Weeknote 11/2025
“My trifles escape me with as much gravity as they deserve. Good luck to them for that. I would part with them at once, however low their price. I do not buy and sell them for more than they weigh. I speak to my writing paper exactly as I do to the first man I meet.”
(Michel de Montaigne, ‘On the Useful and the Honourable’, Essays)
I took the above photo at the CoTech Gathering on Friday in London, an event I was delighted that I could attend in person. There must have been about 40 people there, plenty of whom I knew, but (encouragingly!) plenty that I didn’t. I really enjoyed it, with Natasha and Maddy from SPACE4 doing a fantastic job of herding the cats.
I travelled down on Thursday, joining Aaron on the train, and then staying over at John‘s place. With both, I prefaced my long-ish explanation of what had happened that week by saying “other people’s health issues are super-boring, aren’t they?” It’s at this point I think it’s only fair to remind you that you are reading this by choice: I am in no way coercing you into reading the next few paragraphs 😉
On Monday night I had my first trip in the back of an ambulance. After a couple of days of not really going out the house, except in the car, I went for a walk in the nearby park. Despite walking slowly, my heart rate quickly raced to about 150, and I had a really tight chest. My son picked me up, I went home, and thought that was that. However, when I was making a cup of tea about half an hour later, I was doubled-over with a stabbing pain. My wife called 999.
By the time the paramedics arrived, I was feeling a bit weird but largely fine. The results of all the tests they did were normal, but they recommended I went to hospital as a precaution. By the time I got there, I was uncomfortable but not in pain, and there were old people lying on beds in the corridor, groaning. So, after they moved me into the general waiting area due to my ECG being as it should, I looked at the displayed waiting time. Seeing it was over six hours, I discharged myself and my son picked me up again.
On Tuesday, given what had happened, I let Natasha and John know that I wouldn’t be able to make it down to London. I had a quiet day working with Laura and John on various co-op stuff, and had a virtual coffee with Abi. At this point, I thought that I had Angina, which is what my GP suspected.
I headed to a different hospital on Wednesday morning for an outpatient appointment with a consultant. After another ECG, which was probably my sixth in as many weeks, he analysed it along with other test results to give me some good-ish news. He told me that, as someone who specialises in both Angina and arrhythmia, his professional opinion was that I had neither. It might, however, take a while to rule out other things and get a diagnosis.
I’ve got an echocardiogram appointment next month, which is kind of an ultrasound for the heart. I’ll then have an MRI scan as well at a later date. Me being me, I spent most of the rest of the day trying to figure out what condition I’ve got. My current hypothesis is that I’ve got Hypotrophic Cardiomyopathy (HCM) as it fits my symptoms, and makes sense given that the consultant has asked my GP to switch me to beta blockers.
Given the good-ish news, I told Natasha and John I was coming down after all, took my daughter to football training, and slept as well as I could (my Garmin Body Battery is always low at the moment).
On Thursday, I spent the morning with Laura creating communitybuilding.fyi, another magazine-style microsite showcasing aspects of WAO‘s work. The other two we’ve made previously for this purpose are ailiteracy.fyi and digitalcredentials.fyi. At lunchtime, I had an introductory chat with David Schmudde, CTO of Yorba, about various things. Interestingly, they’re a B Corp which is owned by a design co-op. My wife then dropped me at the train station, and off I went to London.
Friday was the CoTech Gathering and, while there, I talked to someone who reads this blog (hi!) who said that they have HCM and are on a clinical trial of a drug called Aficamten. Although beta blockers had helped them initially, that effect had worn off. This new drug had given them a new lease of life. There’s also an existing drug called Mavacamten which can be prescribed after diagnosis.
While I can’t be 100% sure that I’ve got HCM, I’m just delighted that I haven’t got Angina or arrhythmia. That might sound weird, but potentially having a genetic condition that needs treating means that it’s… not my fault? As in, I haven’t made lifestyle decisions (diet, weight, exercise) that have necessarily caused this. One of the first things I said to my wife when I returned from the hospital was “I’M BACK ON THE BUTTER.” Because, with the greatest of respect, I’ve only had a week of Flora Pro-Activ yet it can get firmly in the sea.
You’ll notice that, apart from some internal stuff and the CoTech Gathering, I haven’t really talked about doing any work. That’s due to us still playing a waiting for the Amnesty and BBC projects to start. I’m looking forward to getting my teeth stuck into something, now that it’s early springtime and I’ve got a bit more hope.
There are no football matches this weekend for our two teenagers, but my son’s basketball team lost this afternoon thanks to the opposition sinking a three-pointer in the last few seconds of the game. It was a bit harsh, to be fair, but learning how to deal with the kind of emotions that situation provokes is exactly why young people should play sports.
Next week, I hold out hope that we’ll start either or both of the projects mentioned above. I’m also thinking of going to some of VentureFest on Tuesday, although last time I almost lost the will to live after having really boring conversation with someone. I do sometimes forget how tedious some people and their jobs are. That’s probably a bit harsh; sorry not sorry.
Anyway, here we are at the end of a rambling blog post that, I will remind you again you chose to read! I write these things for my benefit, so you’ve only got yourself to blame if you’ve read this far. There are no refunds, sadly.
But, if you’d like more output resulting from the collaboration between my brain and fingertips, I’d direct you towards Thought Shrapnel where I published 10 posts this week. But, silly me, you ‘re already subscribed to the Sunday digest. Right?
I track the books I read at literal.club. In the past couple of days, I finished the 625-page Overstory, which took me about five weeks to finish. The absolutely devastating 520-page book, Gulag, which I could only bear to read in small chunks, took over two months. It’s always good to have at least one fiction and one non-fiction book on the go, and I’m finding at the moment that I prefer physical copies.