Five
Posted: Fri 5 May, 2017 Filed under: 2016/17, A428, Bankruptcy, Domestic, Driving, Five Year Plan (now Ten), Getting Organised, M1, Milton Keynes, Rebuilding, Single Life, The Future, Thoughts, Travel Leave a comment »Amazingly, I’ve been in the current house for five years today. How time flies when you’re having fun, and all that piss.
As it stands, this is now the longest I’ve been in any one place since I moved out of the parental home. It’s certainly not my “forever” place (whatever the hell that means) but it does suit me for the moment – and even admitting that feels kind of weird.
There are two significant reasons why I’m more settled here than pretty much anywhere else I’ve lived…
- The location. To coin a cliche, it’s easy to get away from (as I’ve said before) with the M1 for North-South travel, and the A421 for East-West, both within easy reach. It gives me plenty of options, and lets me be away from here on a regular basis while still having somewhere that’s easy to come back to. Compared to (for example) living in Norfolk and Suffolk where it was an hour to get out of the damn county – or onto decent dual carriageway – and this is just easy. Because of that, I’m not keeping on thinking about where would suit me better.
- The finances. While I’m doing a lot better now, and could easily fund a move, it’s more about the credit-checking and so on that would go with any new tenancy. At the moment, I’d likely faily it (or at the least it would cause problems) so it’s easier to stay here. That wouldn’t stop me from moving if I really wanted to – but because of Reason One, that’s not currently the case. And without an urgency to it, why cause myself more problems or hassle than I need to?
As things stand, my tenancies expire in November – because the first tenancy was just six months, and then they’ve extended as 12-month ones. The bankruptcy comes off my record in August 2018. Unless things change radically in the meantime, I think I’ll be here ’til then, and from there I’ll see how I go. So the odds are, another 18 months here, and who knows after that?
Doing Less, Doing More
Posted: Wed 3 May, 2017 Filed under: 2016/17, Charitable, Do More, Domestic, Five Year Plan (now Ten), Getting Organised, Health, London, Weigh Less Leave a comment »After this coming weekend, life calms down a bit once more. (I know, it’s a recurring theme) From here, I’ve got fewer weekends with stuff already booked – at least until September, which is already idiotic. (Of which more later, or in a future post)
However, that doesn’t mean I’ll not be doing much.
Come the end of September, I’ll be walking a marathon distance, and I want to have an equivalent distance already under my belt by then, along with some other practice/training walks building up to it. I did a half-marathon distance back in October, but then haven’t done anywhere near as much since, and I’m aware that I really should have done. Oops, as they say.
So in the run-up to the end of September, that’s (part of) what I’m going to be doing. Taking some time, some days out, doing a shitload of walking. It won’t all be London-based, although the majority will be.
I know I could easily just rock up on the day and complete the course – but I do want to at least appear to be taking it more seriously than that.
I Don’t Understand
Posted: Fri 28 April, 2017 Filed under: Cynicism, D4D™, Domestic, Getting Organised, I Don't Understand, People, Write More Here, Writing Leave a comment »As part of the whole “write more here” ethos, I’m introducing a new occasional topic, which is quite simply “Things I Don’t Understand About People“. Not the snappiest of titles, but it’ll do for now.
Of course, most of them can probably be explained away as “Because people are generally horrifically shit“, but I’ll try to do a bit better than that.
It may be a short-lived theme/topic, or it might be something that keeps me going for a while. There’s certainly a few bouncing around in my head already, so we’ll see how it goes.
Getting Scheduled
Posted: Mon 24 April, 2017 Filed under: D4D™, Domestic, Getting Organised, Write More Here, Writing Leave a comment »Over the first dollop of this year, I’ve been trying to write more here, as it’s all become a bit intermittent. It’s been kind-of successful, but it’s still not great. I’ve found it too easy to lose several days at a time, and once it’s broken, it’s harder to get back into.
I’ve also got some other writing ideas going on (as briefly mentioned in other posts quite recently) which are also slipping, so I feel like I need a bit of a plan.
Gordon this week wrote about something similar, and about aiming to have more of a schedule for writing, which is something I’m going to try out for a while.
So, starting today, the plan will be to have new stuff here on Mondays, Wednesdays and Friday. It might not be much, and it might be rubbish – but it’ll (hopefully) be on schedule. Even if it ends up that I have a day where I braindump three posts for the week and schedule them, I’ll be OK with that, to be honest.
Of course, it may not be written on those days – I may write things and then just schedule them in. But having at least a set of target days seems like a good plan.
Visitation
Posted: Fri 21 April, 2017 Filed under: Domestic, Getting Organised Leave a comment »For me, about the only kind-of downside to renting a place comes with visits from the landlord. In fairness, my current one is pretty good, and really only rocks up once a year to do the legally-required safety checks on gas, electric etc., and checking smoke detectors and the like.
In fairness, I don’t mind – it’s his place, after all, and it’s all for the legal stuff.
This time, he let me know on Monday that it was time for the check visit, and that it was booked in for today. Fair enough. It gave me time to sort things out, and all good. Fortunately, I’m generally fairly tidy/organised, so it’s not like a big panic or anything. Indeed, it took less than half-an-hour of work last night to get it up to scratch, which does please me.
I got the message from the landlord that all’s well, the safety checks are all passed, and all’s good. There’s one small thing he needs to fix, which’ll be done next week, and then we’ll hopefully be done for another year.
I’m lucky to have a decent landlord, who basically just doesn’t take the piss. From what I’ve seen other people say, I’m pretty lucky in that.
Outlining
Posted: Fri 14 April, 2017 Filed under: 2016/17, Creativity, Domestic, Five Year Plan (now Ten), Getting Organised, Ideas, Thoughts, Write More, Writing Leave a comment »At the moment, I’ve got several writing plans/projects in my head, but two that are really standing out, and that I want to work on. And already that’s a fair dollop of progress.
For now though, I’m trying something a bit different – I don’t yet know if it’ll work out, but so far it appears to be doing OK.
Basically, rather than just writing and seeing how things develop, I’m taking some time first to outline it all, so I know what the plan is, where characters will go, and how everything interacts. It’s also interesting, from the perspective of figuring out more about how my brain processes these things.
The only thing that concerns me currently about this process is that I know how I am, that once I’ve written something down or otherwise got it out of my head I’ll forget all about the details, and there’ll be something else to grab my attention instead. Oooh, shiny.
So it may be that doing these outlines is as far as I go on these ideas. Or it may be that the outlines gel everything together so that I know what I’m doing, and then just want to get it done.
And only time will tell which of those options will happen. Which is kind of cool, and kind of frustrating…