According to my front page, I last published a post six months ago. Yikes! Keeping up a regular blog was one of my resolutions for last year that fizzled out. That isn’t to say that writing has completely slipped my mind. Quite the opposite: there have been many moments in 2017 that I really wanted to record. Exploring the landscape and geology of Smith Rock State Park, for instance, or attending my first international conference. A research trip to Guatemala last November probably deserves a series to itself. I wrote several draft posts of those events – but never got around to editing, or publishing. It’s a pleasurable Catch-22 that the more interesting (and worthy of writing about) life is, the more I struggle to dedicate time to writing about it.
But. I’m sitting here at the start of 2018, with the next few months spread ahead of me. I am almost 18 months into a PhD at Bristol, and just over two years remain. Hopefully I’ll have stimulating work in the future, but it’s hard to imagine landing another job with this much variety, and this much freedom, again. So I’ll remember the time fondly; but it would be even better to find it retained, in hard copy, in years to come. There are many exciting experiences to look forward to in the next months and years, and I hope to be able to share some of the experience and wisdom I gain from that. Mostly, though, it would be nice to retain things.
So here goes – a second attempt at maintaining a record of my work, and my life around that. I won’t be able to update the blog in real time, due to fieldwork and deadlines. But I hope you are able to check in once in a while to say hello, and see that things are still happening.
Reasoning With Volcanoes 