2023 resolution/life review

Mixed success for last year's resolutions:

  • "Add weekly yoga or Pilates to my online fitness class regime." Failure. I just found it way too boring to spend a whole 45 minutes on such classes and found some of them too advanced for me, so it just didn't go far. 
  • "have my hearing tested." Minor success. I did an online test that said I probably didn't need a full test.
  • "make a spreadsheet of all my regular outgoings, including charity donations, subscriptions, direct debit bills": Success. I saved hundreds of pounds in cancelling subscriptions I no longer used and getting rid of duplicates.
  • try to use the adjective grand more often. Minor success. I made it my Wordle starting word, until it paid out and I got Wordle in 1. I then switched to GRIND.
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Other stuff

Doing the Zoe programme has been super interesting. My weight has gone down a tad, but I can't say I've been trying to lose weight on it. Exercise took a big hit during Autumn term, so that makes the (tiny) weight loss more impressive.

I succeeded in (charity, not church) tithing this year by making a regular charitable donation schedule, keeping track of it, and giving a larger donation at the end of the year to support resettlement for a refugee I've got to know some.

I've kept in touch with friends fairly well, helped in part by some regular us-time scheduling with some and working with some. I even made it to Scrabble club several times!

I travelled nowhere new this year. I had my second trip to Boulder, CO (very nice), and other than that, just Newark, NY and an overnight in Oxford.

But I did institute the Adventures list in Omnifocus, and did some new things because of it. I'm particularly glad about the bike-riding and Benjamin Franklin's House. I have moved a few undone things to the 2024 list.





My review of cultural consumption is in a separate post.
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Work life

Based on a 5-day week (excluding holidays), I worked 9.4 hours/day in 2023, which was 0.1 hour/day more than last year. But if we don't count my "Saturday job" editing Dictionaries or my "hobby" doing public linguistics, we get that down to 8.5 hours a day. That means I'm working a 42-hour week for the University. 

Last year, I made the following spring-semester resolutions: 
  • Put 15 minutes of week-planning into my calendar. I'm thinking on Wednesdays. It is a bit unconventional, but I think I'm too optimistic at the beginnings of weeks to do good planning then. I am usually doing this on Thursdays, and it's working well. 
  • Declare a weekday as Dictionaries day. Keep a 4-hour stretch free for editing work on that day. Maybe Tuesday? Tried this. It didn't really work. 
  • On the other days, find a way to fit some time for a REFable project, starting with the GloWBE please paper, which has significant parts done. I am thinking I need some kind of daily accountability-partner work—the problem is finding partners who are free at the same times as me. I got several accountability things going, but not daily ones. Mixed results, and had to give up almost all writing in autumn term. 
  • Not forget about doctoral students when thinking about how much I can get done in a week. Getting a chapter or a thesis in my inbox is what frequently undoes me. Two PhD students viva'd, which brought way down the amount of PhD work I was reading.
  • Not in my resolutions, but I also put blogging/newsletter into my to-do list on Sundays, so that upped my blog output. 

I definitely have work achievements for the past year.* But like last year, I'm missing REFable publications, though not for lack of trying. 

*Some things I did:
  • Two >200-page issues of Dictionaries. One was a special issue, for which I was production editor. The general issue was me alone, and so feels much the equivalent of publishing an edited volume. 
  • Submitted GloWbE please paper (now revising for resubmission). Got back to work on thanking paper with Rachele.
  • Lots of very revamped teaching, much of it with Lynne C.
  • Another year as head of department, which included leading a Task & Finish group and serving on the promotion panel in another school.
  • One book review published in TLS and one in Folia Linguistica.
  • Five public talks (if I'm counting right), two particularly fun podcast guest spots, and a couple of other media gigs.  
  • Monthly newsletters and 13 Separated by a Common Language blog posts. 
  • Attended the DSNA conference in Boulder and another lexicography symposium in Oxford, which I treated as pleasure holidays.