where I have lots of hobbies. But none of my friends that I do see, or any of my family, share those hobbies. So anything I’m really interested in I don’t have a way of enjoying with other people. It’s that feeling of not being able to share your interests with other people that makes me feel lonely.

My evenings are mostly a write off due to family commitments, so I can’t go to regular training nights, or folk sessions, or spend hours a week climbing. I’m also studying for a part-time degree with the Open University on top of everything else. I don’t have the energy to figure out how to make it work.

I’m sure this is something that will get better as the kids get older, and rely on us less and less. Or at least I hope so. I’m sure as well that this is a common experience. We all pine for our youth and the things we used to do when life was more carefree and we had no responsibilities. I also know there are people out there scratching their heads at this and wondering why I make it sound so difficult. I do see people my own age, with kids and responsibilities, who cope a lot better with making time for themselves to do things with clubs or groups, or make time to go see friends etc. I’ve just no idea how they do it. Answers on a postcard please.

There we have it. I don’t really know how to end this. I don’t have a solution or a plan of action to change things. Basically I feel like I’m alone a lot of the time, even though I have lots of hobbies, because I don’t get time to do any of them with other real people, and the friends and family I do spend time with, don’t share many of my hobbies. Maybe I have too many and need to focus on just one of them to do more socially? It’s a conundrum. If I could solve it, then it wouldn’t be a problem I guess!

Music, Thoughts

Once More Round The Sun

minceandskirlie

It was my birthday last week, another lap of the sun completed. I don’t really put much stock in birthdays any more or get really excited for them (though I did have a great time with family and a lovely meal out with my wife on the day itself). In fact I find myself now spending most of the year struggling to remember exactly how old I am now. Am I really 43? Or is it 42? Once I hit somewhere around my mid twenties I think I mentally felt like this is my age and I’m going to stick with it. Anything above that doesn’t really count. Just no-one told my haggard, ageing, body.

I fell down a synth laden black hole this week. It all started a few weeks ago when I dug out my Korn Volca Beats and was determined to learn how to use it. This magnificent piece of procrastination coinciding with the start of my latest Open University module of course. Then I started liking and following loads of synthy accounts on Threads that just post chill, ambient beats on hardware synths. I was scrolling for hours just checking out loads of cool sounds.

That led me to browsing hardware synths on Amazon for a while until I came to my sense and decided I should just use the toys I already have. Rooting around in my spare room, I dug out my Akai Miniak synth that I bought over a decade ago and also never learned how to use. I managed to switch it on and play around with some of the presets but it really needs some proper time put in to it to get the best out of it I think.

Time I don’t have it turns out! As my procrastination caught up with me after I had a birthday weekend and I suddenly found I had dropped behind schedule a bit on my uni course and needed to get my head down to catch up on some reading and go hug some trees on the first dry day we’ve had at a weekend for a while. I really went out and hugged some trees, as the course had us out measuring the circumference of local trees with a tape measure. Surprisingly, I didn’t see any posts on the local nosy neighbour facebook group for our town wondering why someone was hanging around all the trees taking pictures and measuring them.

That out of the way, I returned to my synth distraction. Which led me to building quite a wishlist on Amazon of some cheap hardware to do some DAWless synth jams. But I think that should wait. For now I have a drum machine, a beastly Akai synth that I just need to learn how to use, and access to Reaper and loads of software synths that I could use to find my feet with first. Yes, that sounds much more sensible. So instead of a new expensive synth that I won’t get round to learning, I received my dopamine hit by ordering a small USB midi keyboard controller instead so I can control software synths on Reaper and figure out what I’m doing.

My big plan is to use the synth stuff as a backing track to do some live jamming with my guitars, but lets see how that works out. If anyone out there has any VST recommendations or even some budget hardware recs, let me know. It would be a good basis of some music streams on Twitch I think if I can get the hang of it. If it works it’ll be pretty satisfying. But first I need to stop procrastinating and get back to some studying!

Music, Thoughts

Beats and Beaks

minceandskirlie

I’ve been busy with uni, work and then a family holiday this month. But I’ve still found time to procrastinate spend on a couple of lapsed hobbies.

10 years ago I picked up a Korg Volca beats just after they were released. A dirt cheap drum machine, with simple workflow, and a sound harking back to the classic modules of the 80s and 90s. I was full of good intentions of incorporating this in some low fi folk compositions. Then never really learned how to use it properly. It still sits on a shelf by my desk, unloved, to this day. However, I picked it up again the other week, when I was probably supposed to be doing something much more important and had a play with it.

https://www.threads.net/@folkedoff/post/CylKp5fL1CG

https://www.threads.net/@folkedoff/post/CynzhKmoace

(One day Threads posts will embed seamlessly into WordPress. Today is not that day. Click the links to hear the results)

Both those basic beats were drummed up (hah!) in just a few minutes. It’s so easy. I really need to spend more time with it. Frustratingly though, I don’t have a way to hook it up to a speaker at the same time as my guitar or my hardware synth (which I also should spend more time with). But if I can solve that problem soon I should start using the Volca more often while writing on the guitar and practicing in general (always was bad at practicing with a metronome).

While on holiday this week I also picked up a hobby I’ve tried starting loads of times over the years. I keep buying sketchbooks, pencils and pens, then carrying them around with me and never use them. Well, this time I spent a couple of nights sitting drawing in the holiday lodge then colouring the sketches with some pens. Mainly to try and impress my daughter really.

Blue tit (Cyanistes Caeruleus)

Goldfinch (Carduelis)

I love birds and wildlife and have always been jealous of people who can draw really detailed pictures of the birds and animals they see. Whenever I’ve tried in the past they always look really wonky. But I’m pretty chuffed with how this blue tit and goldfinch turned out. The blue tit is still a bit strangely proportioned, but the goldfinch is just about right. Think I just need to practice a bit more to get some consistency. I’ve never been a tidy artist and struggle with detail, which also comes across in these.

I might try some different pens next time or maybe even using some acrylic paints for a chance and see if that helps me get the details right.

Anyway I’m pretty happy with how both these bits of activities have turned out. Less happy about how much I’ve procrastinated from what I should have been doing instead, but that’s a whole other blog post!

Thoughts

Hitting the books again

minceandskirlie

It’s October which can only mean one thing! That’s right, halloween studying! I have a full time career in a very corporate IT environment, plus a family, and way too many hobbies that I don’t get to spend as much time on as I’d like. Yet, since 2019 I’ve also been studying part time for an Environmental Science degree at The Open University. I took a study break last year to concentrate on some house stuff, then procrastinated about that for most of the year. But now I’m back at the books again as the new academic year kicks off and I start my first level 3 module.

So what makes a middle aged man, with a good career and lots of other commitments decide to go back to uni? After all, I already have one degree. A BSc (no honours) Computing for Internet and Multimedia which I coasted through twenty years ago only because I hadn’t managed to get a job with the HNC Computing I coasted through before that. Late teenage and early twenties me was not one for working hard and getting top marks. Drinking lots and cruising to mediocrity was much more my thing.

What else I had in my twenties was a very clear sense of right and wrong, with a firebrand commitment to causes of the left. Fuelled by many, many hours listening to Rage Against The Machine and System Of A Down albums, and as many anti-globalisation books and websites I could find. I was a sparkly eyed idealist who was about have all that crushed by the big hammers of society – having a career and a mortgage.

I live in Aberdeenshire and decided to have a career working in IT. As you do around here, I wound up working for a very large IT services company who’s main client, in Aberdeen and the UK, was one of the supermajor oil companies. Almost twenty years later and barring a couple of short detours, I have only ever worked in corporate IT for the oil industry. Teenage me would be fucking mortified.

For someone who is still very much left of the left of centre, working for the oil industry for twenty years does result in some soul searching over time. Even more so now I have kids and someday will have to explain how we let the planet get into such an awful state. To say nothing, to do nothing, is consent. However, I need to pay a mortgage, don’t want to move elsewhere and the North East of Scotland is very much dominated by the oil industry. So what can I do?

Occasionally when things haven’t been going well at a company (there’s often a cycle of redundancy/outsourcing threats or new management changing the department and office culture) I’ve looked around at the public sector or more environmentally conscious organisations for job openings, but they have little need for my particular IT skills (supporting large applications for oil companies) and I don’t have the knowledge or experience they do need. While I would like to leave behind the world of corporate IT, I don’t really have the luxury of being able to study full-time, retrain, or start from the very bottom again in a new career.

I decided the best thing I could do, for my conscience, and my family, was to look at the kind of organisations I would like to work with one day and then think about what skills they would value. My thinking is that if I never train to do something different, then how can I expect things to change for me? So while I have the money to be able to afford to do another degree I should take that opportunity. Then I can study part-time and build up some skills and experience while still keeping a roof over our heads with my current career. A couple of years ago, a friend told me I was wasting my time doing an Environmental Science degree as there was no money in it. As if the only reason anyone would ever choose to do anything, was to get rich at the end of it. I have to admit, this really upset me at the time and still bugs the fuck out of me today when I remember it.

Even if I never manage to fully jump into working in conservation or helping the environment, at least some day in the future I will have a degree that might help me get volunteering opportunities to try and help manage my local environment or assist with wider projects. And in a roundabout way, I’m putting the cash I get from the oil industry to good use. It’s not about the money or trying to get into a more lucrative career. It’s about looking back at the person I was growing up, the beliefs I held then and think I still hold today, looking at my children and the world I’ve brought them into, a world that’s overheating while our politicians put their heads in the sand and pretend it’ll be OK, without taking any meaningful action to prevent catastrophe. It’s about looking at all of that and being able to tell myself I didn’t just help big oil companies make this planet worse, but I also did a little bit to make it better one day.

It’s hard work. It’s hard to find the time to sit down and read the material, let alone the 12 – 20 hours a week the modules generally say are required to read the material and complete the exercises. I pick an hour here and there through the day – lunchtimes, evenings in front of the TV. Then try and block out chunks at weekends or when the kids are at swimming lessons etc. All while still doing my bit home and spending time with the rest of the family, plus still scraping time for my other hobbies. It really is hard!

But at the same time it’s really enjoyable. I like learning. I love nature and the environment and after four modules I now know a lot more about the natural world and how it’s changing than I did before. This year is my first level 3 module, which would roughly equate to the 3rd year of a normal 3 year degree (for England, here in Scotland we do it a bit differently studying over 4 years normally). After this one I just have two left – a small final module and an honours project. The end is in sight! What comes after that? I’m not sure. I’ll keep my options open, but if nothing else I’m enjoying being a student again and get to spend some of my spare time learning about an important subject, doing so with interesting people from all over the country, and learning from the fantastic staff at the OU campus in Milton Keynes and the superb tutors locally.