At work:
- Social care engagement project: The report writing is on hold because for grief-related reasons I lost focus last week and missed my window to finish it. This week has been too busy with All The Things to even think about it. I’ve got a catch-up with the client early next week to sort this out.
- Co-production resources project: I got organised and put things in place to conduct interviews with people and gather case studies. The ongoing project management with the digital team is ticking along well.
- Project supporting team development: I had one-to-one introduction meetings with 2 (out of 3) of the team, and we’re setting the foundations for some work together in early January.
Deliverables this week:
- Website co-production project: We ran two online workshops, which meant a ton of logistics, emails and follow-ups. We played back the early findings and emergent themes to the client team and they’re happy. I’ll be collating the notes to share next week.
- Facilitating 2 days of business development meetings: delivered the workshops, which went well!
- Support with event report: helped some colleagues with thematic analysis on a workshop participants’ outputs and facilitators’ notes – I extracted the main themes and wrote a concise summary for each. The facilitation team needed to turn the report around really quickly, as the workshop will inform a draft bid and work needs to start on this asap. I somewhat regretted offering to help in what turned out to be the busiest week of the year 😀 but I managed to fit it in and it was helpful, so that’s good!
Development this week:
- After a quiet summer and a drought of pipeline projects, a flurry of invitations to quote and invitations to tender are flying around – too many to turn around in the time available. Shame they weren’t more evenly distributed across the year!
At home:
- Last weekend I had the weekend completely off in anticipation of this super busy week, and it paid off. I felt ready and steady come Monday morning, rather than starting the week overwhelmed. Note to self, do this more.
- Last Welsh lesson before the Christmas break this week. I’m making a point to practice more and more regularly through the week, and planning some revision time over the break as well as reviving some regular scheduled homework in the new year! That’s fallen by the wayside but it’s so important.
- This weekend I went to Paris to visit my mum for her birthday and take her out for lunch. I also caught up with my oldest friend (32 years since we met, our friendship is a proper grown up by now) who’s recovering from a major brain operation. It does put things into perspective.
- Lots of travel = lots of people and lots of noise. My noise cancelling headphones are one of the best things I ever bought, they really help keep me regulated when there’s a lot going on around me. Watching the movements in the airport to a classical music soundtrack was actually quite enjoyable!
Aeroport Paris Charles de Gaulle