who only by moving can balance

... but yesterday was on the whole entirely bearable and today is so far shaping up pretty well, give or take having nothing to do apart from sort of aimlessly read (which is a thing I HATE).

-- ah, no, wait, I can actually legit get started on reading for a lit review. Good. This is good.

So, yes: lift was broken, but via a slightly entertaining sequence of events I have ended up with access to both Bioengineering and the Business School, and thus can get up to my desk even when the main lift is down. Further, my desk has been moved from the third floor to the second, so that if the tiny-lift-for-four-steps breaks I don't have to deal with getting my chair up and down them by hand because I am NO LONGER ON THAT FLOOR (with the added benefit that I am now on the same floor as my supervisors and a KITCHEN and my MUGS and TEA I CAN DRINK).

Yesterday I had a moment of Abject Horror at the Imperial Library - they apparently completely disregard the preferred name field in the student e-service so were displaying my first name. However, I've just received an e-mail promising me this has been fixed.

And furthermore: Yesterday I managed not only grad social but subsequently eating in public at the hostel, in re which I am proud of myself; and this evening I will be going to From Sindbad to Sci-Fi: Reimagining Arab Science Fiction, which is a free event at which Amal el-Mohtar will be speaking (SO MANY EXCITE). So.

Furthermore I continue making progress with Python: to my astonishment and delight, I'm running into things I can't do straight off and instead of bursting into tears and becoming convinced I am not good at anything and will never be able to any of the things, I go away and do something else for a bit and let it percolate, and then I write an outline of what wants to happen, and then I... write code. And then, mostly, it works. I am seriously, SERIOUSLY proud of myself for this - and simultaneously mildly horrified that some of the PIs in my group consider me advanced and intimidating because I am learning to code sort-of for fun...

This afternoon I have a session with my counsellor, which I am really looking forward to: I think I've done a lot of Stuff about feelings and procesing and displaying emotions and how I interact with people, and I think we will have lots of good stuff to talk about (and probably also some processing about Monday, which was kind of traumatic but which I think I have - to my astonishment - mostly bounced back from.)

And finally, this week I am hosting at poetree, so if you want to see me rambling about How Poems Work and sharing some of my favourites, that is a good place to find me (though I appear to be incredibly talkative here at the moment, too, so I doubt you will go short either way ;).

And, seriously, thank you all again so much for the solidarity and validation and the looking out for me: I remain incredibly grateful.