Planning for the Near Future

I was going to start by saying that I take back everything I was saying the other day about the referee who was dragging their feet in actually coming up with a reference for my teaching application.  They actually came up with it, allowing me to finally get the application off.  However, it had been so badly delayed (by nearly three weeks) while I waited for the reference that my first choices for training programmes were no longer available as they had filled all their available places.  Which has left me with a third choice I'm not really enthusiastic about and a fourth that I had to scrabble around feverishly to find, there are so few places left, which I'm positively unenthusiastic about.  It's put a real downer on the whole business.  I'm clearly not going to get anywhere via this route now.  I was actually left in two minds as to whether I should even bother sending my revised application off, but I'd already put so much effort into it that I didn't want to feel that I'd completely wasted my time.  Where this leaves me with regard to my attempts to 'reinvent' myself, I really don't know.  There are other potential routes to take - I do already hold a PGCE after all - which I'll start exploring next week, when I have more time.

The reason I'll have more time is because once I'm finished tomorrow, I'm taking an extended break from work, using up some of that leave I couldn't take when I was ill earlier this year.  I won't be back in the office until September.  If, indeed, I bother going back.  If I enjoy myself enough, my break could easily become permanent.  And enjoying myself is what I intend doing.  For the past week I seem to have been doing nothing but thinking about my favourite beaches which I intend visiting over the next few weeks. The idea of not being at anyone's beck and call, not having to deal with insanely aggressive idiots full of incoherent rage and not having to endure the sheer soul sapping boredom of work is just so appealing.  Hopefully, I'll also find the time to get back into my podcasting groove - as Google seems to have, for the time being, pretty much destroyed traffic to my web sites, I might as well turn my creative activities elsewhere.  As, these days, my podcasts all appear on somebody else's site, I don't have to worry about stuff like traffic - I can just focus on recording, editing and posting them.  Actually, I've already been limbering up in this regard - I've just recorded a new edition of 'Schlock Express', which you can find over at The Overnightscape Underground right now.  This one covers some Italian schlock classics.  I'm hoping to put together a few more of these in the coming weeks ('Schlock Express' episodes are relatively straightforward to record), as well as some more episodes of the 'DS' podcast.  I'm hoping to experiment somewhat with the format of the latter.  So, there you have it, future plans laid out at last.  Well, near future plans, at least.