Satelite 5

A few people have expressed interest in AirTable (sponsor link, I get credits if you use my link) and how it can be used for Exchange tracking. So I've done a bit of a guided tour of how I have my exchange trackers set up.

( Lots of pictures, you have been warned )

( Exchanges tracking )

( Project Tracking )

( Raw Tracker )

Bit of a whistlestop tour, but feel free to ask if you have any questions.

For a long while now, I've been planning to write up something about my planning process, because I am a definite planner and my process is long and convoluted and multicoloured and multimedia and, most importantly, works really well for me.

I've looked at processes like Snowflake and SaveTheCat and others, and even started designing my own method based on the PRINCE2 project management principals, but I keep rolling back to the same system that I've been using more or less consistently for years. Once upon a time, back in the mists of the noughties, I was a bit of a pantser. I'd have a concept and a goal in mind, but not an outline or any idea of how to get from start to finish. What I also had was a lot more time and, honestly, low standards for my writing. I can't look back on my stuff from that period with anything other than pride that I've come so far. There's a 200000 word fanfiction in my back catalogue that will, one day, with a lot of rewriting, be a decent 50k novel. It is not decent right now, because I only worked out where I was going with it a fair way into it, and stuffed it with far too much story. And, regardless of the quality, it took me 10 years to finish because I stopped loving it. That was time I could have spent working on things I did enjoy but no, I gave it to that pile of nonsense.

So in the aim of never doing that again, I have developed a system that works for me and produces works I do not hate. This is, however, my first attempt to codify it. Wish me luck.

( The Planning Process )

December has rolled around at last, and I have a thrilling plan for it. It involves two advent calendars and a whole lot of books.

( I have a tea advent calendar and a candle advent calendar, and my thrilling plan for the month is to make myself a cup of tea, light a candle and read a book for an hour each day. )

So I'm finally feeling like writing again, hence my sudden reappearance on DreamWidth. Whilst I'm in the mood I've treated myself to a new laptop, a dinky little Cloudbook that I can use on the train and at work. Fingers crossed it will see me through 50k of NaNo as well as my uni work.

With that in mind, I've dug through my ongoing and barely started projects and lined up:
( Below the cut )

Especially if you have a writing blog, but any sort of blog at all really. I'm trying to get myself more organised and have therefore got myself a blog reader app, at last, so I want to add all my peeps to it. I realise that I'm about 10 years behind the curve, but I'm getting there at last. One of these days I'll actually get around to setting up my own blog.

Kitten photos should follow soon.

Last time I did this I'd just fallen off my bike, hadn't I? Whoops.

A couple of x-rays on my hand, over a week apart, proved thoroughly inconclusive, so they strapped it up and told me to keep it that way for about three weeks in total. Fortunately it was one of these gauntlets with an annoying metal plate up it, but with velcro fastenings so I could take it off to have a bath and the like. I worked my last two weeks on light duties, which mostly involved sitting on the reception desk and doing a bit of world building and research for NaNoWriMo and calling my old club once a night. I'm now unemployed and sending off a few desultory applications, but mostly I'm trying to get myself in gear to sort my trip to China. That's not working either.

I need to go back to my colour-coded to-do lists blue-tacked to the wall, otherwise I won't get anything done.

Right now I'm going to tick off posting my Reel_TW fic, which is very late but I sort of lost it. Sent off an unfinished version (why did I still have one, I wrote it two years ago), then had my posting day whilst I was on my jaunt around The South and got home to discover that I hadn't saved it in any sensible places. It has turned up, though, and it's been sitting on my fanfiction.net account waiting for me to get my brain in gear and format the LJ posts. I remember when this used to be something I could do in my sleep.

I think I need a routine again, and set times for writing and Not Simming. Good god that game's turned addictive again. There were months when I didn't play at all, and now I can't get enough of it. The passion is returning, hoorah! (It's just the passion for the wrong thing)

I am now officially dropping off the face of the world. I'll still be around on Twitter and Skype and Facebook, things I can access from my phone, but I'm only getting on my computer every couple of days at the moment.

I will be back in early October, with NaNo build up (I'm an official ML for the first time this year!) and hopefully photos of kittens, but I'm going offline for my last two weeks at work and then a week's holiday. I've thrown in the towel at my bingo job because of the commute and the hours, and I need to reclaim a bit more of my time for job applications anyway.

So I guess I'll see you all on the other side.

Turned up at work yesterday and was asked to cook today. We lost a chef a couple of weeks ago, and today we just don't have enough staff to replace him. I'm not doing his shift instead of mine, I'm doing it as well. At the same time. I may well end up working about 11 hours, on one of our busiest days, without enough staff to do the actual job. Our department needs a minimum of three on busy days. Today it will have two. TWO! I might end up cooking a hundred meals with only one person to run the bar and take the food out to the tables, not to mention clearing the tables off and washing the dishes. This is not physically possible.

Fortunately I have booze and ice cream waiting for me at the other end. Now I just have to get there.

My scooter is being delivered tomorrow. I've paid for it this evening, which made this a very expensive month, as I also paid for the delivery and my CBT (Compulsory Basic Training) within about 24 hours. I was supposed to do my CBT today, but I started it and then fell over, and I was too shaky after that to even think about it properly. I'm booked in to go back next month, though, and I'm going to practice what I can in my back yard, mostly getting a feel for the brakes and the throttle without actually letting it move.

I'm annoyed with myself, because I feel like I've bitten off more than I can chew, but I've always wanted a bike and I know I can do it. It's just that annoying 'tense up and panic' stage that I go through with almost everything. I'm pretty much through it at work now, but I gave up trampolining because I probably wouldn't have got through it without injuring myself. I really need to learn to get it under control.

So it's all change here again. I have a job, and there's a for sale board on my house.

After 8 months and an on-again off-again relationship with the job centre, I'm finally going to be free of them. I applied for this job (sort of) back in January and had an interview, and then heard nothing until Sunday, when they called me, missed me, and then their phones went down. I got back in touch with them on Monday and was told that they didn't have a suitable vacancy in January but now do, and am I still interested?

An hour and a half after that the estate agent arrived to take the photos for the marketing material, and yesterday my flat went on the market. The board appeared whilst I was out today. That's all a bit weird too, especially the extreme tidiness of (some of) the flat. The living room's slipped backwards, I need to put some clothes away in the bedroom and the landing and spare room are still disaster zones, but it looks pretty good.

Today I had my induction and went to tell my agency that I'm employed and ask about getting a reference and my P45 from them. I might even get some holiday pay, and I'll get my income tax refunded and all sorts of shiny stuff like that. It'll be a month before I get paid from work, as it's payday today and I've not started work yet, but in a month's time everything will start looking a lot easier. Still not in the black, but easier.

I know I've not been around posting a lot lately, but I'm hoping to get back to it soon. As far as fic's concerned I'm working on a few bits and pieces, including some serious research for an original novel, and RL should be more worth talking about soon as well. Everything has just been sucked down a well of 'what now?' for quite a while.

Which reminds me, I need to make a phone call and cancel an interview. They're like buses.