Ha, just read an awesome article that encapsulates what I'm trying to do here. Work WITH my off-kilter brain, instead of against it. And try to minimise stress/beating myself up. I love coming up with ideas and get a huge dopamine hit from idea generation, but then get annoyed at myself when I haven't finished most of my thousand new projects by the time I think I should. But really, better to wait until I'm feeling it (for anything that doesn't actually have a deadline attached) because everything flows so much better at that point. Otherwise, it's all anxiety, all the time.

Luckily for me, work is pretty conducive to that - in fact it's perfect for me. Big list of projects, just have to get them done as I can. I set my own milestones and my supervisor always seems pleasantly surprised when I turn up with something finished. Just submitted a commentary to the Lancet Psychiatry which it seems they will be happy to publish (!) which was entirely written by me with minor input from a million other authors...

But yeah, have to remember it's okay if some things sit on the back burner for a while - especially home/side projects - as long as the general momentum is in a forward direction.

Luckily Del is very helpful for anxiety-quelling purposes, so I think I'm doing better this year than usual.

Not much going on, really. Bit of a January/February hibernation. Super tiring week - went on a very useful course on Qualitative Research on Thurs and Fri, since I'm supposed to be writing a qualitative paper. Or rather, my supervisor thinks one, I am thinking at least five! He sort of panicked for the two days I was out of the office, though, so am thinking most of this week will be dedicated to catch-up and annoying admin.

Other than that, everyone has suddenly turned up pregnant (seemingly at least half my friends from my Masters), so have brought in a large supply of washable yarn, rolled up my sleeves and started on the baby gifts. Have some great ideas for fun things to make and thinking about the Etsy shop idea again, but maybe best to just wait and see how it goes. Also have a backlog of presents in progress (sorry Grandma!) but everything is moving along, although perhaps more slowly than I would like.

Yesterday was the one-year anniversary of fleeing Yale and arriving in Oxford. In retrospect I really should have given myself more time. However, all worked out WAY better than I ever could have dreamed, so all's well and all that. Think Del and I are going to do a pilgrimage to Dover next weekend, as a joint anniversary trip/in memory of Auntie Barb sort of thing. She wanted "The White Cliffs of Dover" on the wedding playlist since she couldn't be there.