I spent much of the week being really annoyed but I wasn't really sure why. I feel like I have too many things to do and I feel creeping dread about getting my dissertation done, it feels as though I have very little time left to do it. I don't really know why; the deadline is not that close. I can't progress my project until I get the go-ahead from work, though, so maybe that's it. So I keep thinking I should change back to my original topic which won't really require any permission.
Yeah, it's making a bit more sense why I've been in a poor mood for most of the week.
I did all the self-care things. Monday, gym; Tuesday, sauna; Wednesday, yoga; Thursday, PT; Friday, hot yoga. Baths and early nights. Nice pyjamas. I tried exceptionally hard to eat sensibly. I only had one coffee all week. I kept reminding myself that it is almost thinking about getting light when I leave for work in the mornings now. But, to no avail. Sometimes I think you just have to accept the slump. On Thursday night, I decided I would not sit at my computer, messing around online while feeling bad about not doing the stack of marking I brought home, but would instead sit at my computer and fight my work inbox for an hour. This was very successful. It resulted in a much happier Friday and a much calmer weekend, mainly because I know there aren't a dozen things lurking that I haven't quite done. Maybe that was also the creeping dread.
I spent a big chunk of Saturday working on my new exam board job. It took me most of the day to get started, predictably, because I wasn't totally sure what to do, but once I got started - yes. This is the exam board job for me. Spotting typos. Grammar pedantry. Considering whether a specific word really insinuates what we want it to. I looked up and it was 11.30pm.
The only other thing of note this week was that I met a politician at school. He is quite famous. I'm not writing the name because he's also quite divisive. He was a local MP until 2024 and has a reputation for being Victorian and lying on benches. One of our pol teachers wrote to lots of local politicians, inviting them in, and he was the only one who replied, so then we had to have him in, even though our students (and staff) made a half-hearted protest against it. As I imagined he would be, he was scrupulously polite, extremely measured and put across his point of view very well. It was interesting to watch him blow our students' minds a little every time he said something they agreed with. There were some really quite significant holes in his arguments, and I was left a little sad that our lot aren't quite up to pushing back on some of these, but tbf, we did tell them to stay respectful and not bring the school into disrepute, so that might be partly our fault.
He said at the beginning that, if you want to test if you believe in free speech, you have to listen to people you don't agree with, and I think we can all say we did that. I'm mainly relieved that he didn't use the visit to announce he was moving even further right and joining that other party. I would have thought he would have been above it, as they don't really seem to have any ideology other than, 'Go away', but apparently he is considering it.
