Time for a Catch Up, an Update Post

It feels so long since I’ve done a blog post, I know last time I said I’d be back and posting more but I’ve ended up busier and with less energy than I thought for blogging so it sort of got left behind while I sort other things out. I’m back now though and being more realistic about how often I’ll post now.

I thought I’d do a bit of an update post, catch you up on how my life has been and a few goals that I decided to set myself. Though a few of them haven’t been going great looking at my blogging so far!

Another 2018 Goals Update

I did originally plan to do an update every three months but my last one was in March so you can see how well that went! I can’t believe how quickly 2018 has gone, so much seems to have happened but in so little time. Having got a notification saying I’ve just had my 4 year anniversary I thought I’d look back at the goals I set way back in January and see how I’m doing.

I tend to see goals as something to aim for, but still keep them flexible. I’ve found that if I’m too rigid with these things it’s easy to get discouraged and give up. Things change, life gets in the way, making realistic goals helps me to stick to them and I love that feeling when you achieve something. It’s like that feeling of crossing off things on a list. I think I just like lists in general.

Introducing Stormy the Puppy!

This was going to be part of an update post I had planned at the beginning of August but it never happened so Stormy gets his own post now. I have to admit that I forgot how tiring a puppy can be, our last one was 14 years ago, and it has kind of taken most of my energy making sure he goes out when he needs to and pretty much resting when he does so my blogging may have suffered a bit. Also I’m doing a customer service course now from home so that’s another factor, but this is about the puppy!

July didn’t start as a great month as our 14 year old dog, Ricky, died. He had a heart condition and never got on well with the heat so the heat wave did sort of finish him. He was a great dog and had a good life but it was his time.

We weren’t expecting to get a dog so soon afterwards but a friend knew someone at dog training who had puppies and Stormy was one of them. He’s a bit of a mix, his dad is a Labrador and mum looks like a lurcher but might be a rottweiler retriever cross.

It’s going to be interesting to see how he turns out. He’s already almost the size of our old dog and he’s not even four months old!

So far we know he loves water, that’ll be fun when we go places with lakes, and he seems to attract leaves and sticks in his fluffy fur. He’s also not sure what to do with new toys that squeak, he’s still a puppy then.

I won’t spam here with a load of posts about him, though he’ll probably creep into any update posts, especially as we’re probably taking him puppy training, or trying it out anyway. But there will probably be quite a lot on my Instagram if you want to see more of him as he grows up.

Self Hosting a Blog

I feel like I’m a few steps behind with this, it’s something I’ve considered before but it seemed a lot of hassle. However, partly thanks to the fact WordPress now refuses to work on any of my internet browsers, I feel like it’s time to take the step, or at least seriously consider it and start taking the steps towards it. One big problem is, I’m not actually sure where to start with this!

I know a lot of you guys might already be self hosting your blogs so I thought I’d ask and see what you recommend. I’d like to be able to transfer everything over, I’m half tempted just to change to a premium account with WordPress to keep it all simple, and I know that’s a big pain. I also know that if I’m properly concentrating on my blog now it makes sense considering how little money it costs per month, or it can anyway, and how much of a difference it can apparently make when it comes to be taken seriously in the eyes of companies.

Looking Back at 2017

I feel I should start this post with a bit of an apology for the lack of posts the past week. I planned on doing daily posts for the Twelve Days of Christmas Ciate Calendar but it felt a bit forced and they’d be so short but I’m going to be doing them on my Instagram for the rest of the twelve days if you’re interested and then a final post on everything as a round up. Christmas always takes up more energy than I think it will so there’s been a lot of resting and a trip out to the Lush sales, the haul will be coming soon.

Everyone seems to be looking back at the highlights of 2017 and it got me thinking about the year. I have to say it definitely wasn’t the best year, a couple of the things that happened weren’t great at the time but did have positive longer term effects and I think I’ve ended 2017 more motivated than I started the year. I think that probably happens for everyone every year so maybe it’s me remembering differently.

So let’s begin the look back at 2017. I feel like there should be some wobbly effect on the screen and some kind of music like in TV series saying that.

A Bit of a Catch Up

I thought, as I’ve been away for a few weeks, I’d start blogging again with a bit of a catch up. I haven’t really done that much of an update on my goals, my planned no buy September and what I’m doing with the blog coming up. I’ve actually found that the few weeks off, though the reason for the break wasn’t great, has actually helped me clear my head and get more focussed on what I’m going to do with my blog, or want to anyway.

I did get a bit stuck in a rut, despite posting about trying to get out of it before, and did find myself wondering whether I should keep blogging before all of this happened as you look around and see newer blogs doing better with views and likes and things and getting more companies working with them and it did sort of sit there in the back of my mind. However, having had the break, I’m really looking forward to blogging more and have ideas as well as all the things I had planned on posting the past few weeks.

When You Realise You’ve Been Saving the Photos Wrong

Sorry guys, I just realised today that, for some reason my Photoshop has been saving my photos as gifs rather than jpegs meaning they look a bit odds don’t have the same quality as they did before I started using it again. I’m not going to redo the posts I’ve already done, though I may replace the photos in the most recent one, but I’ll be going through and redoing all the pictures for the posts I haven’t posted yet. It’s odd how they looked completely fine on Photoshop, even opening older ones to edit, but on here they just look weird, or maybe that’s just me.

Anyway, not much of a reason for this post except hopefully the picture quality will be better again and I only just noticed it was weird in the first place! I guess that’s a problem with mainly using my phone to check up on my blog. There should be a post up tonight, so back to your regular scheduled blogging… kind of. I’m a bit off on the days this week.

Scotland Holiday and 2 Years!

I’ve not been here for a few days, the past couple of posts were scheduled so sorry if I missed any comments or replies. I’ve not been great about keeping up with blogs I’m reading, I’ll get better at that I promise. I’m back now and going to be doing a few posts on the small holiday in Scotland as we went and saw a few things. As you can see Duff House and Huntly Castle are two of them, will post more on them another day but they’re both worth looking at if you like wandering around castle ruins or old houses with lots of art. We also went and saw the Kelpies and the Falkirk Wheeel and saw some small towns and villages. Nothing to do with any specific thing we saw but they had the Iron Broo Rock and I love Irn Bru so I had to try it. I will do more or a post, or posts, next week but it took a lot out of me so it’s going to be a few days of resting to get over it all. I do love visiting new places but it does take a while to get over it afterwards. These posts will probably be up the middle of next week when I’ve got all the photos uploaded and remembered where everything was taken! 

Another reason for this post was that when I was away I passed my two year anniversary for this blog! I can’t believe it’s been 2 years I’ve been posting on here and thanks to everyone who reads my post Some! There’s over 200 people following me, I think I missed posting that milestone, and it might not seem like many to a lot of you but to have that many people think my blog is worth following is great so thank you! And here’s to another two years (or more)! 😄

ME, Myself and I: Writing with ME

I know a while ago I started to post about various hobbies that might be possible or things to look into if you have ME as something to do. One thing that I have found useful and a great stress reliever when I have the energy is writing. Whether it’s writing a diary, writing stories or writing blog posts it helps a lot at times.

One thing with ME that I found hard to deal with at first was how isolating it is, it was quite depressing at times and the whole situation was frustrating to me. I found that writing helped me to get away from it, to escape for a bit. I know it does take a fair amount of energy sometimes but there are smaller things you can write that might help you to feel better like finding and writing down inspirational quotes for on a wall or writing down what you’ve achieved today in a diary.

Happy New Year!

I hope you’ve had a good night, I stayed in and watched TV all evening. Not the most exciting thing ever but it was nice and relaxing.

I’ve not manages to do the posts I was planning, a combination of ME, overdoing it around Christmas and some fun side effects of a new medication kind of drained me of most of my energy. I do have some Christmas related posts to do including the things I used for my Christmas and New Year makeup (yes I did it for TV watching, sometimes it’s fun to play with it anyway). I have successfully managed to plan a post about it and then forget to photograph it until the exact moment I start to use my makeup remover. I’ll probably just redo it and see if I can get it looking OK another day. I’ve also got plenty of ideas including my Christmas presents and roundups of my advent calendars. I think this is the first time I’m this organised about blogging, I actually have a good long list of posts!

Also, a quick question before I finish this post. Does anyone know of any good new year/end of year tags for blogs? I haven’t really been on here much recently but haven’t seen many that I can remember in my feed and the couple I do remember seeing I can’t remember who did them, sorry! I just think it’s fun to do these tags and I realised I haven’t done one in ages.

Anyway, I’ll shut up now, just a bit of an update and to say happy new year! I hope 2016 is a good one for all of us!