When speaking German, one will ‘make’ a pause when taking a break from something. For example in university a teacher might say “Sollen wir eine Pause machen?” before sending students out for a 10 minute coffee and cigarette break.

Let’s just say that I’ve been making a pause on this here blog.  It’s a relatively large pause made up of inertia, wondering what happens next, paralysing fear and the overwhelming feeling that I should somehow summarise my last year in just several sentences and oh gosh I didn’t do anything worth writing about… But you know, while I was pause-making I did do some other interesting stuff. Like start building a [small] boat.

So that time wasn’t entirely wasted if one is thinking from the perspective of a blogger – “if you did it, but you didn’t publically document it, did it really happen?”.

At least I started work on The Imperial Punt.  But there’s more (unblogged things) that I did over the last year or so. I’m going to try to do this summarising thing – to make the experiences real.

• I fell in love with a bearded maths captain!
• I turned 30!
• I was given a guitar (which I’m scared to learn how to play)!
• I learnt to understand and speak a bunch of German!
• I made new friends!
• I started a really good job teaching and geeking!
• I got health insurance!
• I taught people how to use HTML and CSS!
• I decided on a graduate program!
• I became far more mentally healthy!
• I started running regularly!
• I [kinda] snowboarded!
• I made my room and apartment look lovely on a limited budget!
• I went to Linz, Austria so many times to see the bearded maths captain!
• I went to Norway!
• I knitted a lot of stuff!
• I baked cakes and learnt how to make pies!
• I thrifted an amazing vintage 1970s Husqvarna sewing machine and a great food processor!
• I bought a lot of plants!
• I started to crave Sauerkraut!
• I stopped dying my hair!
• I bought a bed!
• I had visits from lovely friends!
• I learnt a lot of new things!
  • (but that’s another list)

And on and on it goes. There’s so much stuff I’ve done – but haven’t felt motivated or confident enough to record.  And while a lot of those things are only significant to me (buying a bed for instance is a symbol that I feel really happy, secure and at home in Berlin) it suddenly feels quite amazing to write them down.  And what is particularly good is that I have done all these things in the first year of living in Berlin!

I think a lot of this thought that I haven’t done anything worth blogging is a direct result of the interest that people showed in the DIY Masters concept and my progress with it.  I feel like I owe them something and that writing about anything unrelated to my list of 100 Things to Learn was an insult to them.  So I stop writing altogether which is probably a greater insult! Foolish eh?

Far more foolish is the fear that I couldn’t mention the graduate program I’ve finally enrolled in as it’s “formal education” and very much not a DIY Masters – despite my intention being to explore non-formal, online and flexible learning (particularly Open Course Ware). For the record I’m going to be studying a Graduate Certificate in Tertiary Teaching and Learning (GCTT) online through the University of Southern Queensland.

The program is designed to enable educators in the tertiary sector who already have a degree or diploma, to acquire an innovative credential in tertiary teaching and learning. The program focuses on applying educational theories to practical situations in university and other tertiary educational settings in order to design, develop, implement and evaluate emerging learning environments.

So yeah. That’s about it. Thing I’ve done, things I’m going to do. I also wanted to publicly give myself permission to write / videoblog about whatever I want – there’s no way this can ever be an environment where I only write about one topic.  Because not writing is worse than writing about everything.