Cough

Well, 2011 has started with a diagnosis for me of bronchitis. Great.

I’d picked up the cough at work before Christmas, where my manager had been coughing heavily. The three hours where he sat next to me coughing uncontrollably has obviously had a knock-on effect.

So my first week of 2011 now involves an inhaler, and a metric shit-ton of amoxicillin. Happy Days.


Spelling

How to wind up someone in the office…

On receiving the nicely printed invites to the company Christmas Dinner, ask

So, it’s a do at the company’s Christmas Diner ?

The look of horror is pure comedy.


Lergie

Along the way this week, I’ve picked up a foul cold and cough, which has laid me seriously low. So low in fact that it’s made me miss a concert last night – and one I really wanted to see, too – and contemplate taking a day sick off work. (I didn’t in the end, but it was a close-run thing)

Pathetically, I went to bed at 8pm last night – although I did then read for an hour- which is unheard of.

I hate feeling like this, being so utterly effing useless and drained.


Progress – What’s Next? 2010/11

So, following on from how (badly) I’ve done in 2009/10, what’re the plans for 2010/11 ?

Honestly, I don’t really know.  I guess the main points can be brought down to :

  • Write more
  • Take more photos
  • Do more websites
  • Get more business
  • Pay stuff off
  • Get off the antidepressants

Other than that, more of my activity will be down to altering life, seeing friends, travelling, doing other odds and sods along the way.

I don’t know what the run-up to 40 will bring, but right now the thing that I do want to do is not stress about it over the next year.

We’ll see.


Progress, or Lack Thereof

This time last year, this was the list of what I wanted to do in 2009/10…

  1. Mortgage renewal
  2. Build up own business
  3. Design/Launch some of the sites I’ve got ideas for (I know, that’s an ongoing thing – but different sites/ideas this time, as always)
  4. Write more – I want to get at least one solid piece done. I failed in 2009, but it’s still a plan for 2010 instead.
  5. Photograph more – again, I’ve got some ideas for big projects on this, I just need to get started on them.
  6. Lose more weight – I want to lose at least another stone in the next year, and ideally more. But a stone will be the target for now.
  7. Get to the gym more – something I’ve really slacked on this year
  8. Do some business planning, and figure out (to some degree at least) what the fuck I want to do next with my life.
  9. Get back in touch with (and visit) various friends I’ve been useless with for the last couple of years.

So, how did I do?

  1. Yeah, didn’t do the renewal.
  2. Still working on that, allbeit slowly
  3. I did launch a couple of new sites over the year, but nowhere near as many as I wanted to. Mind you, I’ve also culled out a number of the ones that aren’t going to work out, too.
  4. Certainly written more, along with submitting a couple of small pieces to competitions and the like.
  5. Photography hasn’t been so successful. I haven’t had the inspiration or motivation as yet – there’s been a number of things I have done, but not what I was planning to do.
  6. Lost weight – I’m down a stone on where I was, with the intention of losing more.
  7. I didn’t get to the gym at all
  8. I didn’t really do much in the way of business planning, although equally I’ve had enough to keep me going over the year.
  9. I got in touch with friends, saw a few, and then went back to being crap.

All told, not a great year for achievement. Stuff’s been done – just not as much as I wanted to, and/or not in the sections I planned it to be.  All told, it’s a bit of a worry, with the culmination in a year’s time of that five year plan – but then, there’s been lots of change in that five years, if I look back to where I was when I started it. So I can live with that – there’s been progress, work and change, they just hasn’t taken me along the path/road I expected them to.


Culling 2

As well as cutting the number of links in the Blogroll yesterday, I’m also in the process of cutting out a number of the domain names I own. In all cases I’ve had plans or ideas for them, but they’ve not been done, so I’m going to cut down on the outstanding list.

It may be that in time to come I regret this, but for the most part I’ve had those domains long enough that I really should’ve done something with them if I planned to. I’m keeping some – the ones where I’ve really got ideas – but a goodly number are going to fall by the wayside.

In some ways it annoys me that I’m giving up on these. In others, well, it seems like common sense to do so. I think that reducing the number of things on my “want to do/try” list might actually help me get the ones done that remain on the list once this purging process is over and done with.

Of course it might not, too.  We’ll see.


One Year On

Somehow it’s now a year since I started in the current job.

That makes it (by quite some margin) the longest-running permanent role in quite a while.

Strange how things work out, isn’t it?