Happy New Year 2016! Happy 5th Birthday, Blog!

Today is my first day back in the office after the Xmas hols, though I've actually been itching to get back. Not because I don't like the holidays - it was great, I had a real Christmas tree for the first time in my life which was very exciting, and I am now planning on ways to turn it into reference material for environmental archaeology practical classes. This is also the first time ever that I can think of, where I genuinely did not do ANY WORK AT ALL over the holidays. This definitely correlates with the fact I got a permanent position last September, and so am no longer in that state of permanent anxiety that characterizes being a postdoc. I made a promise to my family that I would get better at work-life balance and stop being in continuous work mode. I do not regret this decision at all, I am happier, my family is happier, we had a fantastic Xmas and New Year. But I do find it so hard to stop working. It's a combination of actually loving my job, all the paper writing and musing over ideas, but also I find it very hard to not do things straight away. I've had a whole list of tasks waiting over the holidays, from writing a new module, writing new contributed lectures for other modules, putting together reading lists, marking, multiple papers to finish. When I have stuff to do, I just itch to get it done. My way of working is a bit sporadic - if an idea comes into my head, or the inspiration to do some writing hits, I find it hard to focus on doing something else. Along with not doing any work, I also didn't do any blogging for the whole of December, not even a microfossil of the month! This is the first time since I started the blog that I haven't posted at all in a whole month. My new years' resolution therefore is to work blog more in 2016, and perhaps even get to the point where I can schedule posts for the holidays. Also, happy birthday Castles and Coprolites, my blog is 5 years old at the end of this week!