January Selfie

I'm not really sure what this selfie declaration is all about - except that I love when my sister does it. She sometimes clicks herself at arms-length and adds it to our family Facebook page. I love seeing her face every time she does it no matter the expression.

So this, I think, is the one of the first "selfies" I've ever taken on purpose, and definitely one of the first I've ever shared.

I took it today after shopping with my daughter Amy yesterday. My son Simon is marrying his fiancé Melissa next Saturday, and Amy and I spent this weekend buying what we need to look and feel amazing at this joyous event.

We found the *perfect* dress for Amy and some amazing shoes. She's going to look stunning, I'm so proud of her. I had been lucky the day before and found some lovely shoes to match the dress I've had made. 

We're all really excited about the wedding. I just adore Melissa and am so happy that I get to have her in my life for ever now (<= don't be creepy).

Declarations for 2015: recap

Gosh it’s been nine days since the New Year started. I just flipped open my laptop to revisit my New Year declarations for the ‘end of the month’ and we’re not even half way through!

I really do have a lot of trouble sensing the passing of time.

If you’ve been playing along, gorgeous reader, you’ll know that I have declared 2015 the year of:

• selfies
• lunches
• mornings

With an idea of keeping my goals front and centre I’ll revisit my declarations through the year and note my progress. Consider below a benchmark to measure against the next post on this subject:

Selfies

The idea behind this declaration was to put myself more in front of the blog than behind it - and in a nutshell that meant photographing myself. Even as I type that I feel goofy and my inner critic is piping up with all the reasons that’s a poor idea - so she can just pipe down chirpy!

Progress: I haven’t started yet, but the intent is still there. 

Lunches

I have a feeling in my water that lunch is an untapped source of enjoyment for me. When I think of this declaration I imagine delightful containers, tasty and original fare, celebrating the meal of lunch in park-like surrounds, under the dappled shade of trees. To date I’m still eating at my desk - a adjunct task to this declaration might be to find some lunch spots to sit.

Progress: made my lunch and taken it to work each day so far - that’s four working days which is an all time record of consecutive homemade lunches already! 

Mornings

My sleep patterns are still in holiday mode. I love staying up late, but I hate getting up in the morning and end up being sleepy and a bit foggy during the day. To make this work I do need to go to bed at a fixed time each night and that time needs to be 9:30pm.

Progress: smashed it this morning with a 4:30am rise but it was more to do with sleep problems than the declaration.

Bonus round: a project for 2015

My wardrobe is bereft. It has tired and worn clothes that are ill fitting and bring me little joy. My project for this first half of the year is to build a capsule wardrobe for Autumn/Winter 2015. This will mean thinking about the items of clothes I need; decide on a colour palette; determine what and where and when to buy items to build a wardrobe of clothes that mix and match for when the weather starts to cool.

Progress: Googled ways other people have approached this project and saved the links to Evernote.

Sketchbook Skool and January Cure updates

I’m doing two online courses. So far managing to keep up with as well as pace myself with Sketchbook Skool. We’re up to working to fit drawing in our sketchbooks every day. I’m feeling a bit shy about doing that at work so I’ll need to have a talk to myself to get over that stumbling block.

The January Cure course kind of fell after the first hurdle of cleaning all the floors, but I’ll pick myself up this weekend and get back on that bad boy.

Oh my goodness, that might not have helped you but it really got my ducks in a row. Today I’ll focus on eating my lunch away from my desk, and maybe while I do that, I can do a drawing in my sketchbook. Tonight I shall retire to my bed by 9:30pm and see how that affects my Saturday tomorrow,

Yes, I think these reviews might be valuable to keep a scatter-brain like mine on track. How about you - if you made an resolutions or declarations, how are they going? How’re you keeping yourself on track? Or, if you’ve fallen off the wagon, do you intend to reboot and get back up?

Show don't tell

This morning I needed to take one of my bunnies to the vet. She'd been at the vet's the night before and they'd administered pain relief and other medications but because no one was going to be at the surgery overnight, they sent her home with me with instructions to return first thing in the morning.

I've been really worried about her for about a week and now realise I should have taken her to the vet earlier. Because she's been unwell I've been feeling worried and guilty and not sleeping very well; getting up in the middle of the night to check on her, continuously stealing myself against find her lifeless body and then breathing a relieved sigh when I see her nibbling on hay or drinking water or grooming herself.

Getting ready this morning the plan was to have everything done so when I popped her into the carry-box, we'd go straight into the car and to the vet so she'd spend the minimum amount of time necessary in the box. All was going to plan until I went downstairs to my car and found the back driver's side wheel was flat. 

Of all days! Plus my brand new tyre!

Show me the tyre!

I have never owned a car where the spare wheel is wound up underneath the car, so had to get out my owner's manual to figure out how to change the tyre on the Mini. It took a bit of doing matching the instructions and drawings because the gadget that supposed to be with the car to get the wheel down wasn't there. After improvising and finding something in the garage that might do the trick the next realisation was that I didn't, in fact, have a spare tyre. 

When I'd bought the car last year, I had specifically asked the dealer if it had a spare tyre. He said it did, underneath the car. I thanked him for letting me know but I didn't have him show me because I thought it had been a silly question in the first place. Now it didn't seem so silly as I was cranking and unbolting in the hot morning sun with a sick rabbit in a box not quite knowing how I was going to get the tyre fixed or the rabbit to hospital or make my 11am meeting or get anything else done today.

Show me the email!

Eventually getting to work, I'd rescheduled a meeting about a project that's going on far too long and missed so many deadlines it's not even funny. Before Christmas it was due to go into production and we were looking forward to the New Year to be able to finally use this tool we'd commissioned for our Content Management System (CMS).

The project was for a content picker - a small piece of software for the CMS to pick content from the site and load into an newsletter email. The meeting this morning was about how, now the software is in the production environment being testing before being released into the CMS, it's not working as expected.

I was briefed at the meeting that the software works to pick the content, but when the newsletter email is sent, Microsoft Outlook strips of all HTML upon delivery. To clarify I asked if that meant the email arrived with just one big continuous string of text without any formatting to which the Project Manager said "Yes. That's right."

Sounded pretty dire so late in the project. 

As an example, the Project Manager picked the content and sent a test email, which duly arrived into his inbox. Upon opening the email, I could see that some of the formatting was missing, but it was far from the blob of text he'd said would happen. 

I'm so glad he showed me what he meant and I didn't just rely on what he said, otherwise I would have thought the problem much larger than it turned out to be. Each question I had asked shed more light on the situation so I had a much better set of facts compared to just accepting his initial brief of the situation.

I also learned that if I hadn't felt my question about the tyre was silly and had had the car dealer show me the spare tyre when I purchased the car, I might have saved several hours of time this morning changing my flat.

Show me the lessons

• Keep asking questions; use questions to drill for clarity.
• Ask to be shown an example or evidence to back up claims and promises.
• Just because someone speaks the same language as you do, doesn't mean they use words with as much care.
• Listen, pay attention, and understand because one day you're going run over a nail and then you're going to be so glad you asked "Can you show me?"