On the Socials

We had an in person away day at work last week. I was genuinely looking forward to it (sadly) and it was really great to see people in person again. But you know, ultimately, an away day is as you would imagine. We had a guest speaker. She spoke about trying to manage our tech habits and inspired by her, I have deleted Instagram from my phone. It was a slight wrench but I had found myself sitting scrolling at midnight when I ought to be tucked up in bed reading my book and keeping my husband awake with the bedside light. I gave up Twitter in April 2019 and although I do still slightly miss it from time to time, I am very pleased that I did. I find Instagram less interesting than Twitter so hope that I will miss it even less. Although I did like those filters.

Instead, I now seem to be addicted to Duolingo which at least has the merit of being educational. I am learning Ukrainian. I would say that the Cyrillic alphabet is tricky. Mr. Waffle said, “It’s based on the Greek alphabet – remember Cyril and Methodius – which I learnt in a week when I was 12, how hard can it be?” Frankly, this attitude is unhelpful. I spent some time in Bosnia in the mid-90s and in my head I still pronounce the Bosnian word for restaurant as Pectopah so you can see my difficulty.

Separately, herself introduced me to BeReal which I mentioned a couple of weeks ago. I am quite enjoying it despite the fact that I know no one on there but herself (I feel like I am definitely ahead of the middle aged curve on this one). Sadly most of my pictures feature me in my concrete bunker (or, as it is described elsewhere, my award winning office – architect led design, what is it with architects and concrete?). I am very excited by the prospect of my sabbatical and a whole range of different settings opening up to me.