The post-Christmas period has been weird for me. There's not much routine, there's been a lot of getting up late, and a low note of simmering guilt ... not much guilt, you understand. Just an underlying drone of you should have tidied that up / you should have written that email / you should have returned those books / you should have done more laundry / you should be cooking ...

(hey, does that make it somewhat like a hurdy-gurdy?)

For work, I am traveling around interviewing people about maths - which means that things I am doing include: researching travel options to get to people, emailing people to arrange/confirm interviews, preparing for interviews (downloading audio files, making sure my notes are all in order, making sure I have the right participant's details (and only their details) with me), actually traveling, doing interviews, traveling back, writing up observations, more emails ... round and round it goes. It's been a big learning curve, and it's pretty tiring, and there's some unpredictability - there are still a couple of interviews where times haven't been confirmed, and it's the not knowing when I'll need to be out that is weirdest to live with. I'm more than halfway through now, though, which is good.

For non-work, church youth stuff has started up again :) we're doing a whole term on prayer, which I'm really stoked about. So that's awesome. University term is starting again - I think most people are probably going up today or tomorrow - and I'm not there so I'm trying to half keep in mind things that need to be done. But not feeling that I have the mental energy to sort them out.

And then I'm feeling that I should have more energy than I do, and should feel that I can do more things than I do. Fortunately I do actually know when to take it easy on myself. But my subconscious hasn't caught up yet.

And then there's blogging ... which I am about to catch up on today. And reading - I've bought some awesome new books lately which I really want to read.

And then there's housework. Chris and I are not good at housework. i.e. he very rarely does any, and I do bits but feel that we don't do anywhere near enough ... but then if I focused on getting housework done I would honestly never get anything else done, so it's trying to strike a balance and encourage him to do more ... yeah, haven't got that sorted yet. We live in clutter, I probably do the most tidying of the 3 of us, Sarah generally cooks. Maybe we can blast some stuff tomorrow.

Right. Let's go and see if I can be a bit more coherent over on the other blog ...

Goal for tomorrow: Essay writing

Tomorrow is my deadline for the first draft of my (6000-6500 word) essay on maths education (it's a comparison of two papers on problem solving).

I have done most of it. Think I'm at about 4500 words, 4300 maybe excluding titles and contents page and things.

So tonight before I go to bed ... I am making plans:

• I would like to be finished by 3pm.
• I would like to have 5500 words by 12pm (that gives me 3 hours to read through, see if it all hangs together, and generally edit and add words). At that point I can print out what I've done (draft, on the backs of things ...) and have a go at editing on paper which is generally a good goal.
• I want to have 5000 words by 11am. If I meet this goal, I can ... do something cool. (Possibly watch lots of Glee (after 3pm)? Have something exciting for lunch?)
• By the time Chris leaves for work (about 9:20), I want to be up, dressed, and breakfasted. Possibly with tea ...

Okay. Best way to get this started is to sleeeeeep :) will update this post or comments on it tomorrow to mark how it goes ...

A Liturgy for Ordinary Radicals

Common Prayer: A Liturgy for Ordinary Radicals

Shane Claiborne, Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove and Enuma Okoro.

Amazing book. Liturgy drawing on the history and diversity of the Church. Looking to be a liturgy that can be used by all parts of the Church - hence 'common'. And beautiful, beautiful writing.
Going to stop writing now to go read some more.

(And only £10.99, which for an almost-600 page book of prayers and songs and prose is fantastic value.)

2010: a retrospective

Hey, world.

It's 22:20 and I'm sitting in our dimly-lit living room (which still has a Christmas tree with lights up in it :) ) and I've told myself that I need to start going to bed at a sensible time, so I will be in bed by 11pm at the LATEST which means I don't have much time for this post.

So this may not be representative, or whatever, but that's okay.

2010. Wow. A lot happened.

It's kind of funny to think that this time a year ago I would've been worrying about coursework. I find it hard to think back to before exams, actually. I remember things about that time - like immense stress and finding that I could work immensely harder and more intensely than I'd ever have thought - but I don't remember how it felt. I also remember feeling a bit fed up with maths at Cambridge (which, for the record, is not necessarily well taught or well examined and this is desperately unfair but that's life) and extremely glad that I'd done my 3 years but feeling that it was time to come to the end.

And then there was the post-exam period, and the balls and the parties (May Week! Fabulous. Also cold, and quite tiring. But still.) and graduation (which was amazing) and then starting my new job ... new Master's ... societies starting up again ... youthwork at Church ... it's been a really good second half of 2010, too. For me and for Chris - he's got more hours at his job, and has been Christmas Supervisor, plus has become closer to a bunch of his friends (I assume that sheer number of hours spent eating pizza together and playing Munchkin is some measure of closeness, right?), which is really neat.

High points of 2010: in no order:

1. Graduation! Lovely occasion, and a great garden party afterwards.
2. May week :)
3. Getting the phone call to say I'd got the part time research assistant job.
4. Getting involved with youthwork at church - the group I'm involved with are just such amazing kids. (I probably shouldn't call them kids, they're 14-18, but "young people" sounds so formal)
5. 3rd wedding anniversary! Not that we did anything in particular, but just being married :)
6. Spending time visiting Hazel and Mum and Dad - now that I don't see them very often it's great when I do.
7. Getting through exams. They were harsh. And tough. And not fair. But we got through them.
8. The first meeting we had for all our group leaders in the Student Christian stuff at Uni - it was like: wow. All these amazing and talented and diverse people in one room! Also: we did it! This is working!

I'm sure there are dozens more things that were at least as important ... but I can't count on them to all rise to the surface of my mind at once. 

Hey! I've just looked back at posts from last year (this is the thing about having a blog ... you should be able to see what you were up to all year pretty easily ...) - my NY's resolution last year was to eat more pain au chocolat.

That's cool.

I've totally done that.

I've probably eaten less than 20 in the whole year, but that's still more than in 2009.

There was also some resolution about jogging ... that didn't really happen. Although I did jog a bit - at various times throughout the year - and I did enjoy it and I did benefit from it. So a partial success?

Things that happened in 2010: mostly from blog posts:
January: I resolved to eat more pain au chocolat
February: I started sponsoring a child through World Vision (I'm still doing so)
March: I had a go at reducing the amount of meat in my diet. This is something I should do again.
April: I worked on jobhunting (had done some of this previously)
May: I had a job interview for a posh teaching job! Didn't get it because I didn't convince them I really really wanted it / could handle boisterous Y10-11s (totally fair, I didn't really want it and I probably couldn't), but the interview was amazing experience.
June: Exams! May Week! Graduation! New job!
July: Got contacts. Started new job! (Contacts are dailies for occasional use only - I've worn about 10 pairs between then and now)
August: Started new blog! Thoughtful Eclecticism
September: Got a new baby laptop! Started youthwork with church :)
October: Oh man. Term starts. Chaos! Good, though.
November: Started feeling like I belonged at church.
December: Wow, really failed at blogging on this blog ... made lots of mathsy Christmas cards. Started going arty collagey stuff, too, which is a fad I'm still continuing - look out for more of that over on Thoughtful Eclecticism.

Okay. It's 23:13 now, and I said I'd be in bed by 23:00 at the latest ... but I was! Honest! I've just been sitting up in bed on my laptop. That totally counts, right ... ?

(Plus, Chris isn't home yet - he's off fighting using his Warriors of Chaos army - so I probably wouldn't have gone to sleep yet anyway ...)

Okay. Time to stop writing and post this. Thanks for reading :)