Good night's sleep

Unfortunately, our house is not entirely sound-proof. I have two housemates, two lovely sentient beings with their own worlds and lives. With the lack of sound insulation between rooms, simple things like Skype conversations or having friends over can really affect my sleep. With a poor night's rest comes grogginess, feeling unhappy the next day, as well as feelings of resentment, even though it may not be entirely the other person's fault. I try minimise these things, for obvious reasons.

Furthermore, traffic, drunk people, disrespectful workmen (07:30!) and just living beside a busy main road and the through-way to the train station means there is a lot of noise to deal with. I am a very light sleeper, wake often in the night, and thus any external disruptions can really wreak havoc with my day-after.

I much prefer to sleep in cool, silent, relatively dark places, so I have started employing some tools to get me the quiet rest I love and need. I'm learning how important it is to be able to insulate yourself, give yourself the things you need to be able to just get on, and be happy in your own space. 

That's where my little friends here come in. The eye mask is one from Muji Leo actually sent me when I was still living in Ireland and he had moved to England, going on five years ago. It's still going strong, even if the elastic is fraying a bit. The earplugs were well reviewed on Amazon. With this arsenal of sensory-deprivation tools, I am on track to a good night's sleep.

Sweet dreams, Ese.

Getting up early

I cannot get up early. I always stay up late, scrolling through Instagram, Whatsapping Leo, feeding my Neko Atsume cat friends, whatever it takes. I'm trying to break the last major bad habit I have, getting up, consistently, sometime between 09.00 and 10.00. I know it's ridiculous and not sustainable because before I know it I will have a job where an early rise will be essential, and I just wont be able to survive. Plus, I love the idea of being an 'early riser'. 

So here I am, committed to the cause. I was up, breakfasted and away to my work long before 09.00 this morning and it felt fantastic. I'm mostly writing this here so that if I don't stick to the schedule I'll have a public indication of my failure, and nobody wants that. I'm making a promise; to get up early and to be an early riser. I know it's easier when it's Spring and the sun is shining and you have this to look up at as you sit at your desk. But habits are formed of many small steps. Let's make it happen.

Wish me luck!

Pictures of things

My windowsill, with the Christmas plant that will not die, and Dublin, when we went for a long walk on the beach yesterday.

In between places

I'm getting into a rhythm of sorts. Monday morning, Halo taxi at 08:00, to the airport. Back in Durham by lunchtime. Unpack, do some work. Buy milk. Take a nap. Some sort of reverse culture shock because even though they're so close, they're so different. 

Living in between two places feels weird. Leo's life in Dublin is really starting to take form, and our house is so cosy there. But I really love my place in Durham too, and my life there is uncomplicated. I know what's expected of me. Given the choice I'd obviously rather be in Dublin, for now there is no alternative. So I travel back and forth, a fortnight here, a weekend there, whenever I can for as long as I can. 

I'm a very impatient person, but I'm trying my best.

 

Some things are eternally comforting. Like coming home to your own bathroom cabinet. Post on the table waiting. Doing laundry. Stocking the fridge with foods of your own choosing. The things we do to make the absences feel a little less.

Happy birthday, William Morris

My Socialist, radical, furniture-loving hero.

Farvel til København

Maybe it's fitting that it's Spring, the days are getting brighter, and I have an itch to sort through my ever-dwindling collection of possessions and do a tidy and a clean up. It's been obvious to me for months, since Leo finally handed in his notice and moved, that our life in Copenhagen had reached a natural climax. That being said, I dawdled for months and months and always tried to picture myself going back there to live. 

But naturally, our time in Copenhagen has reached it's conclusion and Leo has in fact moved back to Dublin, while I have an excruciating 1.5 years of PhD left before I can join him (don't get me wrong, I am overjoyed to be doing the PhD, but I am so tired of living in a temporary-home). I've just returned to Durham from Copenhagen, where we finally (FINALLY!!!) packed up all our kitchen stuff, Leo's dozens of work shirts, boxes of cards and letters and memories, and the furniture. 

We spent those last few days catching up with lovely people we might not see for a while, doing a bit of shopping (I lost a scarf this winter that was my favourite one, and needed a replacement), sitting in the same cafe for hours on end, and spending our last night in a Jazz-filled bodega, from which my clothes ended up smelling like an ash tray. 

It was a surreal few days and they went by far too quickly. Now it's back to work, and back to Ireland as well for Easter. It was lovely to live in Copenhagen, and our apartment was cosy and full of fond memories. But sometimes things just come to an end, and that's quite alright. It's onwards to bigger and bolder things, and the most important thing is that Leo and I are journeying together.

Lately

Life, as always, is busy. Fieldwork and teaching obligations are going very well. I'm coming to the end of my tutoring for the year, and am unsure if I'll keep it up next year (as it's very time consuming). I'll be sad when I finish up with my fieldwork as I've met so many wonderful people, but at the same time, I am keenly aware of how much data will need to be analysed by May (when it will be 12 months since I began).

I am going back and forth to Ireland more and more these days, as Leo is there working and we find that life is nicer when we see each other a lot. So I've been going over some weekends, and he comes here some weekends, and it's generally lovely. 

On Saturday we got up really early and did a tidy out of the bits and pieces of life, then we met my aunt and uncle at Avoca and went to a garden centre where we got lots and lots of plants. I also voted in our General Election, and we spent the entire weekend with the radio on listening to the results.

It is so nice to be home. To feel a part of where you are. To feel like you have something in common with the people around you. They are more like you than anyone else in the world. 

In other news: I go to the gym a lot more and lift weights, and I finally got some whistles that don't just play D and G Major (although the low whistle does).

Being busy and being honest with yourself

I am a busy person. Sometimes I am 'busy', i.e. making extra work for myself, having two links in the chain when one will do, that sort of thing. But there's no denying that, objectively, I am busy. A PhD, a huge part of which means spending two hours of buses two to three days a week, is always going to take a lot of time. The bus journeys destroy me because they are a) time consuming b) make me feel incredibly travel sick, ruining my chances for acting like a wholly normal person on those days c) wasted time (you can't write, use a laptop, do useful things on the bus).

I am trying to be less busy. I resigned from the admin job I had for my supervisor. I appreciated the extra income, but the stress of being the recipient of endless numbers of emails was too much for me. I am trying to prioritise. But this is difficult. I signed up to do a fair bit of teaching, and that simply doesn't stop. The dates are in the diary, the times are fixed, the bus journeys obligatory. I guess, next year I might take a break from teaching.

I also play in a ceilidh band. This is immensely fun, and I love the banter, the actual playing, and everything that goes along with it. However, through this I got roped into being the President of the society the band is a part of. Again, endless emails, organising room bookings and so on and so on. So I resigned, because the list was endless. The band also play late at night, and I often don't get home until well after midnight, buzzing with adrenaline. You can see why this is a problem.

I am a PhD student, and yet my diary is full, all of the time, with things and things and more things. Emails come hard and fast. I delete 70% of them, but those 30% require a response, no matter how short. I suppose it comes with the territory, but being the in-between of student and staff is difficult, because you are surrounded by people who's time is fluid, spills over into weekends and evenings, and for whom 'having so much work to do' is somehow an accepted norm. 

I want to have several days a week with nothing in my diary. That's the goal. To switch off the emails, have a list of tasks to work through, read whole books, write the dissertation that needs to be written, On top of that, Leo lives in Ireland now, so that means flying back and forth to see him, spending hours on the phone every week talking and keeping the dream alive. I love it, but it is sometimes very hard work.

So, I'm almost forgetting why I wrote this, because really it's just reminding me how much I have still to do and further stressing me out. But, I suppose, the reason I wrote this was to remind myself that, yes, I have a lot of stuff that clogs up my head, makes me feel overwhelmed, busy, tired and stressed. The end goal is to write a PhD, and move back to Ireland. That's it. Do the PhD, finish in good time, enjoy it, learn a lot, and then progress to a worthwhile and productive job (hopefully!), in the country I come from (finally!), with my favourite guy (yay!). 

I'm just going to leave this here, and come back to it when I'm feeling overwhelmed, and remind myself of what the task at hand really is. It's not to make lots of new friends and integrate super well into the University life here (although friends are nice and I amn't a hermit), and it's not to run student societies (I'm not really a student, and I'm 27 anyway), and it's certainly not to get bogged down in teaching, admin, non-essential tasks etc. It's to research for and write a PhD dissertation. 

And, I guess, to go on as many holidays and breaks as I can fit in (sunshine!), and to take care of my health and wellbeing (which 100% includes drinking lots of tea in my cosy room watching Pretty Little Liars with the jar of fairy lights on the table next to me. Obv). 

Nollaig na mBan

Today, 6th January, marks Nollaig na mBan, 'little Christmas' or 'Women's Christmas'. I'm not really one to bask in a holiday embedded in outmoded gender roles, but the idea comes from the fact that women, who do basically all household and domestic work, should take today off, while their men-folk do the housework for the day. It's also the day when the Christmas decorations are taken down, so sadly the wreath will be coming off the door and the coloured strings of lights will be put away for another year (or at least until it gets dark and they offer some hygge).

Here's an article on the history of the tradition in Ireland. 

I have, as you can tell, conflicted feelings about the day. I love celebrating the work women do and the things we contribute to society (life being the primary one I'm thinking of), but the idea of celebrating your right to take a day off from domestic work makes me ill at ease - women shouldn't have to wait until today, when weeks of hard work have taken their toll, to have a rest. 

That being said, I suppose I'll make the most of the day, and eat a slice of cake on behalf of womenkind everywhere. Cheers to that!

Here's to 2015

Since it's after midnight already it's technically New Years Eve, which means that a reflective end-of-year post is quite appropriate. Hopefully tomorrow night will be a little nicer than it is right now, the rain is pelting down and we were hoping to get some champagne and celebrate somewhere in town.

This year, quite frankly, has been one of the most straight-forward and enjoyable years of my life. It started off on a pleasant note, dinner and fireworks along the riverside in Copenhagen, a plane to Iceland late at night on the 1st, the Aurora and seeing the volcano from the plane. 

The year has more or less been incredibly straight forward. My work has gone better than I could ever have hoped for, I am making huge progress with my writing and managed to speak at a number of conferences and seminars. I have just sent off my first journal article for review and have conducted a lot of fieldwork.

The other parts of my life, too, are falling into place. Leo has moved to Dublin and is creating a home for us there, he has a good job and I hope to spend more time there. There are cheap flights from Newcastle to be had and many weekend and longer trips to enjoy in the coming weeks. Overall, everything is good.

As I look back on 2015, I can't help but feel incredibly warm and happy. Everything has fallen into place just like it should. Looking to next year, I have many goals and hopes, but generally, nothing groundbreaking. I don't want to turn my world upside down, or radically re-invent some part of myself. I just want to continue being me, being comfortable, embracing the hygge, learning more things, and being better. 

Here's to 2015, and to 2016, and to no bad days :)

This picture: many cups of tea and a stack of books, represents my life over this Christmas period