Once again, a year ago, I would not have been able to predict where 2025 would take me. It has been a good year (well: for me… I’m fully aware of the state of the world!). I’ve been through some big changes in terms of work and health.
Looking back at the first post on this blog in January – Recognising what enables me to make changes – workwise, I had lost the contract I was on and I was starting to try to change my diet to control my diabetes and walking daily.
Improving my health
This year has been a bit surreal. Things have gone really well, but it took at lot of my brain time and focus. It was worth it. I’ve written about it in ‘I thought about that a lot‘ an advent calendar for the brain, which I’ve been enjoying a lot in the last few years, and now got to contribute too!
A big thank you to Amy McNichol for creating this, and being so nice about facilitating my contribution and to Nia Campbell for editing and improving my writing.
You can read ‘My body in numbers‘ but you really should read the other essays too and subscribe to the calendar.
To my surprise, I’ve been able to regain some of the physical abilities I had lost since 2010. I had tried different diets to no effect when I was first diagnosed with ME/CFS. But it looks like drastically removing carbs did me a lot of good. I wish I had known that years ago. I’m not saying it will work for everyone, but for me, it made a huge difference.
I’m able to start eating again carbs and even desserts from time to time now, and still have a normal blood sugar level, without medication.
Rejoining the civil service
Rejoining the civil service was not something I ever thought I would do. After losing my contract with DWP, in February I was offered another short one with them and then another one again in May. The service design community has been really nice and supportive during my 2 years there.
I had decided to give contracting a try after being very disappointed by perm roles in various organisations which never seemed to really end up being what I thought they would be. I wrote about it in this blog post: ways of working. Contracting was enabling me to focus on just a piece of work/project. I could keep my expectations minimal regarding the organisation I would be contracting for.
But it turned out that I really like the people, the community and the work in DWP. Discussions with various leads and Alice Forward (who was the head of service design at the time) made me think being a perm there might be good for me. As a contractor, you usually can’t stay for more than 2 years in a government department and I wanted to stay so going permanent was the way to go.
I applied and was successful. It took a long time to go through all the checks and all, but I finally got to see the screen used in the illustration: ‘Offer confirmed’
As a perm, I get to do something I wanted to do for a long time: becoming a service assessor. I’m even working toward an accreditation for it and enjoying this. I can now use the flexi time, and be more relaxed about the time I start or finish work which is really nice. So quite happy with this.
‘Work’ outside of work
I often joke that what I like to do outside of work is a different kind of work: attending events, meet-ups, conferences, or mentoring for example.
This year, I stopped taking part in organising UX Glasgow after a few years. I needed more time. I did attend a few conferences. Got to speak at 3 of them. I met people in person for the first time, and saw people I had not seen for a long time. It’s been really nice. I have at least one more conference I’m speaking at in 2026, there might be more as I submitted talks recently. I could also probably get a ticket via my work now that I’m a perm.
We’ll see, I know better now than to plan for 2026, who knows what it will bring 😉
Last post for 2025
As this is my last post this year, I’d like to thank you for read me, and wish you all the best for the new year!