Good intentions, paving stones...

At the end of last year I made some sort of resolutions. None of them have been achieved.

I had a theme - regrouping. I seem to have spent most of the year on newish stuff.

I said:

I want to be ready by then for new challenges, a new phase in my life - to use the sabbatical months to start a new research programme, or go on a secondment to administration, or to work on a serious career change or job hunt or do something else exciting and new and refreshing and different. So I need to clear the decks.

Umm. yeah. that so not happened.

By February 2010 I wanted to be:

• fitter - I am not
• slimmer - I am not
• have made major inroads into my publications backlog - I have not
• have done a decent amount of personal writing - journalling, blogging, poetry writing -including exploring what I really want to do with the next 20-25 years of my working life -I blogged. but otherwise, nope.
• have cleared a lot of my sample analysis backlog - nope. neck siezed up. keeps doing it. Am fed up!
• be able to easily find things in my house, not have lots of space wasted on items that I don't either use regularly or treasure, have a refurbished bathroom, and have a renegotiated mortgage deal - nope, not that either.
• not be starting my Christmas letters with some variation on "sorry for being a lousy letter writer this year..." - didn't even start writing them this year.
• have had fun. Every month, even the really really mad-busy-at-work ones. And made things - poems, knitted items, whatever - and nurtured relationships - well, there was a little fun. But mostly this, too, is a FAIL
• and maybe have found a church that I can join? Or at least made regular religious practice a more routine and central part or my week, in some form - nope, not done that
• Most of all, I need to focus on maximising the work done in the hours I put aside for science/academia - nope.

A resounding nought out of ten there then! And although the 2008-9 academic year was better healthwise, the 2009-10 year is 5 months old and I've had 7 weeks of sick leave already, through the middle of the semester.

Some achievements:

• some more papers published (can't remember the details now)
• SeniorStudent's PhD is all done and defended
• Getting Bequest project funded, and the PDRA appointed
• putting in two other really large grant applications, one medium (not yet heard about that) and various little ones (none successful, so none of them 'count'
• attended one teaching conference, five academic conferences, gave a teaching workshop and a research related workshop, and did two invited seminars. String of papers and posters associated with all of these.
• working with DrVisit is opening up some interesting new avenues.
• finished the DataCrunching part of DataCrunchingProject, made substantial progress on the teaching software project and gotten some good work done with DrSabb
• my new third year option module in the second semester of 2008-9 went great
• new opportun ities in FavouriteIslands, especially with FairlyFamousProfessor
• travel to northeastcoast and FavouriteIslands

Some disappointments

• having such a long bout of laryngitis
• having to miss stuff cos of laryngitis (a meeting, a workshop, giving a seminar, my parents' golden wedding do)
• being lonely, and not making much if any progress towards fixing that or effectively connecting with distant friends
• still single, and fat, and tired, and periodically wretched. It's so boring!!
• not getting the large grants after all the work involved in applying.
• doing less than I'd hoped, wasting time, messing up teaching through absence and lack of team-coordination
• WierdBugMan retiring, us struggling to find a new way of working together
• WonderfulGrumpyTechnician retiring and not being replaced - lab crises all over the shop
• WonderfulSecretary retiring and not being replaced (her memory was irreplacable...)
• DrVisit going home for a couple of weeks in November, messing up her visa paperwork, and still being stuck in ExoticCountry trying to get a new visa. Sigh...

I am not in the mood to make resolutions or plans or whatever tonight. Maybe tomorrow.