add irl update post

brainsteam/content/posts/2023/05/23-irl-update/index.md

@@ -0,0 +1,25 @@
+---
+title: "An IRL Update"
+date: 2023-05-23T21:13:45+01:00
+description: a brief update - I've been AWOL for a bit.
+url: /2023/5/23/an-irl-update
+type: post
+mp-syndicate-to:
+- https://brid.gy/publish/mastodon
+resources:
+ - name: feature
+   src: images/lakedistrict.jpg
+tags:
+  - personal
+---
+
+You might have noticed that I've not been particularly active online as of late. Well that's for a variety of reasons. Firstly [my company raised £2.8M funding](https://www.uktech.news/ai/filament-funding-20230509) and, since then, I've been working hard hiring, documenting and trying to rework a number of processes so that they will still work once the company gets much bigger.
+
+Earlier in May Mrs R and I went on holiday to the Lake District to celebrate my birthday. The Lake District is one of my favourite places in the UK and I have personal connections to a number of places up there, it was great to get away from screens for a few days and spend some time in the great outdoors.
+
+{{<figure src="images/lakedistrict.jpg" caption="The view from our hotel room in The Belsfield Hotel on the shore of Lake Windermere">}}
+
+
+While I was on holiday, I also started reading [Stolen Focus by Johann Hari](https://bookwyrm.social/book/322172/s/stolen-focus) which discusses a number of modern phenomena which are sapping our collective abilities to pay attention, focus and be creative and making us anxious (being anxious makes it hard to focus too...). Being online, reading clickbait, doomscrolling, reading and responding to reactionary stuff on social media, these are all thing that are pretty bad for our attention spans so I've resolved to try and reduce the time I'm spending doing these activities, spend more time away from computers in general and try to be more deliberate about the time I do spend online. I wouldn't say I'm doing a digital detox but more of a digital de-clutter. I've been seeing [similar updates](https://kevquirk.com/anti-social-update) from people in my online circles too.
+
+I've not paid [turbopilot](https://github.com/ravenscroftj/turbopilot) as much attention as I'd have liked recently as there are only so many hours in the day. However, I will put out some updates and write about my plans there very soon.s