Posted: Thu 1 January, 2015 | Author: Lyle | Filed under: 2014/15, 2015/16, Business, Creativity, D4D™, Domestic, Finances, Five Year Plan (now Ten), Getting Old(er), Getting Organised, Photography, Resolutions, Sociable, Thoughts, Travel, Weigh Less, Work-related, Write More, Writing |
As regular readers know, I don’t really do New Year’s Resolutions. It’s partly my knee-jerk response to the whole “Everyone else is doing it” ethos, which means I won’t. But also New Year is just an arbitrary day for making plans – and I tend to do it from birthday to birthday, for no better reason than that it’s an easy day to remember as a start/finish date.
Anyway, with that said I do have plans for 2015. Sometimes plans work better on a calendar year instead of birthday-to-birthday – although there’s also a couple of ideas and plans this time that would also work better to a fiscal year, April to March. But for the sake of argument I’ll stick (for now) to my usual resolution/plan structure, while also acknowledging the whole 2015 thing.
What I won’t do is go into reams of details – I know what I want to do, and I’ve got most of it written down in to-do lists and the like – but it can all be summed up in four key points, which can be summarised as:
- Create More – includes writing, photography, and web-based work/business plans
- Do More – includes activities, day trips, longer weekends, and perhaps even a holiday or two.
- Save More – working to rebuild finances, build up some backup savings, and restore the credit score.
- Weigh Less – the goal is to lose another two stone in 2015, which is what I also lost in 2014. So it’s feasible.
And that’s “it”. Obviously there’s details, sub-plans and sub-goals in there as well, but they’re the key points. They’ll do me for now.
I’m hoping that 2015 will continue in the positive direction that started in the last quarter of 2014. I’m quite sure there’ll be some hiccoughs and roadbumps along the way – that’s realism rather than cynicism, my life is never a truly smooth process – but with any luck at all it’ll be a positive year, and lots will get done.
And if not, if things go wrong, then I’ll just do what I can, and keep on in the same way as I had to with 2014.
But I do hope that 2015 is positive and constructive. That’s the intention, at least. But we’ll see.
Posted: Thu 1 January, 2015 | Author: Lyle | Filed under: 2014/15, Cynicism, D4D™ |
Well blimey, here we are in 2015. The thirteenth year for D4D™, which is quite a surprise.
There’s a lot of stuff going on, some new bits, new projects (and some continuations of existing projects) but there’ll also be a lot more of the same old shite here as well.
Happy New Year, and all that regular rot.
Posted: Wed 31 December, 2014 | Author: Lyle | Filed under: 2013/14, 2014/15, Domestic, Finances, Five Year Plan (now Ten), Getting Organised, Health, Reading, Seeing Films, Thoughts, Work-related, Writing |
(With apologies to Aaron Sorkin for nicking/appropriating a title he’s used in every series he’s written)
2014 hasn’t been an easy year, with some real ups and downs. Some of the downs have been pretty bloody down, and back in August/September was about as low as I’ve been in a long time, with the finances right back to Ground Zero. The last couple of months of the year have been a massive improvement, a real resurgence that’s left things on a very positive note, and that’s nothing but good.
But man alive, there’s been a lot going on.
Work
I’ve had two spectacularly bad jobs – both permanent roles – this year, the second of which took three months to escape from, cost me a buggerload of money (the owner decided to arbitrarily cut my offered salary by £10K, a drop of just under a thousand a month, with no warning or notification) and affected me a lot more than I’d ever have acknowledged. In small ways it’s still ongoing – I’ve invoiced the dickhead for the money he screwed me for, and my New Year’s present to him will be a claim through Small Claims Court (well, now Money Claim Online, but who’s counting?) so that should be fun.
I’ve also had three contracts (plus one that over-ran into the start of 2014) with two being OK and one being less so. That one was an easy life, which was more about being a bum on a seat “in case anything happened”, rather than actually doing stuff. Easy, but not my kind of thing, as has been written about elsewhere.
The final contract of the year – which flows into the start of 2015 – has been the catalyst for getting things on a more positive footing. It’s been work that suits me, as well as being one where I’m able to work from home for the majority of the time, which also suits me.
Finances
As per the work notes, the London job cost me a lot of money, with the savings I’d made up ’til then getting used for keeping things afloat while I still believed that The Dickhead would actually pay what was owed. Even while everything was down at lowest possible, I still got through – no borrowings, no late payments etc. So it’s not as bad as it could’ve been, and yet again showed how far I’ve actually come – but it’s still annoying to have been knocked back after a year of being successful on it all.
I’m back on the up now, things in credit and so on. I still need to build up the funds again, but that’s happening, and will continue to do so through into 2015.
Creative / Writing
This year’s writing and so on hasn’t been great – because of everything else going on, it just hasn’t happened as much as I wanted it to.
Writing-wise, I have done some stuff. I’ve entered some small pieces to some competitions, although without any decent results. However, at least it’s been about getting things done and submitted – which is more than I managed in 2013.
Photography’s been a lot slacker. Along the way I’ve got out of the habit of carrying a camera all the time, and it’s proving harder to get back into doing it. I love the SLR I’ve got, but it’s a pain in the chuff for most of the time.
The daytrips of late have been partly about taking photos again as well, although they’ve all ‘only’ been taken on the iPhone, but at least I’ve been taking photos again, and they’ve been pretty decent.
Summary
So while 2014’s been a ropy old year in many ways, it’s ending up with a lot of promise, and lot of optimism for 2015. Whether that will be justified or not, who knows? But I’m going to give it my best.
And really, what more can anyone ask than that?
Posted: Mon 29 December, 2014 | Author: Lyle | Filed under: 2014/15, Creativity, D4D™, Depression, Domestic, Five Year Plan (now Ten), Getting Organised, Time, Weigh Less, Write More, Writing |
For the New Year, and as part of the whole “Write More” part of the resolutions etc., I’m trying hard to get back into writing – and other aspects of creativity – on a regular basis. (Which explains why D4D™ has become a bit more busy this month too!)
2014 hasn’t been a good year for my writing in general, although I have been able to get started on a couple of things in the last three months, and want to continue building those up, making progress.
The thing is, I’m not really good at the whole “writing obsessively” thing – or indeed doing anything obsessively. For whatever reason, I just don’t possess that obsessive section of brain/emotion. I’m a crap collector, because while I don’t mind building up sets of things, I don’t care/obsess enough about it all to get the rarities, the things that true collectors always dream of. It doesn’t matter whether that’s books, stamps, music, or anything else – I just don’t care enough to obsess about the rarities.
As a result, it’s work to write etc., and that’s what I’ve been attempting to build up over the last few months – generally successfully.
With D4D™ I’ve been writing more, but pre-dating some of them, so I’ve got the time. But it’s building up a writing routine.
In the same way, I’ve been forcing myself to get out and do walks round the village a couple of times a day, just to keep things moving, and to get some exercise. I do that whether the weather is good or bad – and actually enforce it more when the weather’s bad, because then I’ve no excuse when it’s good.
So I’m working more on building up routines, getting used to doing these tasks and activities, and making them part of the day. The writing is part of that, the things I have in my head to write this time round aren’t essential brain-splurges of healing ventage, they don’t *have* to be expelled from my brain for my own health and sanity.
I’m getting there, and 2015’s looking like it’ll be an interesting time…
Posted: Fri 26 December, 2014 | Author: Lyle | Filed under: 2014/15, Domestic, Driving, Finances, Getting Organised, Public Transport, Travel, Writing |
Currently, I’m in a dilemma about a bit of travelling I’m doing in April. (See, told you I was feeling all organised)
Come the end of the next contract in mid-April, I’m treating myself to a weekend up in Edinburgh. It’s not a proper ‘holiday’ as such – but it’s a break, and it’s something I want to do. I haven’t been up there since the days pre-D4D™ and I want to go back.
The dilemma is about the method of travel. Looking on Google Maps, it’s about a six hour drive – on a good day, with no jams etc. A Friday afternoon/evening is not going to be a good day. So I’ve also looked at train times/costs – and they actually pretty much balance out.
The full journey will be pretty much two refills of the fuel tank, which’ll be around the £65 mark each time. The train, looking at current prices, will be £120. It’s close enough in price to make no real difference – even less so when I also factor in car-park costs – and the timing is much the same for a direct run.
I haven’t done a long train journey in ages – really not since doing the regular run between Manchester and Bracknell – so it’s pretty tempting. Plus it’ll give me the opportunity to look out the window and appreciate the views without the hassles of driving – and perhaps even the chance to write more.
It’s just that whole “Paying the train company to do it”. I don’t know why it’s an issue in my head, but it is. I’ll figure it out and make a decision, it’s just annoying at the moment.
Posted: Mon 22 December, 2014 | Author: Lyle | Filed under: 2014/15, Cynicism, Geeky, Technology, Thoughts, Write More, Writing |
Many many years back – before D4D even started – I used to have a couple of palmtop computers. I started off with the Atari Portfolio, then ended up with Psion devices, a 3a and then a Revo. I used to love these things – they made things easy, and gave me a lot of time/ability for writing. Of them all, the Revo was the best for also having a decent keyboard.
These things were tiny – far smaller than today’s tablet devices – but had enough power to do general organisational stuff, and plenty of writing along the way.
In 2015, I want to do more in the way of writing, and I’ve been looking for something similar to the Psions of old – the main requirements being small size, and a decent keyboard. One thing I hate on tablets is the “on-screen keyboard”, which is nigh-on impossible to touch-type on. There’s no real feedback, and it’s hard to type clearly/cleanly/correctly on the poxy things. When one is wanting a device primarily for writing/typing, that’s hardly ideal.
There’s a couple of smaller tablets that also have decent keyboards – but then, if I’m looking at that I might as well get just a small/compact laptop. Mind you, a laptop (even a small one) is still larger than I was looking for.
Ideally I’d like something the size of the old Revo(ish) with a decent keyboard, and better connectivity. Doesn’t seem like much to ask for, does it? Particularly when you consider that such a device was in existence more than a decade ago. But it just doesn’t seem to available. The best alternative seems to be something like the Typo2 keyboard for my phone – except that then negates the case/battery-pack I’ve already got, and also buggers up some of the other phone functionality. Which makes it a bit more pointless.
I feel the same about “smartwatches” like Apple’s iWatch and so on. Sure, there’s a lot of things that are cool on them, but when I think of what Casio used to do with digital watches back in the 90s – watches with calculators, databanks, thermometers, barometers, heart-rate monitors and so on – then the smartwatches are actually pretty dumb.
It’s just annoying – it seems that for all our technological advances, in some ways the devices we have now are less useful than those from a decade ago.
Posted: Sun 21 December, 2014 | Author: Lyle | Filed under: 2015/16, Change, Cynicism, Domestic, Festering Season, Five Year Plan (now Ten), Food, Introspective, New Year, People, Personality, Single Life, Sociable |
As I’ve said many times before, I’m pretty comfortable with being single, with living my own life, and not really needing any company for a lot of things. I’m happy going to concerts on my own, and to the cinema – indeed, doing most things like that. It suits me and the way I am.
However, there’s one thing I don’t like doing on my own – and get your minds out of the gutter, please! – which is going out for meals. I don’t know why it affects me more than other things – there’s not really any logical reason for it – but it does.
So, in 2015 I’m going to be addressing it a bit, and forcing myself to do it. There are places (both local and further away) that I really want to go to, and so this coming year that’s what I’m going to do. There’ll be a list of places I want to visit – which I may put on here, or may not – and we’ll see how I do.
And I’m starting the way I mean to go on. Earlier this month on Twitter I saw a New Years’ Eve menu that I *really* fancied at a place in Cambridge, and I’ve been wavering on it. But having decided to get my arse in gear with this, I got in touch and booked myself in – and I’m really looking forward to it.
It’s also the first time in *cough* years that I’ll have been out on New Years’ Eve – although it’s quite likely I’ll bugger off before midnight, because I’m still an antisocial bastard who doesn’t like people all that much…