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Filling the calendar: 2009 v 2026

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While pulling out a book earlier today, an old (AmE) planner/(BrE) diary came with it. I don't know why this thing was shoved into the bookcase all by itself, but I couldn't help but have a look. Seventeen years ago today, I was in Rome with my parents, spouse, and one-year old, on a memorable vacation. But I was more interested in the following week:  That week, the first week of summer term 2009, is analogous to this week in 2026, which is the first week back into spring semester, after our three-week Easter break (itself a holdover from when our university had a three-term structure). The blankness of those pages struck me. Here's what 2026 looks like: My first reaction was: wow, that really shows how much more complicated and pressurised academic life has become. But then I looked at it harder.  My Google calendar is colo(u)r-coded: the old-blood-stain red is work. Lilac is self-care and life admin. Orange is social. (The bits of blue and green can be ignored.)  work ...
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2026 Resolutions

From October, I've had a long list of things to do to celebrate my remarkable birthday, so it feels a bit redundant to make new year's resolutions. However, some of the bigger things on that list require some planning. So, in order to get those done, I'm resolving to: Put a sewing/making day on the calendar each month (currently down for the first Saturday of the month). Make a plan for my Pessoa reading project: there are about 1,500 pages to read, and I'm thinking of going between the Book of Disquiet  and the biography. At 20 pages a day, that's about 2.5 months. I won't start till I'm back from the US at least, but a bit of me is wondering if I should put it off till Easter break, as the teaching term harms reading time. Must adjust my expectations re number of books to read this year (or find some really short books to bulk up the numbers!) In addition, I want to exercise extra awareness about: Refusing extra packaging. Always having plants in my meals....
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2025 Consumption Review

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Books Better than last year (despite hardly reading at all during the teaching term): 16 books read:  3 fiction: the best of that bunch was Matt Greene's The Definitions , a dystopian novel on a small, personal scale, which plays with and asks questions about language. 5 language non-fiction: by far the best of the completed bunch (but I'm halfway through another great one ) is Michael Erard's Bye Bye I Love You , which I reviewed for the TLS . It's about first and last words, and I am a little bit obsessed about the last-words element. So much to think about in terms of how we treat the dying (and will be treated). Special mention to Kingdom of Characters by Jing Tsu, a history of attempts to adapt Chinese characters to technologies. 8 'other' non-fiction: death was a big obsession in this group as well. My favo(u)rites were: From Ashes to Admin  by Evie King. The stories of a council funeral officer in the south of England: the people she's had to arrange ...
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2025 Life Review

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My resolutions from last year were pretty useless and boring, so I'm not even going to review them here (though things related to them might come up under the following categories). It was a year of important birthdays for everyone in the house. I threw Phil a party in a pub, organised a couple of nice days for G's, and for mine, I have a series of new experiences to have before my next birthday. I've had 11 so far... Eating and exercising : Not having bread in the house is continuing to work for us. I have not lost weight, but I've kept it at the slightly lower place that it got to after starting Zoe.  Like last year, I'm doing  two online classes on Saturday mornings (which has miraculously lasted, even though there is almost never more than two of us in each of the classes). Phil and I are still going to a trainer once a week and we're getting some use out of the dumbbells we got last year for Christmas. My 'get on the floor' every day resolution fro...
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Building a second teaching-prep brain with Omnifocus

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I have finally found the solution for collecting thoughts I have about teaching a class "next time" when I'm teaching it "this time" or when I'm not teaching at all.  In the bad old days, I'd write ideas down in notebooks or scraps of paper or in files on my computer, and then I'd not remember to look at them when it would be helpful to do so. These would come up when: I was reading an article or listening to a podcast and getting good ideas for the reading list or classroom activities. I was marking the students' work and realizing which aspects of writing I needed to teach more explicitly—or find some supportive resources for them. I had just given a lecture that was a bit too short/too long/too detailed/too loose...and needed to note that somewhere so as not to do it again next year. I got helpful feedback on students on what they found too tough/too easy. I was at a conference and learned something new. Colleagues shared some clever assessmen...
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2025 Resolutions

So, I've been keeping notes all year on possible 2025 resolutions. Some of them involved managing money and some of them involved spending money. Everything about money scares me right now, since we don't know who's going to be made redundant at work. I don't want to make resolutions that are going to floor me with regret later. Ugh. So here we go.  The big thematic one Last year's big one was to prepare for death—and though I'm not 100% finished with it , I hope to be in the next two weeks. So this year's was always going to be: prepare for old age . Here's what I think I need to do: Work on fitness : particularly strength-training, eating well and stamina. This means reinvigorating some old habits (narrowing my eating window, walking up more hills—faster), and adding more (below).  Get some financial help to review what I've got and what I should be doing now. But do that later in the year, when things are clearer. Ideally, I'd like profession...
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2024 Consumption review

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Books The reading year started out well, then I started learning Mandarin. At least that's my excuse. I read 12 books, mostly in the first half of the year and many of them very, very light—plus much of the Oxford Handbook of Typology , as part of a reading group.  The best (and meatiest) of the book bunch was John Higgs' Stranger than We Can Imagine: Making Sense of the Twentieth Century . Each chapter takes a BIG IDEA, like relativity or identity, and spells out how thought on that matter developed. So lucid, with a great sense of humo(u)r. Much recommended. Films Only 17 films this year! Tiny compared to normal, but the next section holds the explanation. If I have to choose one film of the year, it's Wim Wenders' Perfect Days. So quiet, so perfect. Of course, I don't have to pick just one, so I'm also going to choose The Holdovers   and Devo   as my top films.   Honorary mentions to:  Poor Things (though I have reservations) and  Kinds of Kindness...
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