Read this on galpod.com.
It's been a busy couple of weeks. Whenever I haven't posted for a while, I always get this feeling that my next post needs to be a good one, to show how hard I've worked on it. Then, of course, I don't post for longer, because I don't have time to write a thoughtful post with lots of research behind it and before you know it I say stuff like, "nobody reads my blog anyway, I might as well stop posting altogether."
But.
I think a good thing for me to work on would be to let go of my impossible standards and just get out there. So, a quick update on the stuff I've done since the last post that had nothing to do with posting here whatsoever, in no particular order.
I have a new bike! I'm so ridiculously excited about it that I rode it today to my yoga class which is a two-minute walk from my home. Seriously, I'm stupidly happy. I need to explain why I'm so happy with them. When I was about six years old, everyone in the village we had moved to had bikes. So, my parents bought me a bike too, but it was just a little too big for me. Then my dad taught me how to ride which is why to this day I'm not a confident cyclist. I remember my pedalling and him running after me yelling "I've got you! I've got you! Keep pedalling!" He did NOT have me, of course, and I crashed. Then, as I was growing up, I always got new bikes (I say new, but they were hand-me-downs from random cousins) that were slightly bigger than what would be comfortable, and passed my old ones to my younger siblings. Anyway, my new bike is actually a comfortable height for me, and I have cycled through the neighbourhood with various degrees of anxiety over going on the wrong side of the road and getting hit by drivers who are busy texting or yelling at other drivers.
I'm working on my academic paper now. I have no enthusiasm about it, but I do need to get it done. It's been too long, and it's the last one, and it just needs to get done. I wish I didn't have to, but there you go. So I've been up to my eyeballs in stats and R and getting the coding of the variables exactly right. I'm done with the analysis and moving on to the editing of the parts that were already written, and writing the new pieces. I find that once I start, I can get into it, but it's making me feel bleh the rest of the time because I'm not doing what I really want to do. I know that some people have that with their job and I honestly don't understand how they do it. I'm grateful for being able to do what I love every single day (I know, I write it down in my little notebook).
I went to a meeting of a local writer's group. It was scary (almost as scary as riding a bike in London), and I didn't know anyone, and they asked me questions. But it was actually not too bad, and we had drinks afterwards, and there are some crazy people in that group which I like a lot. I'm going again next week, so we'll see how that goes.
We are settling into the new school year and (with the new bike, of course), are making short work of the running-across-the-park-to-get-to-clubs thing. It's a packed day, but my kids have been fantastically mature about it and are patient with me as we work out the kinks and fall into a routine. Also, I've presented a new challenge to my almost-nine(!)-year-old to cook dinner for everyone once a week. He's taking it seriously, and last week he made tortillas. That is, we made salsa verde (throw everything into the blender, press go) and he cut an avocado and grated some cheese. We'll see how it goes, but the idea is that he learns how to be self-sufficient and possibly even helpful.
I'm reading quite a bit (book reviews forthcoming, I promise), which makes me very happy. Also, I got hooked on "Serial" the podcast which is quite dangerous because I can't stop listening to it. I was up last night till past 23:00. Highly recommended if you have hours when you don't need to hear anything around you.
That's about it.
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