Phantom Limb Syndrome
Posted: Tue 20 November, 2007 | Author: Lyle | Filed under: Own Business, Travel, Weirdness, Work-related | Leave a comment »Last night, like the twat I am I managed to leave my laptop in the office. I blame being busy at work, and packing away the work laptop when getting ready to head for home. Oh, and being a twat, of course.
It’s been weird though – particularly whilst travelling home last night, and back to work this morning – not having the laptop around. You see, that’s now what I do most of my work on, and I do a fair amount of that work while travelling, so it’s been deeply noticeable to me that I’m missing out on some work time.
Of course, that’s a good thing in some ways. But I’ve got a lot on at the moment, and missing out on 2ish hours of work is noticeable, and I’d rather be doing the work than not. And sad though it sounds, I do rather feel like I’m missing some significant part of me – which is probably a big sign that I need to get out more and/or work less. Or something. (Not that the latter is likely to happen any time soon, I should point out)
Shhhhhhhhh
Posted: Fri 16 November, 2007 | Author: Lyle | Filed under: D4D™, Five Year Plan (now Ten), Getting Organised, Own Business, Work-related, Writing | Leave a comment »Lack of posting today, due to being snowed with fun in a website that I’m working on.
It’s making good progress, but still leaves me with a tabula rasa for D4D™. Hey, it happens on occasion – live with it.
In other news, I’ve also made some progress already with some of those plans I was wittering about back on November 5th, as well as generating a bit more business just when I wasn’t expecting it.
So a good day, and one I’ll probably write more about later, while sat on the train home. Or something. Which reminds me, I need to find my headphones, and/or some new ones. Go figure.
Working Practices
Posted: Thu 15 November, 2007 | Author: Lyle | Filed under: Animals, Domestic, Own Business, Work-related | Leave a comment »While working from home yesterday, and getting a fair amount done, I also caught up on a lot of the viewing on the BBC iPlayer. It’s one of the things where I find it easy to multi-task, writing web pages and the like while ‘watching’ TV – and it’s even easier when both things are on the same screen, rather than different ones.
It’s odd really – I used to be quite happy to work in silence, with no distractions or accompaniments. (It depends whether or not I like the programme in the background as to whether it’s distracting or accompanying) But as the years have gone on, I now find I’m far happier working when there’s something else going on as well – usually either music or TV. For some reason my brain works better when processing multiple inputs than it does when it’s just focussed on the one thing.
However, I still have to admit that I find working from home to be a bad thing in one particular area : Hound. A lot of the time she just doesn’t get the entire “I’m working” thing – which is understandable. After all, she’s just a dog. But to her, me being at home means I’m available to be at her beck and call for feeding, letting in and out, and playing. The number of times I’e had a tennis ball dropped at my feet as a “subtle” hint from the dog is just beyond belief. And if I don’t play, she barks. And barks. And barks.
Still, that’s part of the “joy” of working from home, I guess.
More bloggage?
Posted: Wed 7 November, 2007 | Author: Lyle | Filed under: D4D™, Five Year Plan (now Ten), Own Business, Thoughts, Work-related, Writing | 1 Comment »With the redesign and redevelopment of the business site, I’m debating adding a blog to the site. But the main debate around it is whether I want to be doing writing for three sites – what with D4D™ and the one on the photography portfolio, do I really need anything else?
The point is even more relevant when I look at the “writing” section of the plans for the next 12 months, where I also want to be doing some more ‘proper’ writing and well, I start to wonder what I can add to the business site with a blog anyway.
I can see the use of the blog on the photography site, after all – although I need to get down to adding in some more posts, and generally get to using it more (as well as sorting out the template so that it fits in with the rest of the site) but for the business site? I don’t know – can’t see it right now. It’s something to think about for the future, but at the moment well, not sure I can be chuffed with adding to the blog-writing workload after all.
Five Year Plan: 20% done
Part Two – What’s next?
Posted: Mon 5 November, 2007 | Author: Lyle | Filed under: Domestic, Five Year Plan (now Ten), Getting Organised, House Work, Own Business, Resolutions, Work-related, Writing | Leave a comment »
So, as listed yesterday, the first year of that five year plan is completed. There’s still some work to be done on finishing off the foundations of it all, but everything is so far pretty much on track, which is a fairly impressive achievement in itself. (well, for me, anyway)
The problem with the next year of the plan (such as it is) is that a lot of it is either
- Hard to explain
- Related to business plans, which I (for obvious reasons) don’t want to bang on about here before I’ve got them started
- Dependent upon other occurrences, or on (to some degree) a bit of luck/chance
- All of the above
This means that the list is almost certainly going to be rather less exhaustive than last year’s one- and God knows, that one was no masterpiece of detail. So this is more an ‘overview’ than a list, and to some degree I also find that rather harder to keep track of and fulfil, due to the nature of the beast. I’ve got more detailed lists of plans and ideas carried around in an ‘off-line’ format- OK, OK, it’s all in my Filofax, which should probably be renamed “my Book of Lists and Notes”. (MBOLAN, or ‘T-rex’ for short))
So anyway, the basic ‘shell’ list is going to be something like this:
- Photography
- Take more photos
- Put the good ones in the portfolio site
- Work on a couple of projects/themes
- Possibly do a redesign of the portfolio site to fit in more with ‘brand ‘image’
- Submit portfolio site and photos to various interested parties
- Possibly make more use of Flickr, although that one’s a bit of a “don’t know”
- Pull more attention to the portfolio site
- Business
Redesign/redevelop business website with a CMS etc.- Look at sorting out a proper business bank account
- Keep generating new work
- Continue with current work and clients
- Get new contract – the one with the current place will definitely expire in ’08, due to tax/IR35 reasons
- Work on developing new sites and business ideas
- Minimise outgoings, increase incoming money
- Writing
- Realistically? Get one solid idea written and done, if only for the head-space
- Optimistically? Get two solid ideas written and done.
- House stuff
- House alterations
- Bathroom
- Kitchen extension/upgrade
- Garden alterations/work
- Veg patch
- Front garden/driveway
- Main lawn etc.
- Borders, beds, blah blah
- House alterations
And that’ll do for now. Like I said, it’s fairly “open”, but that’s still a fair old list from the look of it. I’m going to be a busy boy…
No more 35
Posted: Sat 3 November, 2007 | Author: Lyle | Filed under: Domestic, Own Business, Work-related | 1 Comment »So, that’s the end of my last working day being 35.
*sob*
Of course, I’ll almost certainly be doing some work over the weekend, but well, that doesn’t really count, I know. And so I shall not officially be at “work” again ’til I’m 36. I’m off on Monday, though, so that’s something.
Business Banking
Posted: Thu 1 November, 2007 | Author: Lyle | Filed under: Customer Services, Cynicism, Own Business, Work-related | 2 Comments »Many moons ago, I opened a business account for the limited company I had at the time, and it all turned into an utter nightmare. The problems primarily spouted from the fact that my personal current account suddenly came under the control and “management” of the business banking people, which led to huge screwups all round. I finally closed that account back in ’05 after roughly two years of absolute hell.
Anyway, with that experience in mind, I’ve so far avoided getting a bank account for my wee business. But it’s coming to the point where I need to, so I’ve been doing some checking around, looking at fees, costs, and all that malarkey. It’s duller than shit, of course, but still stuff that needs doing.
Of course, based on my previous experience, I’m avoiding RBS like the plague because I still do my personal banking with them. So one of my primary requirements – if not essentials – for any business banking account is to make sure that the relevant bank doesn’t then insist that I have to have my personal banking with the same bank. Even if I had wanted to stay with RBS, that requirement would kill their chances.
I’m still looking around the various tosspots members of the banking community, but so far HSBC are looking like a good candidate. Now there’s a sentence I never thought I’d find myself saying.