I wrote here a while ago that I have significantly reduced my consumption of what I grew up regarding as ‘News’ – typically TV and newspapers (I haven’t listened to the radio for a long time.) That doesn’t mean that I don’t follow news, just that I focus on hyper-local stories and niche things and let other stuff wash in on the tide. What I’m picking up anecdotally is that other people are doing the same. That is something touched upon in an interesting discussion with Jim Waterson of London Centric:
https://open.substack.com/pub/prospectmagazine/p/jim-waterson-on-founding-london-centric
I’m managing just fine without the endless stream of stories and opinions coming from what, for the sake of a name, I’ll call the legacy press. I don’t think I’m any less informed about the big stories but I do think that I get more signal than noise. The same is true with cutting back on the noisier end of social media.
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Since my last post I have turned 66 and have started on my prostate cancer treatment. In the end I selected hormones plus radiotherapy and have begun taking the hormones. The radiotherapy runs from the end of January through February 2026. I’d say so far so good but I’ve also had a heavy cold that has masked any reaction.
The hormones have been 3 weeks of pills (Bicalutamide) and the first of four implants (Leuprorelin) under the skin of my stomach. The latter stung because the needle was thicker than normal; the nurse suggested the doctor should prescribe a numbing cream before the next one (January) which made me wonder why they didn’t for this one.
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Although I have had other things on my mind, I have kept on with the writing, even if only a sentence or paragraph or two per day (sometimes more of course). In many ways, at 40,000 or so words into it, it is still taking shape. I’m keeping an open mind about how long it will end up being. It’s the second draft that makes it coalesce, this first draft just gets it down.
More importantly, I’ve removed the Amazon exclusivity on the ebook versions of all four of my books. That cuts of a trickle of Kindle Unlimited income, but it is only a trickle. I’m making the eBooks and, shortly, paperbacks available from a variety of platforms, though most of the variety is in North America. In purely commercial terms it probably won’t make any significant difference, but I did not want to stay locked into the Amazon exclusivity. I’ll put links to the other vendors here and elsewhere in a week or so.
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