‘When you realize the plot of the last 10 years was just a prologue…’. Join the conversation on LinkedIn. https://www.linkedin.com/posts/antlerboy_when-you-realize-the-plot-of-the-last-10-activity-7401538858854744064-ZHgj?utm_source=share&utm_medium=member_desktop&rcm=ACoAAACuq-oBecVFDW6PCf3lkoG-peMeuLBeoho
I was given this phrase in a weirdly portentous way by ‘Grok’ ai — using someone’s prompt:
Generate a meme, using a well known template, but with your own words on it. The goal of the meme should be incredibly relevant to hyper recent times and should be both funny and poignant.
The ai locked in and produced an infinite stream of mostly men sanding in front of modern buildings with that gnomic saying.
But it brought me up short. The last ten years have been pretty bad, man!
“Brexit” marked a break for me. I graduated in 1997 and things generally, overall, seemed to be getting better in what I understood of the world around me, despite — and occasionally because of — the annoying, wrong-headed politicians.
Since then, it’s gone crazy, man.
Then there was COVID, the lows and the highs. We had to close down the office, lay off nine out of ten operations staff.
Then the infuriating refusal to learn any lessons as a society.
And my father-in-law died, and my dad slid into dementia.
This summer, we bought a house — finally — 22 years behind schedule, on the beach. The sea!! And I won’t bore you with details, but it’s been a nightmare. Workers, inspectors, insurance, lawyers… a full-time job.
We were just about on holiday, just crossing the border, when I turned on my Ring ‘drip cam’ — and saw rain flooding through the collapsed ceiling.
So I found myself alone in the house — dog (what a blessing of the last four years! And what a lot of work!) and wife and car overseas. And that Friday night, I had the time to respond to a LinkedIn thread on ‘relational public services’ which led to this piece just published: https://chosen-path.org/2025/12/02/a-hundred-origin-stories-an-unfinished-history-of-relational-public-services-parker-dove-and-taylor-2025/
And I had the time to finalise the design of the ‘outcomes in complexity’ version of the Systems Thinking Practitioner Level 7 Apprenticeship, an opportunity to iterate our learning, work, thinking.
While dealing with repeat visits — tradesmen, like digital services, are seldom ‘done in one’ (see https://www.linkedin.com/posts/antlerboy_someone-should-do-some-analytical-ethnography-activity-7400493551333306368-wefr/ ), I got a call — my dad had gone into hospital again with another infection — and this might be it.
Well, it was. A good death, we all saw him, it was peaceful at the end. The funeral was great (he was buried in the wrong grave — one final opportunity to complain, which he loved so much), the wake was lovely — family, stories, seeing the best of my dad through other’s eyes. And he got a Guardian obit!
A work colleague died, too. And I’ve heard about so many people’s dads dying — the ‘dead dad club’ as Adam Buxton so aptly calls it.
And I’m having to come to terms with the fact that — hey — I’m 50 and my health isn’t exactly perfect — I’m now on my second tooth infection of the autumn, thank God for antibiotics! (I can’t invoke the NHS because… dentistry).
And work — it can be a joy , it can be a frustration. The motto since 2009, too much of the time, has been (to badly paraphrase Macbeth) ‘well, if it’s going to be done, it’d better be done well’. Will throwing all of public services up in the air at the same time with no apparent plan create magic? Will relational public services just be another add-on? https://www.linkedin.com/posts/antlerboy_activity-7401226151580377088-HLbx/
__
So. Some hard days recently. As Homer Simpson says: ‘This is the worst day of my life… no, Benjamin — the worst day of your life so far’. Things could be worse. And, in some ways, they will be.
Posting has somehow helped me a bit. Will normal service ever be resumed? Well, I think the dadposting / sadposting will fade, at least.
__
But the real point is not miserabilism. Life isn’t easy, but it’s also the portal to every joy and love and achievement and value and excitement. When you realize the plot of the last ten years was just a prologue, that everything decays and everything passes, OK. As always. So what are we going to do next
‘We are not permitted to choose the frame of our destiny. But what we put into it is ours.’ Dag Hammarskjöld
I was given this phrase in a weirdly portentous way by ‘Grok’ ai — using someone’s prompt:
Generate a meme, using a well known template, but with your own words on it. The goal of the meme should be incredibly relevant to hyper recent times and should be both funny and poignant.
The ai locked in and produced an infinite stream of mostly men sanding in front of modern buildings with that gnomic saying.
But it brought me up short. The last ten years have been pretty bad, man!
“Brexit” marked a break for me. I graduated in 1997 and things generally, overall, seemed to be getting better in what I understood of the world around me, despite — and occasionally because of — the annoying, wrong-headed politicians.
Since then, it’s gone crazy, man.
Then there was COVID, the lows and the highs. We had to close down the office, lay off nine out of ten operations staff.
Then the infuriating refusal to learn any lessons as a society.
And my father-in-law died, and my dad slid into dementia.
This summer, we bought a house — finally — 22 years behind schedule, on the beach. The sea!! And I won’t bore you with details, but it’s been a nightmare. Workers, inspectors, insurance, lawyers… a full-time job.
We were just about on holiday, just crossing the border, when I turned on my Ring ‘drip cam’ — and saw rain flooding through the collapsed ceiling.
So I found myself alone in the house — dog (what a blessing of the last four years! And what a lot of work!) and wife and car overseas. And that Friday night, I had the time to respond to a LinkedIn thread on ‘relational public services’ which led to this piece just published: https://chosen-path.org/2025/12/02/a-hundred-origin-stories-an-unfinished-history-of-relational-public-services-parker-dove-and-taylor-2025/
And I had the time to finalise the design of the ‘outcomes in complexity’ version of the Systems Thinking Practitioner Level 7 Apprenticeship, an opportunity to iterate our learning, work, thinking.
While dealing with repeat visits — tradesmen, like digital services, are seldom ‘done in one’ (see https://www.linkedin.com/posts/antlerboy_someone-should-do-some-analytical-ethnography-activity-7400493551333306368-wefr/ ), I got a call — my dad had gone into hospital again with another infection — and this might be it.
Well, it was. A good death, we all saw him, it was peaceful at the end. The funeral was great (he was buried in the wrong grave — one final opportunity to complain, which he loved so much), the wake was lovely — family, stories, seeing the best of my dad through other’s eyes. And he got a Guardian obit!
A work colleague died, too. And I’ve heard about so many people’s dads dying — the ‘dead dad club’ as Adam Buxton so aptly calls it.
And I’m having to come to terms with the fact that — hey — I’m 50 and my health isn’t exactly perfect — I’m now on my second tooth infection of the autumn, thank God for antibiotics! (I can’t invoke the NHS because… dentistry).
And work — it can be a joy , it can be a frustration. The motto since 2009, too much of the time, has been (to badly paraphrase Macbeth) ‘well, if it’s going to be done, it’d better be done well’. Will throwing all of public services up in the air at the same time with no apparent plan create magic? Will relational public services just be another add-on? https://www.linkedin.com/posts/antlerboy_activity-7401226151580377088-HLbx/
__
So. Some hard days recently. As Homer Simpson says: ‘This is the worst day of my life… no, Benjamin — the worst day of your life so far’. Things could be worse. And, in some ways, they will be.
Posting has somehow helped me a bit. Will normal service ever be resumed? Well, I think the dadposting / sadposting will fade, at least.
__
But the real point is not miserabilism. Life isn’t easy, but it’s also the portal to every joy and love and achievement and value and excitement. When you realize the plot of the last ten years was just a prologue, that everything decays and everything passes, OK. As always. So what are we going to do next
‘We are not permitted to choose the frame of our destiny. But what we put into it is ours.’ Dag Hammarskjöld
chosen path 
i was 27 he was 54
hed just piad off the mortgge then he died
an engineer
LikeLike
Too young! Very much too young.
LikeLike