On failure and other misfortunes

(Warning: contains a small amount of blood and a great deal of frustration) *** On Sunday I admitted failure.  I had failed to finish the book in time to send it to the printers before leaving to catch the plane, despite staying up all night to work on it. I was quite miffed (ok, a […]

On not talking about Christmas

It’s the 25th of November. That makes it exactly a month until Christmas. I am ignoring that, and all other Christmas related things. Between now and then, I have: 4 exams to revise for a book to finish compiling and find pictures for and format and send off in time for printing 3 aquariums to […]

On writing my fingers to the boneskin

I have “Daumenknochenhautentzündung”. “Thumb bone skin inflammation” sounds pretty impressive, but German is a whole lot cooler :). I think the Latin is periostitis but I may well be wrong. I didn’t know that was even a thing until yesterday, I just knew my thumb hurt. Apparently, all bones are covered with a very thin, […]

On “re: vision”

I have an exam on Saturday. Actually. That’s not true. I have 2 exams* on Saturday. The date’s been set for several months, but somehow I managed to ignore how fast time slips away when you’re not looking properly. A month ago I made a list of topics we’d covered, and topics we still needed […]

On Perfect days

(Anyone who read my earlier posts – or spoke to me during May – knows I was invited to spend a week “messing about on a river” (and connecting lakes). This post should have been posted directly after getting back (mid June) but somehow wasn’t. I’m going to post it now anyway) ________________________________________________________________________________ Some days […]

On writing Revision Cards

I have decided to be super organised. Not as organised as I said I would be in October, but still a good sight better than I sometimes am. I have exams in the last week of July. My last ‘block’ (46-50 hours of lessons) is the first week of July. Usually I would finish the […]

On motivation.. (or lack of)

< something I wrote yesterday > “I work in a motivation vacuum. Any motivation I ever had, even what was stored in reserve, is sucked out of my being as soon as I walk through the doors. No matter how inspiring the weekend, how urgent the task at hand, the nagging and stropping of my […]