When I first began looking at apartments in Glasgow, I told myself the priority would be to decorate my home office and lock myself away for a year. That never happened.
I was spending less time in my office, favouring my dining room table as the space was more open and airy, yet still not ideal. Over time the office became somewhat of a dumping ground; laundry and bits and pieces I couldn’t find a place for (that have since been discarded). After 13 months of tolerating dated curtains and dirty carpet, I’ve done something about it.
Before
After
Verdict
Anybody who spends a significant portion of time working from home will tell you that it’s important to have a designated office space. Now that I have a room I’m happy with, I find myself easily spending more time there. It doesn’t feel as dark and closed away as it did before, so now I don’t mind sitting in there throughout the day.
I still haven’t finished it. I fancy a new office chair, and I might paint the ‘feature’ wall a different colour and bring the room together with a rug.
It’s not often I do this, but being self employed and working from home (alone) I don’t have the luxury of bouncing ideas off other folk, which is invaluable in creating something better. I rarely make use of my Twitter followers in this respect either, but today I find myself needing opinions before I can push forward with something.
Many months ago, being the procrastinator extraordinaire I am, I abandoned work on a blog that was designed to be a fun side project relating to my main business. There was a TV show many years ago built around this idea, so I knew there would be an audience. Basically it was a blog enabling submissions from people who had horror stories regarding tenants and property they let out.
I know, I’m trying to make a living selling landlord insurance, then rallying up a bunch of stories that raise alarm bells in the world of rental property. I like to make things difficult for myself, don’t I?
Initially I thought the site had the potential to be a bit of fun, maybe some theatrical tales of ridiculous tenants and how these scenarios could be avoided in the future. While I never promoted it, for the few weeks I had it online people were submitting stories. But these stories were angry and full of hatred. I often had to edit out swear words, as well as protect tenant’s identities by removing their names the landlords were fixated on tarnishing. This wasn’t quite what I had wanted from it, and I pulled the plug until I could think about it some more.
That time is now.
I’m not sure whether I’ll go ahead and launch this or bin it entirely (if I do launch it, I already have an existing user base at my fingertips). The question is, what direction should I be taking? From past experience submissions were bitter, when I had been leaning towards something more lighthearted. Either way, I want this to be useful and possibly educational to people.
Help me. And don’t laugh at my temporary usage of cheesy stock illustrations.
Currently reading Web App Success and attending evening college classes in Stow, being educated in the Ruby on Rails framework. It’s a nice feeling to be pro-active about this, but I find with the whole programming Ruby and coming from a non-programming background, people are fairly negative towards me. Watch this space, because I can do anything I put my mind to.
I don’t usually do anything special for halloween, but after attending Club Noir earlier in the year and enjoying the burlesque influence, I booked tickets to the Halloween special. Okay, so y’all know by now that I like my video games, right? It was important to me to go as something that was inspired by my love for gaming, and celebrated the scary essence of halloween (so Lara Croft, for example, was off the cards).
Mark and I teamed our outfits, though the slacker isn’t wearing his mask in the picture, and went with a Bioshock theme. I was a Little Sister, he was a splicer. I thought that if anyone approached me and said “Oh hey, you’re a Little Sister from Bioshock”, I would know I had met the man (or woman?) of my dreams. That never happened.
I emailed this video to myself in two parts, so you will notice a slight skipping in the middle where I’ve failed to merge it properly.
I gave up drumming a long time ago, but every now and again I find myself drifting back to it. My performance is noticeably rusty, my confidence is low (which is hella important for a drummer), my rhythm is embarrassing, and my skills generally aren’t where they should be.
My dad got me into drumming, and it will always be something that reminds me of him. He too played drums. While my mum tried to encourage me to be a bit more academic with my focuses, my dad supported my desire to drum. I gave it up after he died.
While I don’t see myself joining a band — or at least a serious one — in the immediate future, I don’t want to let this little hobby of mine end up in the gutter. So today I booked two hours in the studio and had a little jam on my own. Hopefully I return to the point where I shake off my inhibitions and really go with it.
This was after about two minutes of planking (longest I had previously done was 45 seconds), feet on the ball, three of us trying to outlast each other. As you can see I wasn’t first to fall, but I didn’t win either ^_^ It’s kind of fun being competitive at the gym.
Also, today was my first session with the kettlebell and I got to act like a monkey in the gym, hanging off bars and stuff. I know I’ll feel the burn tomorrow, but pain is GOOD.
Every day my dog attempts to interrupt my work flow by sitting on my lap and licking my face, and every day I have the same conversation.
“Indie, you know this roof we have over our head? And the Bakers Complete in yer bowl, and the bowl itself, and your designer harness… Well, I need to keep working to supply and maintain that stuff, and you’re not letting me get any work done.”
My Twitter feed is comprised of folk who dream big, work hard, and are on track to realising their ambitious goals. My Facebook feed is comprised of folk who are bored, and measure how great their weekend was by how many Jägerbombs they downed before throwing up and losing their shoes.
Sorry if that sounds condescending.
Twitter inspires me. Like-minded people share links to inspiring resources that often spark new ideas. Facebook infuriates me. People I sat next to in English class at school type lyk dis abt how dey h8 wrk.
I feel I relate more to the avatars I converse with on Twitter than the people I have met in real life on Facebook.
