I hope you weren’t holding your breath . . .

 . . . I kept you waiting a small while there to see what happened that would change my life so much.

What happened was a small something: The next day I was just leaving a Peel 2 Save client when my dear friend Marion called my mobile. I’ve known Marion from when she was the office manager at Newham Education Business Partnership (NEBP), an educational charity I worked for in east London. And I’d kept in touch with her and several of the other people there through regular get togethers and notably chaotic travels (another blog maybe?). Marion was now the esteemed Director of the charity and it was in that capacity she was calling.

NEBP was about to take on board a new position, that of the Stratford City Education Project (SCEP) manager. The project, funded by the developers during the building of Westfield, had already been running for five years but the existing manager was leaving and the project itself was coming to a close as Westfield was now complete. SCEP was being placed within the NEBP as the London Borough of Newham felt it was the right ‘home’ for it. Various members of the NEBP’s Steering Committee were contacting anyone they thought might be interested in a short-term contract to deliver educational materials, and I was one of them.

Long(er) story short I was lucky enough to get the job. Yes, it was a huge compromise on my part to go into a job after best part of 20 years self employment, but the opportunity to get back at the chalk face of education was, after all, EXACTLY what I’d ‘asked’ for, less than 24 hours previously!

And that’s not all . . .

 

Spooky Dates . . .

I haven’t blogged here for about six months. Exactly six months in fact.

I knew it would be as soon as I looked at the last date I blogged on here – 13th June 2011 – and I thought “I bet that’s six months ago”. I know the way the blogging world works for me ie: there’s no such things as a random period of time. When I first thought of writing 43Things in 43Years there was exactly 43 weeks left before my birthday. Now I’m back, needing to populate this blog, and it’s not four months and three days or seventeen weeks and six days. No, it’s six months. Exactly.

Which means I know it’s right for me to be doing it.

And it’s not like I’ve been idle. At all. Fate intervened in my life as it has a delightful way of doing and caused me to be propelled headlong into my future. Or, at least, that’s how I like to see it.

Y’see, last time we spoke I had a plan. A grand plan that I was about to expound upon when something happened that I can only describe as “The Lord delivered”. And if you know anything about me it’s that I’m not at all religiously orientated.

This was the plan - of three strands:

1. Make some money from Peel2Save
2. Put the money into property and generate passive income
3. Get back into education

I’d already tapped up my two successful contacts within Peel2Save (Nigel Botterill) and property (Glenn Armstrong) to see if they would be interested in helping me produce some educational materials around entrepreneurship. They’d both said yes and, as I was driving away from the meeting with Nigel, I remember thinking to myself that I really should get some more experience back in education as I had been out of the system for a number of years. As it was I had been honing skills in other areas, but I still felt a few projects back in schools would be of benefit.

Less than 24 hours later I took a call that, with no exaggeration, changed my life . . .

 

A different way . . .

One of the hardest things to change is my blogging ‘habit’. I’m finding there’s an interesting balance between blogging every day (as I have in the past), when you end up documenting every last thought in your head (doesn’t take long!), and blogging something of interest / quality / usefulness less often but enough to keep the momentum going.

With the blog I write to accompany my jobs mailout it’s a weekly observational, work-based blog so I sit down and think of something every Tuesday for the following day’s e-mailout. Some people would possibly sit down one day and churn out four or five posts which they’d schedule in for the month and then forget about it. But I like my posts to be fresher and more topical than that. I think you can tell when someone’s written a piece in too far in advance – it’s less lively somehow.

And for my last blog here (now the 43things in 43years e-book) I got into the writing habit of one large post at the weekend, with smaller themed ‘fillers’ in the week. This very much fitted in with the style of what I was writing and allowed me to write the book within the timeframe required.

But for this blog I don’t have an overall aim and I really don’t have a plan (two things I spell out as cardinal sins for any of my blogging clients!) and yet my readership is not affected in any way at all. If anything there’s more people logging on and reading now than ever before and they’re doing it at really interesting peaks of time, often days after any recent posting. So I’m going to keep on doing what I’m doing and see what happens.

In case you’re not aware of one of my recent projects (that is taking up a lot of my time) is a magazine that I’m putting together for the good people of Potters Bar – yes, lucky them you say. It’s interesting to be back in my former occupation of designing magazine ideas and then selling the idea to advertisers. But it does remind me of the genuine skill of any sales person – authenticity. I am speaking to dozens of people every day about this mag and I don’t think any one of them, whether they wish to advertise or not, is in any doubt of my genuine passion to create a magazine that represents this little town I love so much. No selling involved really – if the good people of Potters Bar are not any one businesses’ target market then this publication is not for them. However, if we do cover a businesses’ target market then all it comes down to is price and budget allocations. And it reminded me that selling isn’t ‘selling’. It’s more ‘providing opportunities’. Whoa – listen to me – I sound like I should be speaking at some sort of razzmatazz sales convention in Las Vegas.

Watch this space . . . there’s more to come . . .

 

What I’ve been up to . . .

So it’s been quiet on here for a few weeks – deliberately so.

I took a couple of weeks off from social media to see how I got on. It was very interesting as I spent more time on the computer but did not blog or tweet or look at Facebook at any point. As a big fan of social media and a great advocate of using it to make connections with customers I wanted to see how much time I actually spent engaged in producing or monitoring the SM platforms. Not to say that I was bored or idle in any way – I have my new project to keep me busy and that launches on July 1^st so I’m really busy here. My time currently is spent either on the phone or visiting the good folks of Potters Bar, making connections in the old fashioned way by meeting and talking.

I’ve also spent a bit of time with my folks in Devon which was fab, they live near the coast and there’s no better place in the world than my old home town of Westward Ho! when the sun’s out. I’m planning on going back there for a few weeks later in the summer which is amazing when you consider that through all of that I will not be ceasing to work. My laptop and mobile travel with me and I think it’s fascinating how many people need only those two items to carry on ‘at the office’. Yes I suppose some people would consider that a curse as they then can never be off duty or away from the office, but for a self employed person it’s great because you have the freedom to work as, when and where you like. Today’s a great example – I’d be working in the garden if I wasn’t hanging around the front door waiting for a parcel (don’t you love it when they say ‘any time between 8am and 4pm’). So a big happy smile from me today.

And it’s good to be back on the blog. Though I will be changing some of my social media habits as a result of my time away  . . .

 

Fancy a bit of light reading?

Yay – it’s done!

Notice the new tab on the top of my blog – the one that says ‘e-book’? It means I have finally gotten around to putting all the 43 things I wrote about on my 43Things in 43years blog into an e-book. Whoo hoo.

I must thank John Williams and Selina Barker for their 30 Day Challenge that got me to at least focus on what I wanted to do with the blog. All my blogs and now this e-book are the result of my focus in April. I feel an era has ended.

Download, read, pass it on, whatever you want to do with it and please let me know what you think. (And of course if you find any sneaky typo’s etc)

Enjoy!

 

Attitude is everything!

Isn’t it funny how many people use the phrase ’well someone got out of the bed the wrong side this morning’ when an individual is exhibiting grumpiness. As if we are a slave to our emotions.

I find deciding to be happy works great. And there’s other great emotions to add to the list, like deciding to be:

• Excited
• Enthusiastic
• Imaginative
• Ambitious
• Inspired
• Energetic
• Upbeat
• Creative
• Cheerful

The list could go on and on. But I must thank BlackBeltJones for inspiring today’s posting by creating this rule to live by:

 

New ideas . . .

Yesterday I started another business.

Yes, I know I seem to do a lot of that, but I’ve been quite careful with the types of business I get involved with. Let me explain . . .

My background is in education & training and I work currently in the recruitment / HR field for larger organisations. Which I love. In fact the talking with people and understanding the way they see the world is one of the best bits about it. I have also, in recent years, been more involved with marketing, both businesses and individuals, which I enjoy in a different way. The marketing angle still allows me to ‘unlock potential’ but, by applying marketing angles, I can see ways to put that potential to (financially!) practical use. My involvement in social media has been a wonderfully practical application of putting people into marketing and it’s an extremely exciting area to be part of as it’s changing all the time.

Other fields I have been involved in have been more interests then work / income solutions, though some have bought in reasonable amounts of cash. They have included working in theatre production, silver/blacksmithing, magazine production, caricatures/illustration, craft based activities and, of course, my long standing affair with property.

Anyway, as a scanner, I always thought I was too eclectic to focus on just one thing. But as I realised I do have a central ‘theme’ to my interests and activities I relaxed and let whatever my current  passion was direct my daily activities.

The business I came up with yesterday ticked all my ‘needs to be’ boxes as in: flexible, home-based, can be automated etc. It also ticked a lot of the ‘experience’ boxes as in: an area I had former expertise in, access to a team that I could use, a tried & tested business model etc. These days I would never get into anything too new or too unfamiliar as a new venture. I have every confidence that this one will succeed because much of my prior working life has fed into it in some way.

Interested in finding out how I get on? Watch this space . . .

 

New page on blog!

See my new page ‘Worksheets’ tab on the nav bar above?

I’ve just spent the best part of TWO HOURS assembling all the materials from my last completed blog into this easily accessible place for anyone who wants to see them.

I’ve definitely not invented the wheel here, but it’s a collection of worksheets which might help people who are struggling with motivation, self sabotage or a general lack of confidence.

I will also continue to add worksheets that I make for myself to overcome all sorts of common issues such as time management, organisation, recording achievements etc. Again, nothing revolutionary, but may be worth a squint.

 

The wonders of creative restrictions

Some time back I decided to write a novel. Followers of my 43Thingsin43Years blog will know this story already.  I didn’t do it because I had an idea (any idea!) for a good plot; I did it because I wanted to see if following a process would extract a novel out of me. I found a great concept called National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) that ran every year in San Francisco where the premise was: if you wrote 1,667 words a day you would have the basis of your novel in 30 days (a cool 50,000 words later).

December 2004 passed in a fog of laptop screen light and muttered oaths from family and friends (note to self: Christmas is a sociable time of year). But I got it done and am now the proud owner of about 50,000 words of a novel I have absolutely no intention of publishing but have an extremely interesting and enlightening voyage of discovery to tell. Y’see, I sat down and wrote. 1,667 words every day. In sentences. Without fail.

And then the magic began to happen . . .

The characters came alive. The story unfolded, the plot revealed itself and then the cast got right out of hand and started getting into really naughty escapades with each other. Some days I could hardly wait to get writing and see what they were doing. (Some days I could hardly believe I had the words to describe the sorts of things they were getting up to – but let’s draw a veil over that).

I had an immensely enjoyable experience writing a ‘novel’. One I shall probably never repeat, but serves to illustrate how some people enjoy a few boundaries to their creativity. All I had to do was produce the words every day. However, read this wonderful blog posting (over three entries) Catherine, Caffeinated to see how a proper, working, author really struggled with the same boundaries. The difference is Catherine Ryan Howard was trying to write sense in her 1,667 words a day. Ahhh – creativity that has to make sense = alien concept to me.

So – when you consider your creative output today did you flourish within your boundaries or did you bang your head against them in despair?

 

Tactics for busy times

Since I staggered over the finish line on John William’s Screw Work Let’s Play 30 Day Challenge at the weekend my life has just spiralled out of control a tad!

I decided it’s now time to get it all back into a small semblance of order so – you’ll like this – I made myself a handy little document to schedule my time and my tasks: Week&ProjectChartBlank

I print it off and set about completing it first thing on Sundays before the world gets in the way. “Why don’t you just buy a diary” I hear you shout. Well, I have two desk diaries and a wall calendar already so I don’t want any more. The desk diaries are for making specific project notes, always easier to find notes when they’re in a large book! The wall calendar puts in dates that are coming up. But this little weekly scheduler allows me to plan a week ahead so I can see it all on one place. Just that week – not last week, or in twelve weeks time. Just the immediate future and what I have to do.

It’s working so far and the addition of the project boxes underneath the weekly schedule means I can put in specific actions for each project that need doing that particular week. Was chuffed to bits – got through them all bar two last week – progress!!