Notes from My Week, No. 3

This week was quite a busy one; I barely had time to do any real work.

A school asked me to support a careers day for year 7 students. The idea was that the students ask yes/no questions and use my answers to guess my job. There were six 20-minute sessions over two hours, so it was quite an intense time, but it was very enjoyable and rewarding.

The students, while not guessing my job completely, got close in most instances with “engineer”, and I rewarded their effort with some excited description of some aspects of my work.

Over the course of the day, there were two students who definitely took an interest in my work. Both of them engaged me more than others in the class. Even if they were the only two, it’s a success in my eyes. After all, engineering isn’t for everyone, but at least students will know more about it as a career following experiences like this, rather than conflating “engineer” with “mechanic”.

With a colleague of mine, I support a short course that is taught at work. This involves giving a two-hour lecture and, more enjoyably, supporting a visit to a nearby aviation museum.

The idea of the museum visit is to find ways to relate the subject matter described in the lecture with real-life examples using the exhibits. It’s one thing being able to talk about considerations necessary for aircraft design, but to be able to talk about the same things in front of a variety of old aircraft adds some useful context. On top of that, it’s a really great way to spend an afternoon!

I treated myself with a new running watch, the Garmin Forerunner 255. It replaces my Forerunner 235, which was getting a bit tired. It’s familiar in its features and functionality, but has a refreshing look and some interesting new features. It also has a little bit more of a premium look.

The watch gathers more data than the previous one, but I’ll need to wait a few weeks to see how it looks. For running, the watch suggests training activities. As I wrote previously, I have been trying to structure my running into something more like training, so I will follow its suggestions. Unfortunately it began with an hour-long anaerobic workout, which was tough! Today was a much more reasonable 40-minute easy run. I wonder what’s next…

I’ve been knitting a cardigan for well over a year. That’s not constant knitting, rather a few periods of knitting and lots of time spent looking at it in a pile at the side of the couch. However, last week I finally got to the point where all the pieces were knitted and needed to be assembled. There is a real chance now that I could have a cardigan to wear this winter!

I managed to sew both shoulder seams together, the second much neater than the first. The next step is to pick up stitches all around the front and collar, to knit some ribbing. It’s a lot of stitches to pick up. I’ve got around 100 picked up so far and I’m nowhere near halfway yet.

The difficulty I have with picking up stitches is that it’s imprecise. It’s far from clear with my knitting where all the stitches are, and the number to pick up does not easily divide into the number of rows on offer. Therefore I am just trying to approximate an even spread of stitches that looks ok.

Finally, I have been looking at improving my sleep. Most of the time, I fall asleep easily and sleep fairly well, but there are annoying instances when I cannot fall asleep even though I am tired, or I wake up in the middle of the night and cannot get back to sleep. I also find that the middle of the afternoon is a very low point in my day and I could have several naps if possible.

I have previously tried to go to sleep earlier, or at a consistent time. This doesn’t seem to work for me though, as I find each day varies for when I am tired. So what I’m trying to do is try to get some consistent sleep duration into my life. Regardless of when I go to bed, I am setting an alarm for 7 hours later.

So far, I’ve been sleeping as well as before and there isn’t a lot of difference to my energy levels. However, in the last few days I have found myself waking up and waiting for the alarm - it’s usually only a few minutes away.

In future I may also try to add some more sleep to my night, but it will be a delicate balance to strike so that I still have enough time to manage all my personal projects and activities.