Behind every great man...

I gave a talk today - an academic talk to a bunch of people (and an unknown number of people online) and it was recorded and there were questions and it went well! Huzzah! It was draining and took a bunch of time to prepare and even more time to actually attend Oxford to give it.

Picking up the slack

My DPhil is something that I do for me. I’m interested in it and I like the research and coming to Oxford and ultimately doing the things that get you a DPhil. However, I just want to acknowledge that I’m only able to do this because of my wife.

She didn’t ask me to do a PhD and was sceptical about whether or not I should do one. But I did one anyway, and I asked her to pick up the slack. And as the number of children we have has grown, that slack has grown and grown.

And yet she does it all the same. Right now, while I’m sitting in a large and buzzy atrium full of academic life, she’s trying to feed and transport three small children…

Giving Back

Right now, there’s not much that I can do to really ‘give back’. Our youngest is still being breast-fed and so I’m limited to immediate small gifts of time (an hour here or there), ‘things’ (flowers, chocolates, other gifts), or gratitude.

I find it really hard to give time, even though that’s the most valuable currency we have at the moment. I’m already stretched incredibly thin, and don’t have a lot in the way of free time that I can donate. I try ‘things’ but given that we share our money, it always feels a little strange buying my wife things.

That leaves gratitude, and I’m sure I do a much worse job here than I should. I don’t know if she’ll even read this post (I’ll not tell her, and leave this as a little easter egg that she might find at some point), but let it be recorded somewhere on the internet. I am grateful. I couldn’t do this DPhil, which is purely for me, without the support of my wife.

Thank you for helping me be the best version of myself. I literally couldn’t do it without you.