As you may have inferred from my last post, 2018 didn't end quite as I had hoped. I ended up being abruptly off work for three weeks, and working reduced hours for another four. It's been quite an experience. Abruptly not being able to do all the things you take for granted, and then having the consequences of enforced rest (even after I was well enough to get back to work, commuting was a major challenge, and even now I'm nowhere near as fit as I was back in October) was certainly educational. I'm feeling much better now - better even than I did a couple of weeks ago - though I'm still not fully right.
It was not a great time to go off: November and December are accepted as "peak teach", so I would normally work longer hours than usual in order to complete my marking, so I reckon that by the time you allow for sick leave, lost overtime, and just working a lot more slowly than usual, I've lost about 250 hours' work.
A sizeable chunk of that has fallen on other people: I owe a huge thanks to my Product Design colleagues who covered about 30 hours of teaching in my absence, and to my SUITCEYES colleagues at Leeds (especially Sarah Woodin) who held the tiller as we went through our first review and our first two major deliverables - all while I was either in hospital or recuperating. I'm not sure I could readily count how many hours they've put in on my behalf. There's a big Wellcome Trust bid being spearheaded by Stuart Murry due for interview at the end of the month, and I've been able to provide very little assistance. And the Tracking People grand finale - the symposium organised by Anthea Hucklesby - which I ended up missing most of, and being no help at all in organising on the day. Still, I managed to present, so that's something.
The rest of the work must be made up: catch up lectures have been delivered, sixty hours of marking have been deferred to the New Year. And then there is just the shear lost momentum. Since my return, the priority has been teaching, since that really had to be delivered by the end of term. I can barely remember where we were up to with SUITCEYES, never mind how it has moved on in the last two months. So, the start of 2019 will mostly be about catching up on missed work and trying to re-establish my momentum, while accepting that I probably still can't put in Herculean hours to make it all up.
Which essentially means that I'll be taking a break from the blog: it's always been a bit of a squeeze to fit it in, but now, even the odd hour or two per month for a blog post will be sorely needed for other things. I'm not sure how long that will last - I'll have a shot at getting the odd blog post up, but I'm making no promises. Hopefully, normal service will eventually be resumed.
In the meantime... have a good one!
