Over 6 hours on the terrible class 158 East Midlands trains with air conditioning that doesn’t work. Including an hour stopped for an incident meaning no airflow. All my sauna visits have proved to be good training for this endurance test.

Competitive sports that I excel at include: queuing up at the train doors first and standing my ground against others for 30mins to get my preferred seat.

LIbrarians. A moment of silence for our museum colleagues.

Not sure I recognise myself today. Embracing good energy levels. Did a full day in Sheffield and then came home to do more of thesis writing this evening. An almost finished draft of a chapter sent to supervisors and looking forward to feedback. I’m making progress #PhDSky

No trains between Wakefield and Huddersfield at the moments means I have to travel on the Penistone line. A rickety old 3 coach Northern service. The amount of people waiting on the platform for this silly little train makes me feel very stressed.

Sauna with a friend is the best way to clear my head after a hard day trying to write.

Trying not to think about how much better my thesis would be if I wasn’t trying to write it in small windows of time around work and life. Nowhere near submitting yet but full of fear about major corrections because of the patchy chaotic way I’ve worked on it. #PhDSky

I’ve got coffee. My thesis word count tracker is open. I’ve done 73,000 words yet still have two half finished findings chapters to write and need a concluding discussion. Lit review needs updating too. Today I want to to finish drafting Chapter 8 and send it to my supervisors. Let’s go! #PhDSky

The collapse of the UK HE sector will destroy what remains of the profession of librarianship here. (Swathes of academic staff and others are having their careers destroyed too.) Academic librarianship was the last viable bit remaining. Shame the professional body's always been politically impotent.

Lots of posts from friends about children doing GCSE exams. Can’t believe it’s been 23 years since I was too unwell to do my GCSE exams. Still grateful to my headteacher for fighting to get me GCSEs without exams on special circumstances.

Finally got that phone call from the ADHD consultant. The call cut off partway through and now I’ve been accused of hanging up and switching my phone off. Apparently speaking to me on the phone again would not be appropriate as I’m too emotional. I wish I’d never started this ridiculous process.

My social media feeds today are features step by step prompts for using AI to do thematic analysis including writing up a narrative. A process that completely erodes researcher agency? What is the researcher actually doing other than being a prompt engineer assistant?

In the zine making hyperfocus zone this weekend. Really enjoying finding my creative energy again. Would it be weird to take a zine about my year on an SNRI to my next GP appointment?

If the psychologists need more evidence of my potential neurodivergence then I give you my lengthy debate with a pub that halloumi loaded fries should be fries loaded with halloumi rather than just a plate of halloumi sticks. Halloumi fries in the loaded fries section was misleading and I’m mad.

Building a fort around my desk out of dusty, crumbly art books today.

We have an *extremely* important announcement to make. From Wednesday, we will be launching our puffin live cam, coming to you from the Farne Islands. So you can watch puffins all day long. In celebration, please enjoy this clip of puffins being really busy for 39 seconds straight.

An excellent bean filled tour that has reminded me to stock up the cupboards with even more variety. My usual weekly rotation includes baked, butter, cannellini, broad, kidney, edamame and chickpea. Got to get back on the black and pinto.

A full summary of significant medical history was included as part of a referral for my foot pain. It states my radiation was on my left eye instead of my brain. Also that I’ve had retinal angiograms instead of brain angiograms. This feels significant enough to query but I don’t have the energy.

This. I don’t care who is in charge as long as they have the right skills. I’m a someone exhausted by trying to navigate a lack of endometriosis care (yes probably but we aren’t going to investigate, go back to your GP is not diagnosis!). Doesn’t need to be someone with endo to do a good job!

Just fell over getting on a train as I’m so tired that my miss judged the step up. That was embarrassing and now my leg hurts.

I need to find a new pair of jeans. Everything in the shops is very wide or baggy of leg. It a very long time to convince me to abandon flared or baggy cuts for the skinny back at the turn of the millennium. If only I had kept my wardrobe from the early 2000s.

Sauna and cold plunge was good for my brain. I’m going to become a sauna regular here. This one has an excellent set up with good changing areas and a fire pit to sit round. Beautiful window in the sauna looking out on woodland.

Resetting my nervous system after a hard week of thesis writing #PhDSky Picked a mat with a good mantra today at my morning movement class. Decided to stay afterwards for a coffee and vegan cinnamon swirl.

An evening listening to @robinince.bsky.social without having to travel more than a 5 min walk. My thoughts have been racing all day yet somehow like swampy slime at the same time. But that was like pushing the reset button on my brain.

Today was a very bad PhD thesis writing day and a bad mental health day. But I’m going to meet friends for a Robin Ince author talk tonight and I have yoga booked for tomorrow. Tempted to book a sauna for tomorrow too.

This week is annual leave for thesis writing. So far I’ve not gone near the data chapter I promised my supervisors I’d work on. But I’ve had two productive days on other chapters so far.

Every penny kept away from massive data focused scholarly publishers who continue working with ICE, among other groups dedicated to harming our communities, is a win. 📚 www.ifla.org/news/the-shr...

@academiclibsnorth.bsky.social are offering 10 sponsored places for both presenters and delegates at this years conference, "Reimagining Openness in Academic Libraries". The deadline to apply if the 29th of April. academiclibrariesnorth.ac.uk/conference/a...

Massive wild fire burning all night. The entire valley is cloaked in smoke. My eyes are stinging and burning. My heart breaks for all my beautiful bird friends.

A barometer for my mental health is how lax I become with eating dairy chocolate in the office. Lactose intolerant person punishing themself from the inside with chocolate.

Since last Friday I’ve spent 1 night in Newcastle and 3 in Sheffield. Tonight I’m staying in Liverpool. Looking forward to a solid week of sleeping in my own house next week.

why is the only non-sad thing he can imagine going to the moon? like why can’t it be high-speed rail? awesome public housing communities? great cinemas and libraries and public spaces? a rejuvenated postal service finding new ways to serve the public? technology for people not profit?

Two #LILAC26 talks delivered and I’ve loved bringing more leisure research and embodied info to the info lit community. Extremely grateful to the School of Information, Journalism and Communication at Sheffield for funding to attend.

Hearing about the experiences of a dyslexic student taking an information literacy module. Reflecting on how dyslexia shapes information seeking and use of university systems. As a fellow dyslexic student I’m familiar with these institutional issues! #LILAC26

I always like to be able to link my conference talks to the keynote. This morning Matteo Bergamini has delivered the ultimate gift by using mushroom foraging as an analogy when talking about media literacy. #LILAC26

A pleasure to introduce Matteo Bergamini for our Day 3 keynote! Matteo is now talking about the spectrum of spectrum of misinformation, disinformation, and malinformation, and how these are shaping radicalisation and political polarisation #lilac26

Love that Sheila has started this information literacy keynote with some classic theory of the definitions of information. I’ve been grappling with those Marcia Bates typologies during my PhD. The information part of information literacy is fundamental. #LILAC26

I can’t knit or crochet as many librarians do at conferences. So I’m folding a book hedgehog as my way to support focus during talks. Making this #LILAC26 InfoHog out of an old ASLIB Proceedings 🦔

"AI is here, we can't put the toothpaste back in the tube." When I accidentally squeeze out too much toothpaste, I don't then shove it all in my mouth. I wash it down the plughole. #UKSG2026

Interesting reflective question in the critical refusal of AI session about where the pressure to use generative AI comes from. Talking about hype narratives and inevitability narratives is a great way to start day 2 at #LILAC26

Thank you to #LILAC26 for showing such enthusiastic interest in my PhD research about social media, influencers and information literacy in the ultrarunning world. It was great to get feedback on my work from an info literacy audience.

PhD wise I’m going to link the stat about people regretting following health info from influencers into my presentation this afternoon. My PhD work looks at how people experience fitness and exercise info on social media through the study of runners. Excited to share my findings #lilac26

The parts of this keynote at #lilac26 about online health misinformation are fascinating both for my PhD and also personally. I take a medication that has entire Facebook groups dedicated to how evil it is. I like to think I’m incredibly literate yet I got sucked in to the misinformation

I spend too much of my life waiting for train connections at Wakefield Kirkgate. The waiting room is always closed. There is often an aroma from the sewage works. Today bin contents have escaped. Ranking highly in my least favourite railway stations.

Thrilled that my mushroom talk features in this blog post 🍄🍄🍄

A preview and insight into the story behind my #LILAC26 talk. I’ll be talking about information literacy and risk information practices in mushroom foraging.

@nlisn.bsky.social "Emily [an anonymised pseudonym for the librarian] is autistic, and she described how she “always assumes that surely people will see the common sense in things”." "Emily" if you see this, we're at nlisn.org and there's loads of us.

Indulged in train nerd fun at the Severn Valley railway this weekend. Exciting to ride behind a class 20 diesel and steam locomotive combo.

There's so many book reviews in Ex Libris Primo because it benefits the corporate vendor of that software which libraries continue to use despite the software's widely-publicised failings.

🧵