As a full-time academic, I had my busiest semester yet in the first half of 2026: four modules in total, leading three of them and playing a major role in a fourth. In all my years in academia, I’ve never encountered a workload quite like that.
I’ve survived — and in fact, I’m proud to say that life carried on. As someone in their forties, I simply refuse to put life on hold because work gets demanding. Ultimately, surrendering your life to work is self-defeating; it only accelerates burnout and health problems, neither of which provide a solid foundation for doing your best work or career growth.
So, while the first half of 2026 certainly had its hairy moments, the show stayed firmly on the road. Central to the balancing act has been a handful trips away whenever opportunities presented themselves. That always meant taking the work laptop, and occasionally it meant staying in a hotel room to get things done. Otherwise, I effectively “bought” those opportunities by working seven-day weeks and some evenings at other times.
There’s a fine line between the comfort zone and the stress zone. The sweet spot in between is the growth zone, and I’m happy to say that most of 2026 has been spent there. The needle has flickered into the stress zone countless times, but professional and life experience teach you how to wrestle it back towards safer waters. Just as importantly, that experience gives you the confidence that you can.
Anyway, with my first real breathing space in six months, I’m cracking on with the usual summer mix of working on the garden, working on the house, working on myself and looking back for the sake of celebrating and learning. Last summer – for reasons not relevant to the present post – my batteries never fully recharged. This year, I intend to make sure history doesn’t repeat itself whilst maintaining a pattern of determined “across the board” progress.
So far this year I have been to Romania (pics featured), Kosovo, Iceland, Malta and the Netherlands x2. I look forward to catching this site up over the next few days.
Dr Martin James 