Happy New Year!

I got back this week from a Christmas/New Year trip to Cambodia (above at Angkor Wat) and I've spent a couple of days trying to get over the jet lag and pottering about; doing lots of washing, sorting out photos, dealing with my inbox and sending out a few work messages. It's also inevitably a time for thinking back and looking forward ...

Highlights of 2010

• 2010 started with the publication of Global which had been a big feature of my working year in 2009. There was the launch at the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford in February and then in November, the trip to Buckingham Palace to pick up the ESU award for the e-workbook along with several of my Global co-writers - a day to remember!
  
• The summer saw the publication of the latest edition of the Oxford Dictionary of English - the first big native speaker dictionary project I've worked on, so an exciting milestone.
• This year's big project though was work on the Collins COBUILD Key Words for IELTS books. It was, in many ways, a dream project for me, combining my lexicography skills with my recent interest in EAP and IELTS. The project also marked a bit of a step forward in career terms as I was working as senior editor for the three books; a challenging, but really interesting experience.

Resolutions for 2011

Well, there's only one really and that's to break out of the cycle of getting involved in one big project in the year that ends up being more work than I can cope with in the time available, so that my RSI flares up really badly, leaving me in lots of pain and frustrated, and then having to take time off to recover. I don't want to give up those 'big' projects, because they're usually the most interesting. But there really has to be a way of working that means that I can control my hours and work through something at a reasonable pace - as opposed to the usual promises to start on a particular date which then moves and moves and moves, until I'm left with the same amount of work to do (and usually more than expected) in half the amount of time!

So here's looking forward to an interesting, productive and sensibly-paced year ahead in 2011.