advice
Workplace advice for any issue, problem, or concern; from changing careers to co-working advice and decorating needs.
The Costume Change
It started before we even arrived. Our friend Joel was turning thirty, and in the weeks leading up to his party a group chat had been set up for logistics — venue details, what to bring, the usual low-traffic thread that dies down once the event information is locked in. Instead it became something else entirely. Joel's younger brother Dominic, twenty-three and on the spectrum, had found the chat and taken up residence in it. We'd pick up our phones after a meeting or a meal and find two hundred messages waiting, the original thread information buried somewhere in the middle. He was messaging well into the early hours. Eventually my girlfriend and I both muted it indefinitely, which meant we nearly missed a time change to the event.
By Bertyl Kently4 months ago in Journal
The Wingback Chair a Stranger Found Before Any of My Regulars Could. AI-Generated.
I have been pulling old chairs apart and putting them back together for most of my life. My father did it before me, in the same narrow workshop off a side street in Gqeberha, close enough to the sea that on a bad day the salt gets into everything, the tools, the tacks, the little tins of upholstery nails I keep sorted by size. When I was small I used to sit under his bench and hand him things. Now the bench is mine, the light comes through the same dusty window, and my knees complain when I kneel to staple a base.
By Josh Maraney4 months ago in Journal
Keeping On A Positive Path
Introduction I often see things or behavior that grates on me in the Facebook groups and think "I should write about that or call that out" but then realize that it just makes me a bit whiney and as bad as the people that I would be calling out.
By Mike Singleton đź’ś Mikeydred 4 months ago in Journal
The Bill for Her Choice
Four years is long enough to develop a working understanding of someone without necessarily becoming close. That's what I had with my roommate Clara — not a friendship exactly, but something functional and comfortable. We'd found an equilibrium that suited both our lives, which is rarer than it sounds when you're sharing a flat in a city where solo living is something you plan toward rather than assume.
By Bertyl Kently4 months ago in Journal
How to Choose a Digital Marketing Agency in South Africa Without Getting Burned. AI-Generated.
If you run a business in South Africa and you have ever tried to hire help with your online marketing, you already know the feeling. Everyone promises the world. Everyone says they are results driven. Everyone has a slick deck. And yet a worrying number of business owners I speak to have paid good money for twelve months and have almost nothing to show for it.
By Josh Maraney4 months ago in Journal
Top 10 Games for Learning Coding Skills in 2026
Itaught myself to code twice — once the boring way, grinding through a syntax textbook in college, and once the fun way, years later, when I got curious whether “coding games” were actually legitimate learning tools or just gamified busywork. I spent a solid stretch working through the games on this list, from a $0.99 kids’ app to a genuinely brutal assembly-language puzzle game, and the gap between the two experiences was bigger than I expected. Some of these taught me real, transferable programming instincts. A couple were fun but taught almost nothing beyond pattern-matching.
By Jason Will4 months ago in Journal
Skindex: Your Ultimate Guide to Minecraft Skins
My son asked me last year why his Minecraft character kept looking like generic Steve while his friends showed up as everything from anime characters to custom superheroes. That question sent me down a genuine rabbit hole into the world of Minecraft skin sites — and The Skindex kept coming up as the name everyone mentioned first. So I actually used it, alongside its main competitors, editing skins, uploading them, testing how they apply in both Java and Bedrock editions, before writing a word of this.
By Jason Will4 months ago in Journal
I Wasted Thousands on Marketing Before I Finally Learned to Do It Myself. AI-Generated.
I make aluminium windows and doors. That is what I know. I have been doing it out of a workshop in Boksburg for the better part of eleven years now, first on my own, then with two guys who have been with me long enough that they know how I like a frame squared before I even say it. I am good with my hands and I am fair with people, and for a long time I honestly believed that was enough. Do good work, treat the customer right, and the phone rings. And for a while it did ring, mostly from people my old customers had sent my way.
By Josh Maraney4 months ago in Journal
How To Make Money Online
So, how do you make money online? It's safe to say that making it here isn't happening. This platform's great and serves a purpose, but the algorithm isn't designed for you to make money. That's the attraction for some, and company people know that.
By Jason Morton4 months ago in Journal
What He Did With It
There is a particular kind of tired that comes from spending a full day being pleasant to people you don't know well. Not hostile — just not yours. You say the right things, you laugh at the right moments, you make the effort because you love someone and their people are part of the deal. By the end of nine hours of it, the tiredness sits somewhere behind your eyes.
By Bertyl Kently4 months ago in Journal
