Ten things I’m thankful for Tuesday…

1. A bit more sunshine. 

2. New harem pants, sandals and sunglasses that are making me look like I don’t know that even though it’s a bit more sunny, I do still live in Durham*.

3. A new favourite coffee shop. It’s not posh or even pretty, but lingering in Capriccio’s makes me feel good.

4. Good conversations with Richard Passmore yesterday. I’ve missed talking youth work like that, and now I have new inspiration and a good reading list. Now if we could arrange for more interesting youth work thinkers and doers to pass through the North East… maybe on a weekly basis? That’d be grand.

5. A good shopping day with Kat on Saturday. In Newcastle. Including lunch at Olive and Bean. Days like that are priceless**.

6. A trip to the theatre last Thursday that was more funny than could ever have been intended. 

7. A card from AT Jo Dolby.

8. Gimmicky named Diet Coke. I found my name!

9. Foods I am particularly enjoying at the moment: toasted bagels with peanut butter and sliced banana on, aubergine, noodles, and curly kale. As I eat these foods I feel like a better kind of person.

10. Good films and good books. This week has included Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close (the film- beautiful and sad), The Reader (book- very readable, film- well made but somehow more tragic), Living Together (Bonhoeffer book that is rocking my world).

*But I do know because one of my toes fell off.

**But actually also quite expensive.

Durham Illustrated: Reawakening.

The combination of sunshine and making it passed the essay deadline has made Durham endlessly more appealing. It feels like that moment when you’ve cleaned your glasses and then suddenly realise how unclear they were before. Everything is particularly bright and lovely. I have time to explore and be captivated by new discoveries. There’s time to bump into people and have a companionable meander in a book shop, and time to have a game of frustration after alfresco dining with friends.

I read a quote early on in my Durham time that said “I think I like who I’m becoming”. It partly resonated as a truth of finding myself somewhere where I can stretch out a little more into the person I want to be. I partly longed for it to be more true. In the last few days I’ve been quite humbled and moved to rediscover that these words feel more true than ever. I like who I am in Durham, the work and study I do, my lifestyle, the people around me. Tuesday felt like I was moving and operating in a world that I can fully participate in as the best version of myself, and I am so glad and thankful.

I want to share some highlights, but I also want to provide a disclaimer that I will be getting on with some work again soon! I hope that telling you about my midweek vacation isn’t too much like bragging, but I fear that it might be. At the same time, it’s so lovely to be sharing from my happy place, rather than an exhausted and drained one pre-deadline day. I was worrying that ‘Becca is Learning’ would soon be necessarily renamed ‘Becca is a Big Bag of Self Pity‘. Time out is just so important, and it’s felt like a reawakening of my best self. And I’m writing more freely again.

I had a walk by the river with my friend, Ben. We found wild garlic (which I then cooked with curly kale for my housemates later). I’m going to forage some more, because really, it’s quite the thing to do these days. It seems that in response to having been so academically focused, my inner urges to make and do are irresistible. I’m baking and cooking with such enthusiasm and joy. Now I will be adding wild garlic to everything with equal amounts of enthusiasm and joy.

I don’t know if it is ethical to post a photo of someone who doesn’t know I’ve taken their photo. I suspect it isn’t, but Ben told me to. I think I’ve fallen in love with this man. He’s Italian and his little coffee shop is also very Italian. I speak the tiniest amounts I can remember and he beams and recommends biscuits. Thus, a visit to Capriccio’s is utterly delightful.

We took our coffees and had conversation that stimulated and inspired me. It was in a similar spot that my friend Nikki and I had been having other marvellous and important conversation in hours earlier. I’m struck by how wonderful it is to find people who teach you in their stories and honour your own, in a place where learning is so much of the fabric of how we live.

I also took my first trip to Be Tempted, on the bailey. We had frozen yoghurt (food of the Gods) which we took on our stroll. I was delighted at the teapot lights, and was really quite tempted by the cupcake choice. I will have to visit again, and maybe even review. It’s definitely review-worthy.

I cooked and we did alfresco dining. I dug out a particular cherished floral sheet that I’d been saving and took a photo of it all that made me proud. Regina Spektor played and we had Pimms and lit candles.

I had the perfect Tuesday afternoon, I couldn’t help but share it with you all.

Ten things I’m thankful for Tuesday…

1. My big fat number one is that I have completed all my research methods assignments. This is deeply significant, as I get to channel my academic efforts back into youth work. A great weight has been lifted and its just too wonderful.

2. Phil and John and their study haven last week. They’re two of the most kind and generous people I am lucky to know. `Also thankful for our Ludo-on-the-iPad breaks that kept me sane!

3. A back that is way nearly better.

4. The perfect post-essay celebration evening with the Marjoribankses with whom I am well chuffed*. Thanks, gang.

5. York with Sarah and Ellie Fegredo yesterday. IN THE SUNSHINE. I’m not sure whether to tell you that we went to Bettys THREE times. I probably won’t.

There were cupcakes too, and much catching up, and sitting on the green next to the Minster, and new vintage sunglasses. Bank holiday FUNday.

6. Reconnecting with neglected friends and family over the phone. Although too many of them are too far away.

7. Moments where I laugh till I cry. This is happening on a daily basis at the moment. Post-essay euphoria is like some kind of high.

8. A day with the number 25 crew on Sunday. (The people I’m living with next year… more on that to follow, I’m sure). We ate pie in the middle of nowhere and then we did gardening and I got to play with the chipper.

9. Last night’s stingy flush on my cheeks of having been in the sun all day. First this year.

10. Nice things to look forward to: youth work, dissertation, trips and visits, more sunshine, coffee catch ups, reading, exercise… life is opening up.

*Biblical.

Done. For now.

 I’m experiencing the surreal feeling of moving past a deadline of such significant magnitude that has only happened for me a few times before; my dissertation, my book, my research proposal for Durham. As they’re ‘turned in’ there is a sudden departure of tension, focus and stress, and whilst not trying to sound too melodramatic, there is a sense of looking up and seeing the world there, waiting for you. It’s been carrying on and waiting for you to rejoin it when you’re necessary. I can only imagine the scale of this feeling in a few years time when I’ve completed my PhD thesis.

This deadline is so significant to me as it represents a new phase of my Durham life and work. I’ve found this first part of studying, the taught MA in Research Methods in Social Policy, much more difficult than I imagined I would. The combination of demanding academic work in a field that I’m so new to and a manic second term gave me quite a few ‘why am I here?’ moments and felt so far removed from the field of Christian youth work which I deeply love and comfortably operate in.

From now on it’s back to youth work research. I have a final module, but it’s linked with my dissertation, and for my dissertation I will get to return to learning in the youth work field. I’ll be returning with new perspectives and ways of approaching this study, but I’ll be so glad to refamilarise with ideas and theories that make me much more excited than is good for credibility to admit.

I think I’m grateful for this past season. I’ve definitely learnt extensively; about myself, about academia, about writing, about Durham life, as well as the content of the course! It’s not been all bad. This week the final countdown has happened in Yorkshire with two of the best people I know, tea drunk in incredulously high quantities, and a new type of spread for toast that may have changed my life.

I feel like such a weight has lifted, and I’m desperately keen to tend to the parts of my life that I’ve neglected; my lovely job in which I’m keen to plot, scheme and act in, the friends and family who might have forgotten what I look like, letting my back recover from extended haunching over a laptop, and getting into summer- spending time outside, drinking beer in the daytime, wearing flips flops and enjoying Durham in a new season.

Ten things I’m thankful for Tuesday…

1. That the world has changed so much for women.

Found at Messy Nessy Chic.

2. Two more essays handed in, and another completed. Two more to go and then I’ll be a human being again.

3. Gorgeous evenings with friends; Miriam, her amazing duvet and a Josie Long DVD on Friday, and a delicious spread with thoughtful conversation on Saturday at Ben’s with Emma too. Finding like minded friends is really quite precious.

4. This bath that I got made for me yesterday. I’m staying at Phil and John’s again and it’s like a womb. With candles and bubbles in. 

5. My lovely and talented friend, Sara Reynolds, and her work on Pattern at Coffee Rings and Beautiful Things this month.

6. Organisations like the Joseph Rowntree Foundation that help us understand and deal with poverty in the UK better. The silver lining on the assignment I’m writing today.

7. Maeve Sherlock and the insight she shared with me for said assignment. Panicking to much lesser degrees today as a result. What a trooper.

8. The Chain, by Ingrid Michaelson. This live version invites a young woman from the audience to join in, which I find very charming.

9. Painkillers. My heart genuinely breaks for people who have chronic pain but no access to drugs like we do in the UK. The NHS is so important, proven by experience again this week.

10. Summer’s coming.