Sunday 2 May 2021

April round up

Books read: I finished Empireland - the first non-fiction I have read in its entirety for a long time. It was fantastically well-researched (he seems to have written a lot of it during the pandemic so, no surprises there) and extremely readable. I'm chasing it with a teen fiction a student recommended to me that is going down very quickly. 

Metres knitted: The baby jumper was about 400m. I started a 4-ply jumper and managed to knit one skein of yarn into it by the end of the month - another 400m. Then a skein of Lion & Lamb into hexagons - 187m. I basically made it! All I needed was two weeks off work haha

Pounds lost: Yeah, none. Still maintaining my pre-covid weight though. Not too bad. 

Sleep: I am hitting 7 hours more often than not these days. I'm starting to adjust my work schedule a little. I've been aiming to get to school for around 7.15 for well over a decade now, since I had to do it during an inspection and realised that traffic is better and I'm way more productive. When I was getting the bus to school, it was a necessity because I was so anxious about being late. 

Then, when we returned to school after Easter, I had a really spacey Monday so on Tuesday I lay in a bit and went to my favourite bakery on the way to school for a breaktime pastry. I got in by 7.45 and found I was a lot more purposeful in my work before school. 

It makes sense to get in very early when my lessons aren't planned. I can usually get together all my lessons for the day in that hour. But more and more, at this end of the school year, there's just not that much to plan. The bulk of my teaching is GCSE and A-level and I've been teaching those lessons now for five years. So, instead of using the morning time for useful things like marking, I faff around with emails (this week I got my inbox down to 16 emails, satisfying but utterly meaningless) and tidying my desk, ultimately pointless tasks of that ilk. And I could be asleep, instead. 

So, over the next few weeks I am going to make a concerted effort to go in half an hour later at least a couple of times in a week, see how it affects my workrate and sleep patterns. 

Blogging: An improvement.