I’ve had a planner for decades, planners of various shapes and sizes. Pre-printed and pretty, dots, lines, grids, all weights of paper. I’m finally (more or less) settled into a groove which works for where I am now. My planners, yes multiple, hold my life and lives. And, for someone immersed in tech and with…
You know those moments when you have let the words slide from your tongue and wish you could grab them and haul them back inside, push them deep down until they disappear? I had one of those moments yesterday, a moment that shows how far the conditioning goes, a moment where I failed, if only…
An entirely unscientific field guide, in the spirit of the name. I named a consultancy after coffee, so I have clearly spent more time than is reasonable thinking about the people who drink it and the small ways they give themselves away while doing so. Not the coffee itself. The performance around the coffee. The…
On finding rest in a full life. Not as a reward. Simply as yours. I used to arrive at school early to collect the children. Deliberately early. Five minutes, sometimes ten, just sitting in the car. I remember the irritation when another parent knocked on the window. A silence of relief, alone in the car,…
At some point mid-2025 I had a bout of bravery and applied to give a workshop for Research Culture Week at Lancaster University. The workshop I proposed was based on some of my ideas and resources I was creating for my consultancy at the time and was named ‘Stories that Connect: Building Bridges Between Research…
When thinking runs out of road On using tarot as a reflective tool, and why it has nothing to do with predicting the future I should say this at the outset: I don’t think the cards know anything I don’t. I’m not reading my future in them. I’m not asking them to make decisions for…
What if? It is a powerful phrase; powerful when we are imagining our futures, imagining what might lie ahead, the good and the not-so-good, because contingency plans are often useful.
words can be doves or bullets, choose wisely
the challenges of meetings when you have achieved menopause
It’s a strange situation to be in, I am doing research-type activities within my role (with project-wide ethics etc etc) and yet I can’t get ethics to do research around my PhD because I need to pass my upgrade/confirmation panel first. And yet … the panel is to prove I can do research, which I…
I used to say it takes a community to raise a business – and after working with academics and third sectors I am becoming more and more to the realisation that community and connection is needed more than ever if we are to thrive as a human race and as a planet. How does a Collaborative Story Weaver enter into this equation?
I’m receiving so much pleasure from watching my garden resurrect itself after the long winter. The hellebores were first a few weeks ago, now the daffodils are a bright splash of yellow against the trunk of the silver birch, and catkins are hanging from my corkscrew hazel. Trees are pushing out buds and new leaves,…
