One Year Ago Today

One year ago today, my PhD Viva (oral exam) took place. I’m trying to recall how the day went, but can’t really remember much at all. All I remember is counting down to it via my blog, and being in a strange mental place (somewhat detached, excited, fully pressurised, elated, a vacuum), and going to Morrisons on the way back to buy some smoked Bavarian cheese.

Roundabout the same time, my good friend A. split up with his missus (actually it was a few weeks after – just after the New Year I think) and, meeting up with him yesterday, here’s some real, solid proof how quickly life can change and turn its tables:

A. one year ago (roughly):

• quite fat (well, big, overweight, but tall. Fat face though 😛 )
• just about to be left by his missus of over 2 years
• stuck in a hateful, despicable, exploitative job (working for Lidl 😐 )
• stuck in a flat he was unlikely to afford much longer / on his own

A. now (roughly):

• quite skinny (thin bordering on junkie)
• in a happy, successful relationship since roughly August
• in a great job with prospects, about to be promoted
• living with his new missus and just bought a house

Thus, what initially looked like a devastating blow, able to fuck up his life and his dreams (missus leaving him), has turned out to be just the thing he needed to move his life on to the next level. A bit like a kick-start, or a punch in the face, that leaves you more beautiful after.

Lessons to be learned:

• bad things aren’t really essentially bad – they can become something really positive, given time
• do not fear devastation
• do not kill yourself

Getting Rid of Some Categories

I’ve been wanting to clear up the category-mess on my blog for a while now. With WordPress’ introduction of tags, the categories have become somewhat superfluous.

Here‘s how you can convert categories into tags.

I think it may benefit some, for instance jetsam who has far too many categories imho. I used to have plenty more than what I do now, but got rid of a fair few of them ages ago.

I still don’t like them much, so I’ll strip them down by means of conversion. I think I’ll hang on to some of them though – just very basic ones, ‘themes’, maybe such as ‘work’, ‘Friends’, etc. I may even keep the ‘PhD’ one – just in case I want to quickly navigate to that painful period of my life in the future 😛

/me wonders if she should convert them *now*, or *after* publishing this post…

EDIT: I’ve just converted various categories to tags. However, not all categories appeared in the checklist for conversion! I.e. I was only able to convert 10 or so, when I wanted to convert more than that 😦