James Bell Central

I’m addicted to workahol

Urgh. Another year end. They feel like they’re going so fast now. And sorry, I know I’m always whining about them as they end. In my defence, aren’t they just a precision-crafted ritual for worrying about where your life is, and isn’t, going? Unless you had a great year, in which case I’m glad someone is, and I genuinely hope next year is even better for you. But I think for a lot of people this one has been particularly suboptimal.

And in 2026 I have the joy of turning 50 years old. Something I am treating like PE class way back in school: decidedly un-fun, but there’s not much I can do about it.

A big part of this feeling is that I have had a pretty stressful 2025 – dominated by the constant threat of losing my job, and, you know, [gestures broadly] – and I feel like that’s made me not much fun to be around.

Anyway, now that I have a bit more bandwidth I’m trying to be more constructive and to strike the right balance between identifying problems ahead and focusing on joy now.

Part of that is going to be more of a focus on actually making music again (which I’m still in the very early stages of).

Part of it is also going to be about spending more time with friends, family and community, and that’s really what I want to focus on in this newsletter.

First, let’s do some recommending.

Recommended

MK.GEE

Mk.gee was big about a year ago, and as ever I’m late to the party. I feel like he’s writing the most creative and original pop/rock music I’ve heard since Hyperpop.

I first heard about him through Guitarist YouTube™ where guitar influencers were singing his praises for seemingly trying to make music they would hate!

It’s like he took a checklist of all the things good guitar tone is supposed to have, and he then deliberately did the opposite. Instead of a classic Fender Stratocaster plugged into a vintage valve vamp and recorded with perfect microphone placement, he plugs directly into a crappy old four track cassette recorder and then slathers on chorus and reverb.

And it sounds great. His singing is pretty impressive too. He reminds me, oddly, of a sort of neo-soul Steve Vai.

And I think this video is beautifully hypnotic.

Recommended

ANORA

If I was a bit more disciplined then I’m sure I’d be recommending the new Knives Out movie I mentioned last month (which I haven’t had time to see yet). Instead, I’m recommending an Oscar-winning movie from last year.

Actually, full disclosure: Anora is a movie I have started but not finished, and I am watching in 15 min chunks, when parenthood allows. (Less easy to do that with a whodunnit.)

So far, it feels like it’s part screwball comedy, part doomed romance, part Ken Loach drama, and part melancholy coming of age story.

I eventually realised I had watched a million billion YouTube video essays on how great director Sean Baker is, and I figured I should check out what the fuss is about. Particularly as this, his latest film, won the Cannes Film Festival Palme D’Or and won Oscars for best director and best lead actress.

He makes the kinds of films which I would make if I was a director and, you know, had magical powers. He treads that incredibly gossamer-thin line between making (a) realistic stories about people with tough lives (with lots of creative input from those communities) and (b) warm-hearted films that don’t make you want to jump off a building.

Recommended

DREW GOODEN TAKES ON THE TECH BROS

One of the early stars of Vine who migrated to YouTube, Drew Gooden has been doing talking-head comedy monologues since around 2017.

But this video recently set the Internet all a-chatter.

Suddenly he’s taking on political economics, and the graphs are coming out. And finance experts on YouTube have been going… “that’s actually quite a good analysis!”

Why does this matter?

Well, for all that mainstream news and entertainment is getting flattened and enshittified, I’m seeing more and more beloved quirky creators with huge audiences loudly and meticulously taking on the plutocrats. And this is important, because – being influencers – they influence a lot of people.

The Wealth Inequality debate seems to be seeping more and more into everyday discourse.

Recommended

BLUMINECK

This is Dave: an archer, pole dancer, medieval weapons fanatic and YouTuber who also goes by the name of Blumineck.

Just when you thought YouTube was an endless sea of monotonous repetitive podcasts.

I just think it’s so refreshing to see someone who seems to be a genuinely nice chap and who is not only having a lot of fun but is showing off some serious skills.

At the beginning of this Q&A video, he throws an apple into the air and then shoots it with a bow and arrow before it hits the ground. And he does it so casually.

He also talks about how he became a pole dancer, and gives a very thoughtful and considered answer to the question of why he isn’t on Only Fans.

Oh, and… er… it really does seem like everyone but everyone is talking about Wealth Inequality.

Recommended

DR HOPE vs GOOGLE AI

The aptly-named Ed Hope is a junior doctor who found internet fame with his pandemic dispatches from the trenches. He was appointment viewing for me during that time, although the algorithm has hidden his videos from me of late.

This video is, unfortunately, another case of how AI is ruining our lives.

Because he recently discovered that whenever anyone googles his name, the new Google AI overview will confidently tell you that he, Dr Hope, has been struck off for medical malpractice.

This absolutely isn’t true, and a quick follow-up search will reveal that the AI is confusing him with someone else. But most people don’t click that far.

Moral of the story: Google Search is terrible now.

Recommended

NOELLE PERDUE on 404 MEDIA

This is a great conversation between the increasingly ubiquitous (in a good way) 404 Media and online pornography historian Noelle Perdue, that covers a lot of ground and goes to all sorts of interesting places.

They start by bonding over their mutual love of ‘parody porn’. Game of Bones, Bill & Ted’s Sexcellent Adventure, Ten Inch Mutant Ninja Turtles, The Loin King… you get the idea. “There is a real art to it, because you want [the title] to be recognisable, and it has to be as stupid as possible.”

They move on to how the anti-porn laws are creating a culture of online censorship, deliberately or otherwise.

Then Perdue has some really surprising things to say about erotic chatbots: she was very early to write about them, and initially she thought they sounded like a great idea. Somewhere for people to explore without the possibility of real world damage. Now she thinks the opposite, and believes the lack of reality is extremely dangerous.

And that might sound obvious, but it’s worth hearing her explanation of it.

Recommended

SANTA GEORGIA by NANCY KERR

I expected to start a bit of a flame war on the local folk music Discord server when I suggested that Nancy Kerr is the best songwriter in the English folk tradition.

Slightly disappointed that everyone then went ahead and agreed with me.

Anyway, this song of hers has been my earworm for the last couple of weeks (well, this and the dastardly Wiggles, obviously). It’s about how she found leaving the narrowboat she had lived on for 12 years and moving to inner city Sheffield.

It’s catchy as hell, imho.

“So farewell cold winter, we will all shine out together…”

So the employment situation I’ve been complaining about all year has stabilised a bit. And I’m starting to get a bit of free time back.

I’m inching back into writing music again, although – as I mentioned in last month’s newsletter – I continue to deal with the problem that my ambition has vastly outrun my abilities, and there is still a lot of catching up to do.

But something else I’ve been able to focus on, which feels long overdue, is hanging out with friends again.

The last time I was focusing on this was actually the month before Trump was re-elected. I wrote a newsletter about how you need to ‘find your people’ and maintain those relationships, and then that got swallowed by the doomscroll for the next year and change. But now it’s back in my foreground, at least.

In fact, it keeps being in my foreground and then being pushed out by world events. I realised my social circle was shrinking dramatically just before the pandemic hit. And at some point I journaled an idea that has haunted me ever since and I think I’ve mentioned here several times before: ‘if you come out of a global pandemic being too busy for your friends them you’ve learned nothing.’

However, I realise now that I learned this lesson a long time ago. It’s just harder than it seems.

Of course it’s difficult to spend time with friends when you have two young children, but when I think back to before I was a parent, I found it difficult then too. I even found it difficult back when I was single.

Or perhaps difficult is not the right word.

What I used to understand but had forgotten is that having a social life is not about making a decision in the moment. For me at least, it requires long-term planning. If I wait until I am in the mood to see friends and family, it will never happen. And I’ll go into detail why not in a moment. But it’s never something I’m going to spontaneously do.

If, however, I plan my whole routine and schedule more carefully, and actually mark out regular social time, then I will want to do it when the time comes. Not least because I will be frequently reminded why it’s important.

To a certain extent, yes, scheduling a social life is more difficult when you’re a parent, because your daily life just has more moving parts. But, again, it’s not like it was ever straightforward for me, and this month I have been reminded that it’s totally normal to have to cancel and postpone from time to time.

Doing some kind of communal activity like music can really help, though. Way back in the ‘find your people’ month before Trump I was considering starting some sort of band again. Or maybe even a folk club.

Now, I feel like I would need a bit more employment stability to fully engage with that in this moment, but it does feel more plausible than it has in a while.

So What Have We Learnt?

Why am I unlikely spontaneously choose to hang out with friends?

Well, this relates to the title of this month’s newsletter. (My brother always used to make the joke: “yes, you are addicted to workahol.”)

For a long time I think I’ve been ambivalent about self-identifying as a workaholic, because in my mind this is somebody who is always pulling all-nighters and hovering around burnout. And I’ve always been pretty careful to make sure I lead a balanced life.

But I realise that, by a slightly different but equally valid definition, I absolutely am a workaholic.

Because whenever I get any free time, all I want to do is work.

Given the choice, this ‘work’ will be composing music, but it could be many things: journaling my thoughts, scheduling my tasks, doing various household chores or even noting down some wild project idea that I know I’ll never get the time to do.

Perhaps it’s that introvert/extrovert thing: some people get their energy from socialising, but I very much get my energy from focusing on making something in a solitary way.

And I really don’t think that’s a decision: I think that’s just how my brain is wired.

But I realised that this is the reason why without a concerted effort my social life withers away.

But realising this month that my workoholism has always been a kind of social barrier feels like quite a big deal to me. I feel I can now see why it’s a problem I keep bumping up against.