Currently – 27/07/2017
Which way next?
I'm finding myself wondering about my blogging again. It's been 205 days since I started posting daily, and while I've enjoyed the challenge of doing so I've been thinking about how much longer I keep it up for. There has to come a point at which I stop the daily blogging so when is that point?
My initial plan had been to blog every day through January to help me kick-start the habit again, and then reduce back down to regular but not daily posting. January came and went, and then so did February, and March and here we are almost at the end of July and I'm still doing it.
There are things about it I'm still loving and there are things now that I'm not loving. I've always said to other people when talking about blogging that it's one of those things you should do because you love it. So I think I need to follow my only advice and tweak things so I keep loving it.
I'm finding that since starting my new job the demands on my time are completely different. The time I would ideally be spent writing are ending up going to blogging, and I'm not entirely content with that. I'm setting personal goals for what I want to have done with my writing and by when, I don't have a hope of achieving them if I'm not writing.
Tuesday of next week is the 1st August. I think, unless I have a complete change of heart over the weekend when I'll be surround by other bloggers and booklovers at YALC, that that will be the point at which I finally see my plan to shift from daily blogging to regular blogging come to fruition. I'm still not entirely sure what will stay and what will go, I think some planning time with my trusty notebook will be needed!
Settling in.
I'm into my third week in my new job now. It's all going well, I've hit that point where I know enough to be getting on with things but still don't know very much about anything. I got good at asking questions in my last job and that's proving very useful again now. Years ago I saw asking questions as something that other people would use to view me poorly, so I avoided doing it at all costs. In my last job though I watched, from my desk next to the supervisor's, as everyone in the team came to ask questions regardless of whether they'd been doing their job for a year or a decade. Seeing this reframed asking questions in the workplace for me, and I've brought that increased confidence into my new job too.
The other big lesson I've learned over my work life is the importance of taking proper breaks. At my old job I always stepped away from my desk for my lunch hour, part way through my time there they established a proper staff room and I'd go and escape there with my iPad and a cuppa for an hour. At this new job it works a little differently in that we get a 30 minute lunch and two 15 minute breaks. To start with I was taking the time at my desk, just shutting off my computer monitor. A colleague told me about a garden space, complete with benches, just outside our office building though and now I escape there.
It's so nice to go and sit there. It's very peaceful, and being surrounded by the trees and flowers makes for a lovely contrast to the office. I was just going there for lunch, but then realised it takes only a minute to walk from my desk to my bench of choice so I've started taking a cuppa out there for my afternoon break too.
Quite what I'm going to do when the autumn comes and it gets too wet to go out there I'm not too sure. I'm keeping everything crossed for a long, extended summer that lasts well into September at the very least!
Glorious geekery.
I always enjoy the weeks after San Diego Comic Con. There's always so much video content generated by the weekend that it takes me a few weeks to watch it all. So far this year all I've managed to watch is trailers, there were (like always) so many good ones and so I thought today I'd share a few that excited me the most.
First up is the trailer for Thor: Ragnarok. I'm a huge fan of the Marvel films as a whole but if pushed would have to choose Thor as my favourite. I'm so pleased to see how brilliant this looks.
Next we have the trailer for the Christmas episode of Doctor Who. There's one moment in it that's really pretty spoilery so don't say I didn't warn you.
And finally the trailer for Ready Player One. This is an adaptation of a book that has been teetering on my to be read list for so long now. This trailer has made me push it much further up it, I want to make sure I've read it in readiness for the film.
A list of happiness (4)
I didn't do a happiness list last week and I missed it. So here's this week's list, with a side helping of the happy things I can remember from the week before.
Going to London to see the Para Athletics. Finishing catching up with lots of the shows I watch. Starting to feel comfortable with my new job, being able to get in in the morning, sit down and start working without needing to check anything with anyone. Finding a perfect new mug for work. Unpacking more of the boxes of non-essential stuff I brought back from London. The Student's Union shop selling half size bags of the mini jelly babies. Picking my c2c crochet back up after months. Having to take a detour on the way home because I was so intent on singing along to the radio that I missed my turning. Finally watching Sing Street after hearing so much good about it. Finishing my 100 Days of Cross Stitch. Finding a little, peaceful, grassy space at work to enjoy my lunch in. Discovering it's close enough to make it worth going to for my breaks too.
Saturday song.
This week I couldn't have chosen anything other than a Linkin Park track to share today. The soundtrack to my uni days featured their music regularly so the news this week of the death of Chester Bennington left me very sad. I know many deemed them not a cool band to love, but I never cared about that, I loved their sound and what they had to say mattered to me a whole lot. I saw them headline at Reading Festival back in 2003, while I was there with a group of friends we all did our own thing so I went on my own (some of the others were elsewhere in the crowd) and had such an amazing time – they were a highlight in a weekend that was full of so many musical highlights.
I often talk about music getting under my skin, those songs that seem to capture my heart most intensely. Of all the Linkin Park songs I love In the End is the one that absolutely got under my skin so it had to be my choice.
Mascots Go For Gold.
Last weekend at the Para Athletics I picked up a copy of the games' picture book Mascots Go For Gold, written by Paul Aldridge and illustrated by Ben Barter.
It features the mascots for both the World Para Athletics Championship and the World Athletics Championship as they enter into a relay race against some proper wrong uns. The story has plenty of twists and turns, there's always some new way that the baddies try to cheat their way to the win. It didn't always flow quite as well as I would have liked, but the story itself worked well. I'm really looking forward to sharing it with my friends' boys in a couple of weeks time when I next visit them and deliver their copy.
