and inside Ellen's house,
was an orgy of late-night writing,
amidst mess, noodle pots, and empty bottles of famous grouse.
Well, I never said I was a poet. But, if I squint a bit, and overlook various small omissions such as citations, formatting, oh and occasionally whole paragraphs and even conclusions.....okay if I squint *a lot* I have now finished writing chapters one, two, five, six and seven of my eight-chapter book. Which feels good!
And actually I'm lying about the pot noodles and whisky. I prefer gin. But in truth it hasn't been ridiculously painful. I have inevitably fallen behind in various non-book areas of my life. My email inbox is in such a serious state of neglect that I'm tempted to call social services and see if I can get it taken into care. And I'm totally late refereeing a paper.......a million-times sorry to that author.
But otherwise I've managed to make reasonable, if admittedly disorderly and unpredictable, progress on this project, and without totally abandoning my own needs or falling sick with stress or having to call in favours about child care and so on. I've kept up occasional running, done most of my Christmas shopping, and kept a reasonable eye on all of my supervisees. I even made it to my daughter's nativity.
I totally have days where i feel less optimistic than this, where it feels like i'm failing at everything, and everyone is ill and life is totally out of my control.
But, even if I'm a total grinch about christmas (heteronormative-commercialist-religious-yuck!) it's nice to end the year on a fairly positive note, quit beating myself up for once, and let my thoughts turn away from biology and towards all the many ways in which I'm lucky. Hopefully I'll get to see my loved-ones soon and even if Boris or Omicron prevent that, I've got a week of uninterrupted time with my children to look forward to. Let there be kitchen discos a-plenty!
Happy holidays all!
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