2019 was intense, and that (kind of) contextualises my lack of output on here.
I already wrote the posts about my main concern: trying to finish my PhD project, which involved crossing disciplines, writing a novel, attending conferences, teaching, researching, editing, transcribing, sitting blankly at a computer screen for hours, deleting words, losing USBs, losing self-confidence, finding random files, mumbling to myself in libraries and cafés, literally cutting and pasting a paragraph onto my bound thesis (the least said about that, the better!), paying library fines, shopping with student discount cards... and, despite all the downs, finding joy inside the academic bubble.
Meanwhile, I juggled other projects, which I didn't even shout that loudly about because I was busy overexerting myself (I mean, I had a whole poem going up the side of St. Paul's Cathedral last October!)
Maybe I didn't want to jinx it, but I told fewer people about my viva last month, the exam to end all exams, where I had to sit in front of two much-respected academics (one of them a recent Booker Prize winner!) and justify my life. And at the end of it - subject to me completing corrections over the next few months - I passed. It's been 4-and-a-bit long years, but I'm overjoyed. And knackered. And I can flaunt this t-shirt I bought, ironically, many years ago.
I've got some other things happening over the next couple of months which I can now shout about, and I will, if I can get back into the habit of blogging.
Meanwhile, Happy 2020 and all that....
