Study Blues....

Today marks my first day in part-time employment! I am stepping down from my full-time work at the hospital after 10 years, to work half time (from 60 to 30 hours/week). I have my last professional exams in February (FACEM) and I have been studying for them for the last year, but in these last few months the pressure is really on.

I have dedicated myself more to them for the past 3 months. Somedays, as I look around the house it looks like a scene from Grey Gardens: my usually pedantic, borderline OCD, house-proud standards relaxing a bit as I sink into a quagmire of textbooks and paper...

Time does evaporate. Willowbrook Park has consumed any spare time I have had over the last 2 years. When I look back through the blog, there are posts about things which I had forgotten had happened. I can't remember what happened last year, let alone 10 years ago. Med school seems a distant memory. It is hard to believe that this November will be my 10th anniversary of qualifying as a Doctor, my 7th year of training as an Emergency and Trauma Specialist, and the 5th anniversary of my Ordination as a Priest in the Anglican Chruch.

I am looking forward to putting the study behind me next year, and getting back to a life on the land, taking up all the interests I have been putting off (fencing, learning the cello, equine eventing and social hunts, throwing pottery, reading all the leisure books that people have given me over the past year or so, and perhaps blogging a bit more (or at least blogging without feeling guilty (hard to know whether it will be as fun without the guilt!). We have also decided to postpone the start of building the Manor until after my exams (as Peter knows there would be no way I could leave the project to run itself and concentrate on exams when there was something far more exciting to do).

So, over the next 6 months there may be a few less posts at Willowbrook, but I'll still be following all your blogs when I have some spare, guilt-free time!