There are weekends that feel long before they even begin. By Friday evening I was already carrying towels from one room to another, opening doors, closing doors, checking who was sleeping over and who was suddenly staying for lunch without warning me first. Fruitloop laughed when I told her about it, but by Sunday I…
A Lunch Tale of Yoga Knees, Yellow Cars, and the Mayor’s Ongoing War Against Forgotten Laundry Some Lunch meetings begin with philosophy. Others begin with technical difficulties. This one began with The Mayor accidentally announcing his own old age before breakfast. “Sorry, I forgot,” he said halfway through the conversation. “You see, I’m so old.”…
I dress in the dark these days – winter in South Africa. Some mornings, my socks are upside down and inside out because I’m trying to beat the sun to the finish line. It’s a quiet, clumsy start to a day that I already know will feel like a race with untied shoes. I used…
I usually spend my time here talking about the “real talk” of life—the inside-out socks, the cold coffee, and the responsibilities we all try to juggle. We focus on the grounded, everyday truths because those are the things that make us feel seen. But sometimes, the most human thing we can do is step away…
Martin Later, after my Fritzbox had staged its small but effective rebellion, I wrote to The Mayor. I had to explain myself, because in the middle of Manfred’s Croatian field study I had simply disappeared. This was not because the questions had become too difficult. It was not because the killer ants had somehow reached…
Manfred When The Mayor asked me what image came back first from my two weeks in Croatia, I did not need to search through many dramatic possibilities. There was no heroic mountain pass. No storm. No spectacular sunset with violins. The picture was very simple: I was sitting on a chair, feet up, looking over…
Today, The Mayor told me we were going to speak about values. He said this was a philosophical subject, and maybe he was right. Values are not always easy to explain. Sometimes they are easier to see in small stories, in mistakes, in work, in discipline, and in how people behave when life becomes difficult….
From Points for Brushing Teeth to the State of Democracy We began, as we often do, with something apparently small and slightly ridiculous. The topic was gamification: the modern habit of turning ordinary tasks into games, points, badges, rewards, leaderboards, and little digital pats on the back. I had prepared the topic because Ismar and…
When Work Becomes a Game, Someone Is Always Keeping Score When The Mayor asked Ismar about gamification, I was already smiling a little inside, because I could imagine where Ismar would go with it. For him, this idea itself sounds like one of those modern things where people take a simple responsibility and make it…
The Strange Game of Being Good When The Mayor asked me what I thought about “gamification of tasks,” I had to stop a little. Not because the word is difficult, but because the idea itself is strange to me. I suppose gamification means trying to make something hard become less hard, or maybe more attractive….
