(no subject)
Well, the exercise in pulling back a bit from things at school is going OK. I had my appraisal at school and was very up front about how unhappy I was and my intention to move on if I couldn't improve things/things didn't improve. The Head said all the right stuff, so I guess it's a question of what the follow through turns out to be like. The atmosphere at school is pretty awful though - people are massively negative and demotivated. I started to feel sorry for Head by the end of the week - I think she's realising how much she's set people against her. We've had a couple of TAs leave because they didn't like their new assignments or hours for next year and I suspect that she's now worrying about how to replace them. She bought it on herself for the most part but still, it must be a tough situation to be in.
The decision not to work in the evenings or weekends has left me feeling really refreshed though. I think it's partly just because it's new - there's a sense of decisiveness to it - but the fact remains that both last weekend and this I've felt more able to relax, enjoy myself and do stuff around the house and garden. I'm probably even going to manage to get the book club book read and I re-read The Power as well, which I still have a completely visceral reaction to. I've become completely obsessed with Critcal Role, which is a show where a bunch of voice actors basically twitch stream their weekly DnD session - I've started at the beginning and am working my way through, switching between watching the YouTube vids and listening to them as podcasts. It's making me very nostalgic for playing DnD, I have to say.
I was listening to the FT podcast yesterday and one of their commentators was predicting that the way Brexit is being handled, Scotland will probably leave the union in the next 20 years or so. They weren't so sure about NI, not because they won't want to but because they weren't sure if Ireland would want to accept them, which was a point I hadn't thought of. Personally, I'd put about a 90% chance of a United Ireland and about 70% of Scotland leaving the Union in the next 20 years - I thought I'd write it down because I was reading a Tim Harford article about how we routinely over estimate how good we have been about making predictions, so this way, I can come back in 20 years time and check :) American politics continues to be scary and depressing - I feel uncertain if there's anything I can or should do as an outsider to support the forces of non-fascism (US friends, feel free to suggest). I remember studying the interwar years when I was in school and thinking that if only they'd known, they could have done this or that and we could have avoided WWII but now I feel like we do know, we can see it, but we can't seem to stop it anyway, which is super depressing.
I feel like I should end this on a less depressing note, so I should say that I am still really enjoying veg growing. We have lots of super large courgettes (my courgette plant is looking HUGE), and lots of green tomatoes ripening up on the tomato plants, plus the beans are flowering and the sweetcorn is continuing to grow. The kale we put in for the winter has been a bit eaten and the peas we planted didn't do very well, but Mum and I are already plotting how to put more veg growing troughs in for next year :)
The decision not to work in the evenings or weekends has left me feeling really refreshed though. I think it's partly just because it's new - there's a sense of decisiveness to it - but the fact remains that both last weekend and this I've felt more able to relax, enjoy myself and do stuff around the house and garden. I'm probably even going to manage to get the book club book read and I re-read The Power as well, which I still have a completely visceral reaction to. I've become completely obsessed with Critcal Role, which is a show where a bunch of voice actors basically twitch stream their weekly DnD session - I've started at the beginning and am working my way through, switching between watching the YouTube vids and listening to them as podcasts. It's making me very nostalgic for playing DnD, I have to say.
I was listening to the FT podcast yesterday and one of their commentators was predicting that the way Brexit is being handled, Scotland will probably leave the union in the next 20 years or so. They weren't so sure about NI, not because they won't want to but because they weren't sure if Ireland would want to accept them, which was a point I hadn't thought of. Personally, I'd put about a 90% chance of a United Ireland and about 70% of Scotland leaving the Union in the next 20 years - I thought I'd write it down because I was reading a Tim Harford article about how we routinely over estimate how good we have been about making predictions, so this way, I can come back in 20 years time and check :) American politics continues to be scary and depressing - I feel uncertain if there's anything I can or should do as an outsider to support the forces of non-fascism (US friends, feel free to suggest). I remember studying the interwar years when I was in school and thinking that if only they'd known, they could have done this or that and we could have avoided WWII but now I feel like we do know, we can see it, but we can't seem to stop it anyway, which is super depressing.
I feel like I should end this on a less depressing note, so I should say that I am still really enjoying veg growing. We have lots of super large courgettes (my courgette plant is looking HUGE), and lots of green tomatoes ripening up on the tomato plants, plus the beans are flowering and the sweetcorn is continuing to grow. The kale we put in for the winter has been a bit eaten and the peas we planted didn't do very well, but Mum and I are already plotting how to put more veg growing troughs in for next year :)