Stoked

Marvellous local election news from the UK. Delightful to see the Tory party receiving a trouncing, especially in places like my home city of Stoke-on-Trent, which has reclaimed the council from the ideologically twisted paws of conservatism.

Today the workshop, which has been on the themes of project monitoring, evaluation and learning, has been quite tiring. During one slide within one presentation all of the following terms were displayed:

Evaluation
Planning
Harmonisation
Strategy
Management
Adaptation
Integration
Vision
Context Analysis
Prioritisation
Mid-term Review

(non-exhaustive; these are the ones I managed to note down in time)

Meanwhile my colleagues and I ploughed on and whilst jargon-filled, there were some good discussions. Overall the week has served as a reminder that I am much less interested in talking shops and more interested in on-the-ground tangible impact. I find the thought of moving any further away from field project implementation very unattractive for job satisfaction, as is the idea of ‘climbing the ladder’. I used to assume it was natural career progression and now I’m allergic to the notion of adding more responsibilities and workload for an extra few grand. Nothing like hitting 40 to decide what does and doesn’t serve you.