2018/19 – What Happened?
Posted: Wed 6 November, 2019 Filed under: 2018/19, 2019/20, Creativity, D4D™, Domestic, Five Year Plan (now Ten), Getting Organised, Introspective, Self-Doubt, Single Life, Thoughts 1 Comment »So, I had some plans for the last twelve months, and it’s time for an update. It won’t make for hugely positive reading…
The list from the post a year ago is as follows.
- Keep on working on losing weight.
This one is a long-term thing, and one I’ve written about before. For me, it’s a struggle – I’ve worked with a number of resources this year so far, and feel better-informed than I was, but there’s still a long way to go. If nothing else, this year so far has eliminated a lot of options and bullshit.
RESULT : Absolutely sod-all difference. Which is both positive (I’ve not gained any) and negative (for fuck’s sake, nor have I lost any) - Keep on improving fitness/health
Linked to losing weight, I’ve had more success with this one over the last 12 months, but there’s still stuff to do and improve.
RESULT : Fitness and strength have continued to improve, with very few visual clues/hints that it’s happened. - Continue doing the stuff I enjoy
Various bits here – but basically, do stuff I want to. Not as a “fear of missing out” (“FOMO”) thing, but just as in “I really want to see/do [x]” and doing so. (This is, of course, in direct contrast to ‘doing less’ in the list below, so it’s a bit of a balancing act!)
RESULT : This one’s been a success, actually. Although it’s not been a great year in many ways, at least I’ve kept on living my life and generally enjoying it. - Be more sociable
I’ve realised this year that I’ve been utterly crap with seeing friends – I’ve been doing a lot of stuff, but at the same time it hasn’t been overly sociable, hasn’t involved going to see friends at all. And that needs sorting.
RESULT : And this one’s been a failure. In fairness, it hasn’t got much worse, but it hasn’t got any better either.
I’m getting rid of some of the longer-running goals. They’re still things I want to work on – I’m not giving up on the plans, just on the having them as goals – but it affects me more when I see my ongoing failure to complete/do/start them year on year.
So I’ll note them here as reminders, but they’re not part of the main “What I’m aiming for” list. See if it works better for me as advisories, rather than as targets/goals. And those reminders are…
- Writing
I want to do more writing – I’ve got the ideas, but it’s finding the time, inclination and drive to get them actually going. I hope to schedule more in – I’ve also invested in some tools that should allow me to do so – but we’ll see.
RESULT : Nope, hasn’t happened. Even more ideas bouncing round in my brain, and an absolute zero on getting them addressed - Business plans
As with the writing, I’ve got the ideas, but need to allocate time and energy to getting them to work. In some cases I’m frustrated by time, in others by funding for getting them how I want them. We’ll just have to see how things go.
RESULT : Nope, nor this. Ideas are still there, but I’ve done keck-all with them - Doing Less
This is kind-of related to the above two – if I could sort my brain out so that ‘doing less’ was better, then I’d hopefully have more time to spend on the writing and business ideas.
RESULT : Nope. Still been an idiot all year and kept busy for about 95% of the time - Plan Better
And the final one, which controls all of the others – make better plans, notes, and be better organised.
RESULT : Again, Nope. Not even close.
So, all things considered, while it’s not been a bad year per se, it’s also not been a good one. Which also goes to sort of explain why I’ve been crap at getting this organised/written, and why I haven’t yet thought about whether I’m doing this for the coming year, or just sacking it off.
48
Posted: Tue 5 November, 2019 Filed under: 2018/19, 2019/20, Cynicism, D4D™, Domestic, Five Year Plan (now Ten) Leave a comment »Usually at this time of the year I write about what’s happened over the last year, and what I’m planning for the coming twelve months.
That’ll probably still happen – it just won’t be perfectly in line with my birthday this year. How do I know that? Because today’s my birthday, and I’ve done sod-all about preparing those posts and thoughts. Which might be a bit of a hint.
So anyway, today I’m 48. I don’t feel it at all, but there we go, that’s how things work out sometimes.
Anyway, blah, resolutions stuff later.
Anniversal
Posted: Tue 13 August, 2019 Filed under: 2018/19, Bankruptcy, Customer Services, Cynicism, Domestic, Finances, Five Year Plan (now Ten), Getting Organised, Rebuilding, Thoughts 3 Comments »Having gone through the six years of the bankruptcy process (as I’ve written about many times in that period) today marks a year since that process completed. Time flies, and all that rot.
It’s the final real anniversary of any significance though – even though it came off my record a year ago, most of the banks work on a “Six years plus one” basis (fuck only knows why, but that’s their choice) when it comes to ‘full’ current accounts and the like.
So that’s where we are now – the full “six years plus one” is complete.
It shouldn’t affect things much – it would be nice to have a ‘full’ account with overdraft facility and so on , but only because that’s another thing that is good to have. I’ve done fine over the last seven years with no overdraft and never needing one, and I don’t see any reason why that would change now.
However, it does mean I’ll almost certainly move away from my current bank’s offering, purely because they were lying dicks about it all the way through the process. Once I’d gone through the first year where I was officially bankrupt, I was fine to have a basic current account. When I got it, I was totally honest with the bank, and they said I could try to apply for an upgrade to a ‘full’ current account on a regular basis (every six months or so) and see how I did.
It was only after three years that anyone mentioned that they wouldn’t give me an account until the “six years plus one” – ‘but it’s not that we have a policy, sir, it’s just that’s how it works, we won’t do it before then‘ – and so had basically lied and wasted my time for all those reviews. That did cost them money in the end – a complaint went all the way to the Financial Ombudsman, who found in my favour. (The rule in this case is keep a record of all paperwork and appointments, so you can show a history of wasted time, and stuff that you wouldn’t have done if they’d been honest and said to not bother for seven years!)
So yes, I’ll probably change banks for the current account – I’m not yet sure who to, but we’ll see what happens.
But the most important thing really is that now, seven years on, there’s nothing else keeping me back.
Halfway
Posted: Mon 1 July, 2019 Filed under: 2018/19, Change, Domestic, Five Year Plan (now Ten) 1 Comment »Today, we’re halfway through 2019. The first half has been pretty good, but also has had its downsides and irritations.
So in the second half, I’m aiming to get rid of some of those irritations, and to get some stuff done that’s been hanging around for a while. I’m not saying it’ll definitely happen, but I’m going to try, at least.
One irritation for me – as I’ve said before – is how much the noise of flies (and other buzzy bugs) annoy me. It’s something that I just can’t tune out, for whatever reason. When the weather’s warm, the food I have for the cats attracts flies, so it gets deeply annoying after a while. In previous years I’ve bought small bug-killers and so on, but they’ve never proved to be overly effective. So this year, I’ve finally bitten the bullet, and bought one of the classic ‘kitchen’ big blue bug zappers.
So far (and it only arrived today) it’s seeming pretty decent – although the zap is pretty noisy! Hopefully it’ll prove more effective than the previous ones, and any flies this year won’t annoy me as much.
After that, well, we’ll see what other stuff I can get done and what other irritations I can get rid of.
Getting Out More
Posted: Sat 4 May, 2019 Filed under: 2018/19, Do More, Domestic, Five Year Plan (now Ten), Gigs, London, Single Life, Travel Leave a comment »I really need to remind myself that long weekends are meant to be about relaxing and doing less.
Over the next four days, I’ll be…
- Socialising with friends at a barbecue thing (and probably doing a fair amount of the cooking)
- Going to three concerts
- Seeing the parents
It’s all a bit busy – and the following weekend isn’t much quieter. Thankfully there’s some time off in the meantime, but yeah, all a bit chaotic. Again.