So here is the first of many wee thoughts that will be posted here for all to see.

It's one month until my last High Table at Sallies, I'm editing, editing and editing some more and beginning to see that over the past three years researching, studying,writing and discovering lots of little unknowns that there is a glimmer of PhD there if you wipe it clean of blood sweat and tears, I'm really starting to feel that I'm coming to the end of an era.

It's all been very abstract so far, talking about when I move rather than implementing anything to actually make the move, that was of course until last week. Deposits paid, a new address secured, a man with a van sending me 20 medium boxes and a bike box in which I have to pack up and send across the sea to old Amsterdam, business cards finalised and my new email address activated. Not to mention a new Assistant Warden being appointed at Sallies and a new Tutor at UoC Edinburgh. I've signed, sealed, arranged to pack and deliver, I'm ready to go...it's no longer talking, it's moving!

I'm really excited for everything to come. Its not a bad start to the year, the year I finish one major thing (that PhD thing) and begin at a new university, for the first time not as a student but as a faculty member.

I'm also terrified but in the same way as I was when I was standing on the edge of a bridge with nothing but a bungee rope tied around my waist, I was paralysed with fear, the last thing I wanted to do was jump, the only thing I was demanding of the safety guys around me was to make me jump...somehow the adrenaline rush is worth the terror, it actually makes the terror somewhat pleasurable. Now this is a very extreme way to describe the move to Holland but I cant pretend that the adrenaline isn't pumping and that the thought of the jump isn't terrifying.

Having been at university as a student for 9 years I'm starting a fresh at a new university, something I have enjoyed many a time before, but the fresh start is as a faculty member at a University were I have never been a student. This will be a strange and exciting new experience.

Anew place, a new life style, a new language and everything else in between.

For now the anticipation and adrenaline is keeping the motivation up. The nerves keep me writing and keep me to a self-imposed and grueling structure, the reward....a wee apartment by the canal, my bike, Webster and everything else I'm yet to discover.