Among the many things I find myself asking as the 2020s begin is: have I really had this blog for a decade? How was the 2010 General Election nearly ten years ago? Am I really nearly 35?! I know time seems to pass more quickly as you grow older but it honestly seems like yesterday that I was blogging optimistically about the coalition (oh, sweet summer child...) and moaning about being single at the advanced age of nearly 25 (seriously!).

2010 seems both like yesterday and a completely different world. I saw in the start of the decade at a friend's house back home - having nearly died travelling there due to a giant snowball rolling towards my car. I was just over a year into a job I loved at Coventry University, helping to manage relationships with the University's industry partners which in practice meant looking awkward in a suit at events and trying to persuade my boss to let me order my own business cards. I was very single - I'd finally stopped holding out hope that my on-again, off-again relationship with the first person I'd ever loved would ever work in early 2009 and, apart from a brief rebound relationship with a colleague, I pretty much focused on making my own happiness. I lived in a lovely shared house with an Irish girl called Mairead who had soon become a friend. In a lot of ways I was the happiest I'd ever been in my life - I had good friends, enough money to get by, and the inkling that I might have found a career that I liked.

Ten years later, I live with my boyfriend of nine years and our dog in a (sadly still rented) house in Surrey. I've lived in five different places since I moved out of that shared house in Coventry - although until we moved to the South East earlier this year all of them were in the Midlands. I feel like I really built on the foundations of that happiness I was striving so hard to create back in 2009 - the person I am now grew from the person I was trying to become back then.

Work-wise it's been a successful decade, although there have been more than a few moments where it absolutely hasn't felt like that! I stayed at Coventry until 2013, despite the immensely frustrating time I had trying to prove to those around me that I was good enough at my job to deserve a promotion. In hindsight, it's not easy to start your career somewhere at 22 and work your way up the ladder, particularly when you're trying to convince a load of men in their 40s and 50s that a twenty-something who spends most of her salary on hairdye and wine is a responsible adult! I then spent two years at Nottingham University, followed by two years at De Montfort University in jobs that were absolutely not as good as they looked on paper - particularly after the EU Referendum result in 2016 meant that future EU funding of the kind that was essential for my then job looked extremely uncertain. So I switched track slightly, moving away from the business engagement that had been the core of my career so far to a job back at Nottingham in 2016 where I was working directly with academics writing research grants. It was a steep learning curve but absolutely the best thing I have ever done - enabling me to really focus on the things I loved about my career: writing, editing, working with amazing researchers and helping them get to bring their ideas to life. I don't quite know where I'm going next - relocating earlier this year took me slightly sidewards - but ideally it would involve leading a team and helping to shape strategy. HE has been my career for over a decade now and, despite the many problems in the sector, I'm still as passionate about the importance of universities and research as I was when I first started.

I think I probably first met Andy in 2009 as well - at least online - although it was 2011 before we met in person for the first time and almost immediately started a relationship. It sounds incredibly corny but I knew on about our second date that I'd met the man I wanted to spend the rest of my life with. We still haven't quite got around to getting married (possibly a task for the next decade?!) but, despite the ups and downs of the past nine years, I still feel that way about him <3 Mostly I feel incredibly blessed to have met someone who loves me for who I am - even when who I am is sleep-deprived, neurotic, grumpy, or hungover - and who respects me as an equal. Having shitty relationships with (mostly) terrible men throughout my early 20s did, it turns out, teach me not to settle for being treated like crap! Hurrah for personal growth!!

In some ways I feel like I've not made a huge amount of new friends over the past ten years - if you'd asked me to make a list of my closest friends in 2009 and 2019 they would be very similar. My friendships with a lot of people have changed significantly, partly because most people I know now have small children and no free time, but that doesn't make them any less important to me. Particularly as getting to watch my friends' children grow up is utterly delightful! The new people in my life are mostly Andy's friends and family who have now become my friends too which I feel so so lucky about. Moving down to Surrey has a lot of drawbacks in terms of putting us much further away from friends in Wales and the Midlands - and I'm conscious of the fact that the distance is going to make keeping up those friendships difficult but I'm determined to put the effort in. Conversely I have a lot of friends already living in the South East whom I'm delighted to be much geographically closer to. I sometimes feel that I'm not doing friendships right or that I'm not doing enough to keep in touch with people but I do have a lot of people in my life who love me and support me in all kinds of different ways. Which I think is all anyone really needs so I'm really lucky.

Probably the biggest thing that's changed in the past decade is the growth of my love of running and triathlon. If you'd have told me in December 2009 that ten years later I'd have run a marathon or cycled 100 miles or done even one triathlon (let alone the ten plus I've actually done) I would have howled with laughter. I attempted to train for a half marathon in 2009 with a group of work colleagues and failed utterly - partly because I didn't take it at all seriously... I'd decided that running just wasn't for me and that I'd stick to yoga and the gym. Running and triathlons have utterly changed my approach not just to exercise but also to eating and my body image over the past decade. I no longer count calories, track what I've eaten, diet, or engage in office diet chat about "good" or "bad" foods. I say this not to be smug but because it's changed my life. I value my body for what it's capable of, not how it looks, and I enjoy food without thinking about it in terms of guilt or punishment.

I have no idea what the next ten years might hold or where I'll be on New Years Eve 2030 - apart from maybe in the middle of an existential crisis about being in my mid 40s! But the last ten years have been brilliant, terrifying, heartbreaking, and wonderful all at once. Here's to the roaring 20s - am I too old to get away with a flapper dress?!