Towers without visitors
We think of a folly as a false start. A hiccup. A problem.
But the word has a deeper meaning. Its origins are related to the construction of ornamental buildings which have no practical purpose. Rich Englishmen built ornate towers, in remote gardens, often as a source of private joy. These works of art in stone may have brought joy to those who ordered their construction. I guess one built a folly when money was no object.
I’m not exactly financially secure. Yet I’ve got into a sort of digital folly building. My web projects cost a fraction of the monetary cost and the time that they used to. The development of new tools, and the ease of using Claude (and the like) to code, means I can bring visions for projects to life multiples of ten cheaper and faster than I could only a couple of years ago.
Yet the thing about follies is nobody visits them. They may sit at the end of a long garden path, admired privately, or stumbled upon occasionally by someone random who it wasn’t even built for. The internet in 2026 is full of noise, ads, and generative slop. My ornate digital towers get lost in it. Modern day equivalents of the follies of times past. I don’t give up on them though. I curate the code regardless.
Unexpected Mindfulness
I was in London recently for an IOP all-staff day. Walking onto an empty tube platform at Paddington, I found myself facing a bustling wall of commuters and tourists on the opposite platform. They were arranged before me like an audience. I then felt I was on a stage, entirely by accident. It was a surreal moment. I’m glad I resisted the urge to burst into song. That way lies tube crazy.
Later that same day, we did a group relaxation session. There was music, meditation, poetry, and colouring in. I expected to find the colouring trivial. Interestingly, I did not. There was something about the focus it demanded. I got completely absorbed for the ten minutes in colouring a cat, and for a while the noise of the day fell away entirely.
Focused attention on small things, it turns out, reveals something. I made a mental note of that observation, and mused about returning to a more regular meditation practice. Admittedly among my personal interests meditation has taken a back seat compared to other side projects.
What side projects?
The most prominent of these (VibeQuiz) turned one year old last week. Officially, anyway. It has been alive in various forms for a bit longer than that, the way that projects are. The site is a gift-finding platform built around personality rather than algorithms and bestseller lists, and it exists to support UK-based independent shops.
A few weeks back I dialled down my social media promotion for that project and set up more search engine content on the site. The pivot to SEO over consistent social media is ongoing, and has yet to bear fruit. I’m featuring on a podcast soon, which feels like a different kind of visibility. Less broadcasting into the void, more conversation. Will see how that goes.
Then there’s the Runners Toolkit. Nothing to do with jogging or marathons. It’s a fan site for other players of the collectible card game Netrunner. I have thought I had finished it several times. I keep coming back. One more feature. One more small improvement. It has the energy of an addictive computer game of old… just one more turn. I’m not sure if that’s a problem?
Tracking everything and monitoring progress
These are my follies. I build them because they are my creative outlet these days. I also journal, but that’s more constrained. Not free-writing but organized. A section by section bullet journal. This week I reached the end of the first arc of the bullet journal. Thirteen weeks. I named it ‘Origins’. Slightly pretentious perhaps.
The journal was always going to be about the 70 weeks before I turn 40. A way of paying attention to how I was actually living rather than how I assumed I was living. I divided it into six arcs of 13 weeks each, and Origins was the first. Its been a chance to look at the foundations. I recorded my energy across the weeks and graphed it.
What I found was that structure matters more than I was aware. Steady day job work and regular kickboxing sessions did something for me that I hadn’t fully credited. Also, the rhythm of termtime helped keep stress well in check. The school holidays, with their competing and unpredictable demands, raised it back again.
In management speak they say “what gets measured, matters”. Measuring my own energy for the three months revealed fascinating insights. The ATM framework (Awareness, Trust, Movement) I set out early in the year showed up as more than a philosophy when I looked back at the weeks. It was itself a practice, and the practice needed certain conditions to flourish. All noted.
Arc one is done. Five more to go before May 2027. In terms of self-development, the tower is still being built.