Final Check In of 2011

This year I decided to make some resolutions. They're not the stuff dreams are made of but they were important to me. Here's a quick recap of my pithy goals for 2011:

1. Lose weight
2. Make more of an effort with my writing
3. Be more organised (and this does not mean buying 101 pocket diaries)
4. Be better at keeping in touch with people
5. Be better at managing  in more control of my finances

1. Lose weight


I'd say that this has been my most successful goal of 2011. I am exiting 2011 2.5 stone lighter than when I entered it. This sounds incrediably morbid but I have become more aware of my mortality this year. My flat is located up three flats of (not very steep) stairs which left me wheezing like an old man. The final crunch came when I was running to catch a bus. After paying and finding a seat, my body took a good five minutes to approach recovery. A tad melodramatic but it scared me. Someone in their mid  late twenties should not be that unfit. 


So I decided to get off my couch and start following the Couch to 5K program. I'm fortunate to live close to Queen's Park which provides a pleasant landscape to my running. Running gave me time to think, to compete with myself, to start regaining my self-respect. My calves have become less wobbly. Unfortunately I've not made time to go running since September. The darker nights and tales of friends having nasty running accidents on the ice made me afraid to venture out. However I miss my 'me' running time and have decided to join a gym until the weather gets better. However I won't go until after the January rush. I've been in a gym post-Christmas slump and it's the closest circle to hell I'll ever get to be.


The other big diet change I made this year was to go vegan. I covered it in this post Check In October 2011 if you care to re-visit my reasons. Being vegan has not made a big impact on losing weight. I suspect I can attribute 0.5 stone to becoming a vegan. What it has helped to do is maintain my weight (with a slight hint of ethical smugness). 


2. Make more of an effort with my writing


This goal has had peaks and troughs. I abandoned my attempts at working through The Artist's Way due to landing my 'proper' job. But I still have some achievements. I performed my work at the lovely Three Cord Theatre night held at the Flying Duck. It's a great space for actors, writers, musicians, stand up comedians, film makers and other performers to showcase their work in front of an appreciative audience. The staff working at the event are extremely supportive and are extremely accommodating. I'll certainly be performing again when I get some messy first drafts edited and trimmed up. 


3. Be more organised (and this does not mean buying 101 pocket diaries)


This goal, along with no. 5, is probably my least successful. I've tried everything: paper diaries, Remember the sodding Milk, Google Calendar, back to paper diaries. At the moment I have one Google Calendar and one paper diary for work and a separate Google Calendar and paper diary for outside of work. But sometimes the two cross over if I'm working outside of office hours. 


And I still forget birthdays, anniversaries and when I'm meeting people for drinks. If anyone has a successful organisation tool, please let me know via the comments on this blog. I'll buy you a pint if it works on me. 


4. Be better at keeping in touch with people


I suppose this is a difficult goal to assess. Twitter and Facebook (supposedly) make it easier for people to keep in touch with each other. But then it removes the need for face to face contact on a regular basis. I've noticed in recent social gatherings that I've been itching to check my phone. Although I'm pleased to be meeting people, my attention span has shrunk somewhat. This scares me a little and makes my inner sociologist howl in despair. Earlier this year I did have a Twitter/Facebook/social media free week and I really enjoyed it. On my morning commute I read books, listening to some epic music and judged my fellow passengers on their reading material. Perhaps next year it might be a good idea to have one social media free week every month. I quite like the sound of that. 


5. Be better at managing  in more control of my finances


Ha! I have discovered an interesting correlation. The more money I earn, the more I spend on crap. This is a worrying development because, after June 2012, I will not have a job. So I'll need to be more thrifty next year. After I buy a Macbook Air. And more ebooks for my Kindle. And a new pair of jeans. And more shiny trinkets. 


Ideas for 2012


I quite enjoyed working towards five goals this year. To motivate me, I stuck them on the wall beside my bed so I'd see them most mornings. It makes me sad not to think of them being there any more. So I'm going to spend the last days of 2011 pondering my goals for 2012. Five seems to work well for me. I'm nowhere near the 101 goals in 1001 days standard set by Alex In Leeds but perhaps I will be, one day.  


Hope you all have a fabulous New Year when it comes. 

Goals for 2011: Halfway Point Check In

Ho hum, it has been a little while since I’ve posted an update on here. I cannot believe it is almost halfway through 2011. Where has this year gone? So much for writing a monthly update about my progress. Bet some of you can guess how well I’ve done for goal no. 3: Be more organised.

1. Lose weight

This has probably been my most successful goal of the year. At the end of February I had had enough and decide to bite the bullet (pardon the awful and unintentional pun). One of my friends had re-joined Weight Watchers and was having a great success with it. However he was not going to the dreaded meetings. He was following their online system which was a bit nicer than being weighed in a drafty church hall in front of lots of people. Instead you can leap onto the scales in the comfort of your own home and without anyone tutting their disapproval.

I joined Weight Watchers at the beginning of March and have lost 1.5 stone since then. Tracking what I eat has really helped me lose weight. The points system helps my brain make sense of how many calories foods contain. For example, a bag of crisps is the same number of points as five portions of my breakfast porridge. That helps me reach for the bananas at snack time.

Two months ago I started doing a Couch to 5k program and I have been really enjoying it. Before the start of June I was easily mastering 1.5. The last time I did proper exercise was at P.E. in school: over ten years ago. To do 1.5k was a major achievement for me. Alas I have discovered the hard way that you cannot take time off from running. I took two weeks off due to a hen weekend and a cold I caught whilst on the hen weekend. Last week I went back on my route and was really struggling to run 1k. I was so disappointed in myself but I’m not giving up. One of my goals for 2012 is to run the Women’s 5k in Bellahouston Park.

On a side note I have noticed my calves becoming more toned since I started running. Unfortunately that has not happened to my other wobbly bits! A yoga class might be in my future but that’s still to be confirmed. I’m not, and highly doubt I ever will be, a gym bunny. However I need to find a method to tone up and yoga seems to be the best way to go about it.

Assessment: Excellent, keep going

2. Make more of an effort with my writing

I finished my OU writing course in April. It was a struggle towards the end to find time to complete the assignments. In March I was asked to provide cover at my old job because someone was on long term sick leave. Straight away I lost two full days I had been using to work on my OU assignments. Him Indoors became a freelancer around the same time and suffered from the freelancers’ curse of working all hours and taking any job that came his way. I snapped up what little time we could spent together, free of the bloody laptop. What I’m really trying to say is that excuses kept cropping up and I couldn’t find time to write. Scratch that: wouldn’t make time to write. I did send off some submissions at the end of May. So far I’ve had one rejection and I’m still waiting to hear back from the others.

On Monday I went to a talk by Sara Sheridan which you can read more about here. The short version is that I am going to work on creating a collection of short stories to self-publish on Amazon. Fortunately writing does not need to be my full time job (although it would be lovely) so I do not need to make a lot of profit from it. I would love more people to read my work so perhaps self-publishing a good path to take. 

Assessment: You were off track for a wee while but stick to the path you’re on

3. Be more organised (and this does not mean buying 101 pocket diaries)

Again, I’m plodding along with this goal. I became the owner of a Blackberry and have managed to sync it up to my Google Calendar. This has helped keep me a little more organised. Remember the Milk has been a great help especially with self-imposed deadlines. I appear to respond well to deadlines highlighted in red.

I have done away with carrying a paper diary and stick to using my Blackberry to mark in appointments and meetings to remember. The only drawback is that its calendar only syncs my Google Calendar entries that are happening in the next four weeks. In order to check more long term plans I have to log into my Google Calendar on my netbook. Not a major problem but it does annoy me, especially if I’m being asked to do more shifts in work.

Alas I sometimes still forget certain things, especially if I’m changing handbags over. I have toyed with pinning a checklist to my front door. That does tap into my mild OCD a little too much so I may avoid doing that.

Assessment: Don’t forget your bloody purse.

4. Be better at keeping in touch with people

There’s an amazing correlation between being more sociable and having a larger disposable income. Since my wages increased I have been going out a lot more for friends. Some of us are getting grown up and meet up for coffee rather than heading to the local pub. Shocking state of affairs.

As mentioned above, I went on a hen weekend in the first week of June. It was for a friend I had known since my first round of college, when we were both seventeen. Her hen do was fabulous but it made me sad about all the times I’ve forgotten to met up with her or made excuses not to. That’s something I plan to resolve when she returns from her honeymoon in a couple of weeks.

Assessment: Could do better

5. Be better at managing  in more control of my finances 

This goal has been a complete joke recently. When my income increased not once did I think “I’ll use some of that to clear my student debt.” No, instead I bought stuff. Lots of stuff, especially stuff that comes in brown boxes from Amazon. That came to an abrupt halt earlier this month. My dear bank decided to end my interest-free overdraft despite several assurances earlier this year that they would allow me to keep it until September. Fortunately I have some untapped resources I can use to pay it off and stop incurring the ridiculous charges they have.

That, dear readers, was my wake up call. I’ve managed to pay off some of my overdraft and should have it cleared by mid-July. One more step to being in more control of my finances. Looking back on my last entry, I can see not much has changed.

Assessment: Use the mantra of “Can I afford it? Do I need it? Can I buy it somewhere cheaper?”

All in all not a bad position to be in for this time of year. I have lost pounds from my figure and my purse (har har). Still as unorganised as ever though I never see that changing. Full steam ahead and let’s see what the rest of 2011 holds.

Write on, Explorers

On Monday I went to a talk given by Sara Sheridan, author of Secret of the Sands and explorer of the archives. It was hosted by the Section for Specialist Repositories and I went along as a baby archivist and as a dabbling writer (I should really mention there was also a fantastic free lunch). Some of my inspiration for my writing has come from handling documents in the archives. The first story I wrote in years was based upon my work with Gartnavel psychiatric records called Weber’s Puzzle (which will remain in the dreaded ‘To Edit’ pile for some time). Historians can lean towards writing historical fiction; especially if their research covers time periods with large gaps in the records. I attended a talk given by Alison Weir a number of years ago and she stated that such writers have to make a decision: do I write a monograph or do I write a novel based on the facts? Sara mentioned that a lot of historians are jealous of her job of ‘making things up.’

Sara was a fantastic speaker and I wonder if she has some archival fever in her blood. She covered topics that are important to today’s archivists: access, digitisation, copyright, the dawn of e-book readers. She spoke of chasing people through the records which struck a chord with me. I have dealt with many enquiries about individuals that bounced in and out of Glasgow’s asylums in the early twentieth century. My heart would break as the records revealed the sad truth of someone’s life. Post-natal depression was a common feature. Today that would be treatable. Back then, women were kept locked away for years with a little note that said Cause of Insanity: Post-partum melancholia. Many times I have wondered what that woman’s story was. What was their house like? How many children did they have? Did they miss being around their family? What was their favourite food? and on and on.

I was fortunate enough to chat to Sara over lunch. I was touched she had looked at this blog after I said hello to her on Twitter. It reminded me that I have neglected it over the past couple of months. She gave me advice about publishing my work for the Kindle; something I had not considered. At times I felt guilty about the advice she was giving me: after all, she was here to give a talk about archives not fight off a plucky young writer. It made me realise that I need to do something with the things I make up.

With this in mind, I have managed to borrow a house for a week in July. I plan to use this week to fire through my ‘To Edit’ folder which holds at least twenty doc files. Hopefully I will end the week with a decent body of work that I can create a collection of short stories from. Perhaps I’ll find a character I can squeeze a novel out of during that time. I am in awe of people who can write novels or find characters that they want to spend that amount of time with. My character might be languishing in my C drive, waiting to be discovered.

So thank you, Sara, for giving me that push and tweeting a link to this blog.

Goals for 2011: January

So, how have I done with my five goals so far? Well there's some good, some bad and some of it is downright ugly. 


1. Lose weight


This goal has not gone well at all. In the past month I have managed to make it to my local Zumba class once. The excuses have mounted up and made me realise I need to look for other exercise opportunities. My current workplace has a gym onsite with a reasonable monthly membership. I may try pay-as-you go at first to work out if it's cheaper than paying a monthly rate. 

My attempt to stop eating so much rubbish has not gone well either. However I have made one positive change. Instead of investing in ready meals I have been cooking big batches of meals in the slow cookers. I have inherited some plastic takeaway meal containers from my mother and they are a handy portion size. All I need to do is remember to take the meal out the freezer the night before. Him Indoors and I have noticed a big change in our weekly shopping bill since we adopted this tactic. On average we're spending £30-£40 on our weekly food budget. This is a massive drop from the average £50 we used to spend and still run out of food halfway through the week. Finances will be discussed later. 

Assessment: Could do better. 

2. Make more of an effort with my writing

Thankfully this goal seems to have gone a little bit better. This week I started the Open University course A174: Start writing fiction. The fees are covered by the lovely ILA and is part of the reason why I applied for it. My life is rather hectic at the moment and I like being able to study when and where I choose. Today I spent two hours working my way through the first block and I've been very impressed with the content so far. The course materials include an anthology and audio CD. I was chuffed to learn that Alex Garland and Tim Pears were contributors to sections covered by the CD. It was very inspiring sitting on the shitty bus into town and listening to writers express their love for their craft as well as imparting some words of wisdom. 

One of the exercises encourages you to use a paper notebook for assignments. Today I've enjoyed scribbling down ideas on paper. I may decide to start writing first drafts on paper before committing them to an Open Office Writer file. 

Write in for Writing's Sake is chugging away nicely. Being the moderator has encourage me to contribute and get more writing down. You've got to lead by example, haven't you? Some of the stuff I have produced has not been amazing but at least it has got me writing. I have got some ideas for the site and which direction I want it to go in. The first big change is moving it over from Tumblr to a Wordpress platform. Tumblr is a tad clunky and I'm wary of how often its servers seem to go down. Also the site is a bit irratic in IE, as I discovered from user feedback and my own experience when I tested it. You forgot things like that, especially if you use other browsers (I'm a fan of Chrome personally). 

Assessment: Doing well, keep going!

3. Be more organised

At the moment I'm channelling this goal into small areas such as planning teas for the upcoming week. I hate wasting food and try to avoid throwing things out whenever possible. I've started using my pocket diary the Mothership got me as a graduation present. More of my social events tend to be written in there than on Google Calendar these days. Lately I have been using Google Calendar for long term events, such as reminding me to pay off my overdraft before the interest free period runs out. 

Next month I would like to be better at managing housework. I am a very messy person and it takes me a real effort to tidy up. Also I'd much rather spend the time cleaning doing other things. But then the mess builds up and it takes twice as long to clean up as it should do. Also I am very bad at starting something then wandering off halfway through never to return. Last Monday I cleared out some old Masters coursework and it still needs finished off. 

Assessment: Good start but need to make time for boring tasks (and finish them!). 

4. Be better at keeping in touch with people

This is my most successful goal in January so far. In the past month I have seen a number of friends I had not met up with for a while. Sometimes this was bitter sweet. Last Thursday I had tea and cakes with a friend who is moving to another city for job purposes. It made me sad that she was going and I regretting not making more effort to meet up on a regular basis. 

Yesterday I went to see Glasgow's local ice hockey team, the Braehead Clan. It was a really good atmosphere and surprisingly chilled out considering the violent nature of the game. Fans were good natured despite the Clan's defeat to the Belfast Giants (who seemed to play rather dirty in my opinion). The tickets are a tad pricey for a weekly outing at £15 for me. I could stretch to going to two games a month at the maximum due to current finances. However the best part of the day was seeing friends that I had not seen since New Year. There was some good banter and that helped make the day. 

Next month I may have to cut back on social outings due to my OU class. This is unfortunate but we shall see how it goes. 

Assessment: Excellent stuff! 

5. Be better at managing  in more control of my finances 

This month has not gone well. At the beginning of the month, myself and Him Indoors sat down and made ourselves do the budget outlined by moneysavingexpert.com. It highlighted some good areas but there were some ugly bits. I was horrified to find out how much money I had withdrawn and had no idea where most of it had gone. Now I have started writing down what I spend in a little cashbook to help keep track. It's a start and hopefully a good habit to keep. 

Alas I had a slip up last week. In my folly I decided to withdraw the last of my cash the day before I got paid. I thought it would not be a problem. Except a payment for something online came off my debit card and pushed me a couple of pounds into an unauthorised overdraft. Lesson learnt this month: don't clean out your account the day before payday. 

Assessment: Not a great start to the year but it's onwards and upwards from here. 

So I had a think....

Yesterday I had myself a little ponder. What do I want to do with 2011? This is the first time in my life that higher education has not been on the horizon as an escape route. I'm not sure if one HNC, one BA Honours and one Master of Science has done me much good in life.

Here I present my goals for 2011:

1. Lose weight
2. Make more of an effort with my writing
3. Be more organised (and this does not mean buying 101 pocket diaries)
4. Be better at keeping in touch with people
5. Be better at managing  in more control of my finances 

A little explanation is in order:

1. Lose weight

This is something of a tried and failed venture. I'm not going to post very much about that goal on here. It's a little too personal to have blabbed across the internet; even in this day and age. However I will give you an idea of what I need to do to achieve this goal. A friend is getting married in June and I plan to have lost two stone by them. I've done the research (and by that I mean Googled) and losing two stone in six months is do-able. For those who know me in the "real world" and see me picking up another chocolate, feel free to slap it out my hand. 

Another way I'm going to achieve this goal is to not drink during the week. I've noticed my weight tends to bob up and down when I'm guzzling beer. It is very easy to slip into a 'beer a night' habit  especially when there is lots of it lying around after New Year. Don't slap a beer out my hand but a stern finger waggle may do the trick. 

2. Make more of an EFFORT with my writing

I enjoy writing. Unfortunately I am easily distracted especially when writing on my netbook. As I mentioned in my previous post I have installed StayFocusd which has a nifty nuclear option. You can select an option which will block ALL websites for a specified time, with the minimum starting at one hour. I used this the other day and found it be an excellent feature. I knew that I would not be able to faff around on the Internet for hours. So I got stuff done. 

When I write I know I write reasonably good stuff. The trouble is that I lack the motivation to finish pieces or go back to edit them. During my writing class, the tutor would take in pieces of work and return them with feedback written on the drafts. Instead of reading them I flung them in a folder. It's time to take them out and start reading the comments. 

By the end of the year I would either like to have performed in a slot at Words Per Minute or have my work published in some medium (this does not include Write in for Writing's Sake). There's a whole world of online writing sites out there and it's about time I explored them. 

3. Be more organised.

My friends will tell you I have a shocking memory. There have been times I have received texts asking "Where are you?" Or I make arrangements with one group of friends, forgetting that I have other commitments. Last year I started using Google Calendar which includes an option which sends a text to your phone to remind you of an event. This has been rather useful; the only drawback being that I don't own a smartphone. I can only update the Calendar  when I'm on a computer. Not always a problem but not very handy if I'm out and about. 

The Mothership bought me a snazzy University of Glasgow pocket diary as a graduation present. I know I said no more diaries but this one really suits me. It's pocket sized with lined paper (surprisingly difficult to find) and feels rather robust. As part of my decluttering I am moving towards only using certain bags on a regular basis. This should make it easier to have my diary to hand when making arrangements. Which leans me onto...

4. Be better at keeping in touch with people

On New Year's Eve myself and Him Indoors hosted a party. At this party I saw a lot of people that I had not seen since our last party in November. Prior to that party (do keep track) I could not remember the last time I had seen a lot of my friends. 

And that scared me a little. 

As you grow older you sometimes grow out of friends. Time is short so why spend it with people that you don't care for? The simplest way of assessing this is by thinking of the friends you have interacted with in the past three months. Is there a reason why people are off this list? Perhaps they live in another city. Or they have been dealing with some personal issues. Or maybe it's a subtle sign that this person is no longer important on your social spectrum. 

Or, like me, you've been too lazy to arrange to meet up with people. Lack of money didn't help in that black hole between finishing university and getting a job I enjoyed. People are becoming more open about saying "I can't afford to go out for dinner and drinks. How about we just do drinks?" 

To end the waffle, I am going to find out if I have been too lazy or simply out grown a friendship. 

5. Be better at managing  in more control of my finances 

This may surprise some people but I am a bit rubbish with money. I tend to be an impulse buyer especially where Amazon is concerned. Online shopping suits me. Physically venturing out to the shops fills me with dread; I think this is due to the screaming fights I had with my mother clothes shopping as a teenager. Also being the above average size makes clothes shopping a painful experience. 

Shopping online is so easy. Click, click, card details, click, click. Sit back and wait for the postie to arrive with your goodies. Then I wonder why it rolls around to the end of the month and I haven't got a pot to piss in. 

Moneysavingexpert.com has been a help. For months I have been getting the email updates, primarily for the money off vouchers. But I started reading some of the main articles and have realised that I am truly a bit rubbish with money. This shows how grown up I'm becoming: I'm doing a budget with Him Indoors in the next couple of weeks. Hopefully being more aware of my money will lead me to consider my spending choices a bit more wisely. 

So let's press that button for 2011. It's going to be a bumpy ride...