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How can an entire year have gone by?

Fri, 03 Feb 2012 07:13:28 -0500

I remember sitting at my computer a little over a year ago and taking up a blog challenge of blogging once a day for 30 days. I had a few slips here and there but managed to catch them up and get through my 30 posts. Well those 30 days finished, and I did a few more blogs, tried to start another challenge, but somewhere along the way I got through 2 more weeks of blogging before I stopped totally. And it wasn't until I was moving my client's websites to a new server that I rediscovered my blog just sitting there waiting for me to return. And I'm left with the challenge: how on earth can I catch up a year's worth of missing blog posts?

Perhaps there is no real way of catching up, and I should just carry on from today, even though so much has changed. We're still living the life we love on our lifestyle property, with lots of animals. I've made some great friends in the last 12 months, a couple of guys who I've never met but talk to almost every day about everything and anything, though I must admit it's mostly about Battle Pirates which is a Facebook game I'm totally hooked on. I blame George, he got me started and the challenge has become to be a strong player who will take on anyone that annoys me. On the other hand, I'm proud to admit that I've given up most of the other games I used to play.

I'm looking forward to trying a few new things this year too, spending more time trying to make our lifestyle block work for us. And I should really spend less time on Facebook. Ha! Whatever. I know a few who won't believe that until they see it.

Anyway, that's me for now. I'll be writing again soon - I've got a hell of a lot of catching up to do :)

The Next Challenge

Sat, 05 Feb 2011 00:00:39 -0500

Well I couldn't get to the end of the 30 day blogging challenge without taking on another one to keep me going. So I got myself on another couple. The first is to learn something new each day for the next 30 days. I've already learnt a lot today by browsing through the other's learning.

The other challenge is from a book I discovered online about building a better blog in 31 steps. To tell the truth, I found that the first challenge of blogging every day was a little much, so for this challenge I'm going to take a little longer than the recommended one per day and instead do 2 per week. This way I can alternate with my blogging with this challenge and hopefully keep up with everything.

The first step in building a better blog is to write an elevator pitch for my blog. This way you know what your blog is about and you can focus your posts. I've decided to make this challenge about improving my business blog, which I'm in the process of setting up and starting.

So: the objective of my business blog is to make website owners aware of the mistakes others make and how to avoid them. I figured this is the best place to start!

Falling off the wagon

Thu, 03 Feb 2011 00:48:29 -0500

It would appear that it's quite easy to fall off the wagon even after doing something consistently for 30 days.

The whole point of the 30 day blogging challenge was to set myself up to be a consistent blogger, and to continue blogging 4 or 5 times a week once the challenge was over. Monday, Wednesday and Friday were definite days, Saturday if something interesting happened that day and Thursday is to be my business blog day which I'm still in the process of setting up.

Well it's Thursday. I did my post on Monday, which was day 31 for me, and somehow Wednesday came around really fast and the post got missed. If blogging for 30 days straight isn't going to ensure that I keep blogging, what is? At least I have the blogging challenge group on facebook to insure some accountability which is why today is a catchup blog, and tomorrow I better have something interesting to write about otherwise I'm going to have to get my mum to kick my butt!

Funny how the day just slips away

Mon, 31 Jan 2011 22:49:35 -0500

No matter how many times it happens, I'm always surprised at how fast a day can slip away from you. And once that's happened a few times, you realise the whole week came and went and you don't really know what happened to it. I think I need to put my web designing job on hold for a while and work out a way to slow time down.

I was reflecting this morning that my 30 blogging challenge has run it's course, and I've blogged consistently for 30 days in a row. It's been great but is it really over already?

I had a bunch of work that I wanted done by the end of the month (which is today) and a lot of it has been shoved into February, which means I have to try and work twice as hard to get through it so I don't end up at the end of Feb and have another list to push into the next month.

But it's not just the monthly stuff that gets away. Like today, I had hardly started on my work for the day and it was 11 o'clock already. Oh I've tried making lists, I even use WorkflowMax which is an online job management system to give me deadlines but I just can't get through all the work I need to. Maybe I should try scheduling a bit less to be completed each day.

Ok, 'out of time' rant over, now just get back to work - I've still got about 6 hours of work to complete today and it's 9pm already. Yes, I'm quite aware that I'm basically pushing s**t uphill.

No more blogging on Sunday

Sun, 30 Jan 2011 22:51:22 -0500

I've got to the end of my 30 day blogging challenge and have decided that I will continue blogging, but it won't be every day! I seem to have the most trouble writing on a Sunday.

Like today, I'm trying to think about what I've done that's interesting enough to write about. I slept in (who doesn't on a Sunday), mucked around the house doing some housework and general cleaning, cooked dinner, had a visit from my inlaws (hence the cleaning), and continued doing the updates to my business website once all that was done.

But I did learn a lot over the last 30 days. The main one being that the more often you write, the better and faster you get at it. When I first started writing, it took me over an hour to do a post, often close to 2 hours by the time I'd organised the photo. Now I can get one out in 30 minutes if I'm not distracted.

Cricket also asked us what we had learnt during the challenge. Some of the comments by others really hit home.

The first was about having a backup blog in case you ran out of time. This was something that I really wish I did, as I was often up late at night, churning out my blog post. Having a back up post probably wouldn't have helped me most of the time, but it would have meant a couple less late nights!

A lot of people learnt that if they want to find the time to do something, they can fit it into their busy schedules. I would definitely agree. Before this challenge, I'd been telling myself for at least 2 years that I needed to start blogging, but just never 'found the time' to fit it in. But now that I've started, I can see the benefits of putting something new on a website more often than I had been.

Last but not least: done is better than perfect.

Whenever I need a good laugh...

Tue, 25 Jan 2011 22:27:13 -0500

Sometimes you're just in the mood for a great laugh. My sister showed me this website last month, and reminded me about it again tonight. I was feeling the need for a pick-me-up, so loaded it up and laughed away.

The site is called Damn You Auto Correct. This is my favourite so far:

Busted ...

Blogging my brains out

Wed, 19 Jan 2011 22:44:52 -0500

I had a friend ask me for some advice about setting their own blog up because I was suddenly "blogging my brains out". It made me smile and tell him about Cricket's 30 Day challenge where I have to blog every day for 30 days. Now he probably thinks I'm crazy (if he didn't already). But it also made me think about how I nearly threw it all in earlier this week.

I got behind a bit on the weekend, busy with the new farm, this, that and the next thing and suddenly Saturday was over before I realised. I hate how the weekends always speed up - it sucks. Not to worry I told myself, I'll do 2 posts tomorrow because it was already 1am and I needed sleep.

Sunday sort of came and went like Saturday, and as I sat down at about 11.30pm that night to write a blog, my brain just wouldn't do it. A little frustrated I thought bugger this and went to bed an hour later, having not written anything.

On Monday I told my mum (who is also doing the challenge), I don't think I'm going to get through this. I can't think of anything to write. "WHAT???" She couldn't believe her ears. I pushed it aside and carried on with the work that I had to get finished that day. At the end of the day, I was sitting at my desk and annoyed. I wasn't going to give up after 17 days of blogging. It was something that I've been telling myself I need to do for over 2 years. I wasn't going to bed until I'd churned out the day's post.

So I sat at the computer and wrote about my writers block, which was actually quite easy to write. I also surprised myself by not only getting that day's post out, but also the two I'd missed over the weekend. It felt really good to be caught up again and to know that I hadn't let myself chuck in the towel.

I'm still going strong and just have to tell myself each day that I will continue to "blog my brains out" cause it makes me smile each time I say it.

Writers Block

Mon, 17 Jan 2011 22:48:00 -0500

I am really enjoying Cricket's 30 day challenge, however seem to have hit a brick wall with my writing, and get stuck after choosing the title and the picture. Well that's not quite true, I can usually get the first paragraph done.

I hadn't found writing hard until yesterday. I sort of got busy on Saturday, so missed the post (sorry Cricket) and had full intentions of catching it up yesterday. But I sat in front of my computer and couldn't write. Oh I picked out the photo, and chose the title. I even got the first sentence done.

It's making me think that writing a blog for day to day happenings is harder than I thought it would be. I mean, you can only write about sitting in front of your computer so many times before it's cheating and you're just repeating the last post with a few words changed.

Actually all this post is doing for me is making me realise that I need to diversify what I do each day. But hopefully I've broken the block and can get yesterday's and the day before's post out.

Puzzle Time

Sun, 16 Jan 2011 22:13:14 -0500

What better thing to do on Sunday afternoon, than to spend it at the dining room table doing jigsaws?

I guess it started with my mum, and her creating online jigsaws as part of her blog. And while doing online jigsaws is great, I was craving the real feel of doing a jigsaw. Having to actually sort the sides from the middle bits and turning the pieces all up the right way.

Quite a few years ago, my parents gave me a jigsaw that I liked so much that I went and got the other 3 puzzles in the set. Each puzzle is 500 pieces, and you can probably see from the photo, that they aren't your standard pieces. Which doesn't make them the easiest puzzles to do.

It's been quite a while since I did them, but I pulled out the first one and started working away. Oh how disappointed I was when I got to the end and there was a piece missing. But, on the bright side, it had happened before, and the piece had been found in one of the other boxes. I pushed the puzzle aside, and started on the next one.

I completed the next one, which had another piece missing. I was mad now! And I had also run out of table room. So I packed up the first two puzzles, keeping out a bit with the missing piece, so that if I found the now two missing pieces, I could put them in the puzzle.

Puzzle 3 had all of it's pieces and no extras in the box. And so did the fourth.

So not only have I not found my missing pieces, I took a look at my jigsaw puzzle box. I have about 8 more puzzles to do to check that my 2 missing pieces aren't in one of those boxes. Wish me luck - some of them are big suckers.

More Unpacking

Sat, 15 Jan 2011 22:12:10 -0500

I've been managing to unpack a few boxes a week but I'm quickly running out of places to put things.

I thought I did very well last week where I managed to unpack about 5 boxes and find homes for most of the stuff. I actually have full use of my office desk now, and part of the other desk has also been emptied off.

I've still got a lot of stuff to unpack. We were planning on having a house warming party next weekend, but we're still not organised enough to do it yet. Perhaps we should just set the date and then we'll have to get ourselves sorted.

Resetting my body clock

Wed, 12 Jan 2011 22:06:55 -0500

I always find it surprising how simple it is to put your body clock out of sync. One single night where you can't sleep, and catch up in the afternoon of the next day is all it takes.

Weekends are the start of it all. Generally you don't need to go anywhere, so we end up sleeping in. Instead of getting up at 7.30 or 8 like we usually do, we sleep until 9.30 on Saturday morning. And because we've had the extra sleep, we generally end up staying awake until 1.

The problem with staying up until 1 or later, is that you sleep in until 10.00 on Sunday. Which means that it's even later that night that you go to sleep. Monday goes pretty much the same way. Tuesday on the other hand is a different story.

I have to be up at 6am in time to travel 30 minutes into town for a 7am meeting. So I haven't got to sleep until 3am, which equates to 3 hours sleep. I can usually make it through until about lunchtime before I need to take a nap.

You tell yourself it's only going to be a short nap, just an hour. Yeah right - 3 hours later I have wasted the rest of the day and I've caught up on sleep for the night. Except that I didn't go to bed until 2.30 last night, and didn't go to sleep until after 3am. And didn't get up until 11am this morning, so my body clock has got way out of wack after only half a week.

My fix is to get up at 8 tomorrow morning, no matter what time I end up going to bed. And no naps during the day. The main part of the fix is to continue with this routine so that my body clock doesn't get out of sync again. I'll let you know how it goes.

The Cat Scrap

Sat, 08 Jan 2011 21:53:04 -0500

Today I was helping my mum unpack a few things, and we came across a box of breakable ornaments that I'd obviously been holding onto for a while for her and it probably hadn't been unpacked for a good number of years.

As we're unwrapping things in the box, Mum was naming most of the things before they were out of the paper. I came across a rather heavy package which she couldn't guess. We opened it up to see what it was and discovered the ugliest cat ornament you'd every seen. "Mum", I asked. "Have you ever seen this before?" She looked at it and I guess she was speechless. We were just looking at this ugly cat.

We began to laugh and then Mum said that she would blog about this (because we're both doing Cricket's 30 day blog challenge). Well I didn't think that was very fair, so we proceeded to have an arguement about who would get to blog about the ugly cat. In the end we compromised - she wrote about the ugly cat (read it here) and I'm writing about the stuff she wanted to leave out - like fighting over the blog and who actually opened the darn thing :)

So far I've asked my sister and one of my brothers if they'd ever seen it before. No luck yet. If anyone knows where this butt ugly random cat ornament has come from, can you let me know?? (Sorry in advance if anyone thinks it's the cutest thing out or if you gave it to us)

Moving my Mum

Wed, 05 Jan 2011 21:45:03 -0500

Today I spent the day trying to put even more boxes into my little house.

My mum's house is literally falling apart with all of the earthquakes that Christchurch has been hammered with since 4th September 2010. The photo is the ceiling of her kitchen. She's hoping to be back in California in a few weeks, but in the meantime, she's moving out to the farm with me, hopefully a little further away from the aftershocks that we are still getting. We moved to our place mid November and certainly haven't felt as many since but get to feel the occasional rumble. It's almost scary how I've got used to them.

The best thing about having mum move out here is that she's going help me finish unpacking - which I still haven't managed to do since moving in November and emptying our storage unit last week. And this weekend we're going to dig up the other half of the vege garden so that we can plant some more veges.

We're also going to be having a sale, and getting rid of a bunch of stuff that we've had in boxes for ages and never use. I seemed to have accumulated a lot of stuff, and now that I've moved from a 4 bedroom house to a 2.5 with my office space has halved, there isn't anywhere to put stuff! Trademe is going to end up being my friend in the coming months.

Tomorrow mum will actually be out here - she's spending her last night in her place to finish cleaning up the last few things in the morning and tomorrow I will be cooking her dinner and serving a glass of wine or six - I think we both deserve it!

What a Super Hot Day

Mon, 03 Jan 2011 21:41:32 -0500

Today was actually a very unproductive day for me - mostly because we spent most of the day trying not to die in the heat. So no surprise that I didn't make it into the vege garden either.

The thermometer in the conservatory said it was 34 degrees celcius, but it was in the shade, so I'm sure it was a lot hotter than that. It was only 29 degrees in the fish tank so it was tempting to climb in there, but instead I turned the garden sprinkler on and stood under it for a while - that was nice.

The suns disappearing now, so I need to go feed the animals before it gets dark and move the sprinklers. And yes, I'm feeling slightly ashamed of my tiny blog post.

Happy New Year and Goal Setting

Sat, 01 Jan 2011 21:33:14 -0500

Well I'm taking up the challenge - writing a blog every day for the next 30 days. It's going to be fun.

As it's the new year, the tradition is to set goals for what you want to achieve, but I find that somewhere along the line, the piece of paper gets lost and I sort of float through the year. I'm not saying that I achieved nothing for the year - far from it in fact. But there are some things that I would have liked to do that just got missed, that also didn't matter a whole lot, but would have been awesome had I completed them.

SO: this year I'm putting the major ones in my blog, and because I manage the server and the website that this blog is on, I will have probably made a serious error to loose them.

Right: to the goals this year - here are the top 5.

To have my first child (or at least be on the way)
To building 30 new websites before next January
Something to do with the farm but I'm not entirely sure what yet
To eat a lot healthier than I did during 2010 and also exercise more
To complete the blog challenge of posting a new blog every day for the next 30 days.

I'm figuring that number 4 will be easier now that we've moved out to the country. The mall isn't just 5 minutes down the road anymore, it's 40km away so no more sneaky food trips. And I've now got a big vege garden, and it's 650 metres from one end of the property to the other, which I have to walk each day to move the irrigation sprinklers.

In the next couple of days I will be putting together a plan to make the business earn a good profit and also work out how on earth I'm going to build 30 new websites in a year.

I've also got to work out what my farming goal is, I'm thinking along the lines of becoming self sufficent but not to make things harder for ourselves. For example, I'm not interested in pulling a cows teats morning and night to get our own milk. For one, I'm not going to have the time to do it with these 30 websites I need to build, and the other reason is it's a lifestyle block, not a life sentence block, so the goal is not to be tied to having to be here 100% of the time. So there are levels of self sufficency that we're aiming for here.

The blog challenge is going to be interesting but I'm determined to do it. I'm just wondering - if I post after midnight (like I am now) does that mean that I've missed a day? I guess if it's consistently after midnight, I'll just finish a day later :)

And finally, the goal for Warwick and I to have our first child is awesome. I'm going to be 28 in February so it's about time I got on with it. My mother kindly informed me that she'd finished having her 4 by this time. So no pressure.

So there you have it, my main goals for 2011.