So What Happened?

Basically, I finished my writing every day for a month, got caught up in tutoring for three days on a workshop and then started working from home. For some reason it felt like when I was at home I had to work, even though when I was doing my PhD (and working for the grad school for those three weeks) it never seemed to bother me if I wrote two or three blog posts some times.

Has been an interesting couple of weeks. I've got another two workshops lined up over the coming month, and have been commissioned (in the first instance) to spend a day developing an outline for some new online resources for the university's Graduate School. I'll be doing that this week, before the workshop this Wednesday to Friday, and if the man at the top is happy on Thursday then it looks likely that I will be commissioned to actually make the resources. I'd say there's about a 75% chance that that will happen, he seems really up for it.

Above and beyond the financial reward for doing it, there are two other reasons why it would be very good for me to do it:
1). It gives me valuable experience of actually being able to do these kinds of things, developing resources being the other half of the job that I'm carving out for myself.
2). By developing multimedia resources it gives me a very cool showreel of things that I can show potential clients.

An added bonus is that the man at the top has said that I can sit down with him and copy his list of contacts for people in his position at other institutions, and then he'll give me some pointers on what to put in a general letter/leaflet that I can send out.

So all is going well, even if I feel like some times I'm not progressing as quickly as I would like. I've been to a couple of courses on being self-employed, and also one on tax for the self-employed. Just have to keep on top of my records.

So there it is. All is well. Just a bit busy. And National Novel Writing Month is just around the corner!

Seal of Approval

After nearly four weeks of waiting on my examiners to get back to me, I decided to write to them last Friday and check how things were. The word came back (promptly) and told me...

...that everything was fine! They're happy with my corrections!!!

My internal is going to sort out the paperwork tomorrow, and after that I just have to get three copies bound and submit officially. Oh, and then graduate in December - but that's just the formality really, to all intents and purposes my PhD will be over.

Four years is a long time. And yet it seems like no time at all. I remember turning up for the first day of my PhD - heck, I remember turning up for my first day of university, remember the start of my first lecture (the lecturer said, "There's an Arabic proverb: three things come not back; the said word, the sped arrow, and the missed opportunity. Don't waste your time while you're here!") - and now all of a sudden four years has gone by. What happened?

I have a few things that I have to take care of here, some of the things I mentioned before, and then things like talking to my supervisor about publishing papers and so on. Will start moving some of my stuff home today I think. Job hunting has not been successful, but in a way I was hoping that it wouldn't be, I was hoping that I could take the time to take a holiday in September. It looks like I'll get my wish!

No plans yet, although I've started to look. noisms, as per usual, has failed to get back to me about whether or not there is a good time to visit in September, so am looking elsewhere. Had thought about doing a whistlestop tour of various US states, but then stories about border policies concerning laptops, digital media and books has put me right off.

So now I'm toying with the idea of just going to a resort in the south of Spain for two weeks. Lie by the pool every day, read a few good books, do some writing, maybe work out a bit. Just something relaxing... I'll let you know what I decide!

Oh, and over on Racing Entropy I've finally gotten around to doing some flash fiction writing! It's amazing how much time writing a 250-1000 word story can take... I'm going to have to really try hard to reach my goal of writing another 100 of these before I turn 30. Anyway, my first piece is up here, and feedback is most definitely welcome.

More soon!