New Year: new me?

It doesn’t feel like three weeks since my last post, though I’m glad to report that Ray is making great progress with his recuperation, (the human body is an amazingly forgiving organism) and we had a lovely Christmas and New Year. But can that really all have taken up the last twenty-one days?

Is it only me who finds taking a break is often not so much about having a rest, as providing an opportunity to reflect?

If we’d used the time to go away on holiday somewhere – ah, remember those days? – we’d have been kept busy adjusting to the accommodation and exploring our surroundings. Holidays, in my experience are adventures.

This time, spent at home pottering, hasn’t been consciously given to contemplation. Although I’ve put some time into lesson preparations as well as my domestic duties, we’ve both just taken time off, and not thought or talked about work for days at a time.

It was only when I began to transfer class dates from the notes in the back of my old diary to my term-planner, last week, that I drew in a sharp breath. Could I have been sane when I committed to so many teaching hours?

I was. I swear I was.

But, there is going to be a lot of reading. It’s going to be fun, too, meeting so many people from all over the country, sharing our ideas about reading and writing – without any need to spend time driving!

I’m loving on-line teaching. It’s very different to classroom based groups, which I look forward to returning to, it has a slightly different dynamic and I hope I’ll be doing both in the not too distant future. However, this term something is going to have to give, at least for the next three months.

I’m tempted to let the housework slide, so, so tempted… But the truth is I do prefer not to live in squalor.

My reading has already been slimmed down to the eight novels and nine short stories that are on my class reading lists, and the background research that goes with them. There is, I realise, as I settle at my desk on Sunday the third of January, one other way to make some space in my diary… I can, temporarily, cut back my blogging to a monthly, instead of a weekly schedule.

So, lovely readers, I’d like to send you all my very best New Year Wishes. I hope we’re all heading into much better times than the last few months have offered, and I hope you’ll continue to drop in and see what I’m rabbiting on about, on the first Monday of each month… at least until April.