8th April 2024 - Start as I Mean to go On

 Hello everyone,

And here we go!

I needed a week to get myself organised to start this mammoth journey. Over the past week everyone at home has been putting in the effort to make the house clean and decluttered. For the first time in 6 years we have space! Lots of items have been thrown out or donated to others, and I was particularly impressed by how easy it was to let go of the vast majority of the ‘stuff’.

The living room looks livable, the bedrooms are all tidied up, and the kitchen is holding together nicely!

Most importantly though, my tiny little office has been thoroughly decluttered, with literally nothing remaining in it that isn’t useful or designed to inspire me in my times of need. My desk is clean and tidy, there is nothing leaned up against a wall waiting to be sorted out, and all of my tools and boxes, which for some reason I kept in my office (as if I wanted to be close to them??) have now been sorted and stored under the stairs in my now-organised toolbox.

I’ve put a message out on my Facebook profile stating  that I won’t be posting for a month. Social media is the biggest distraction in the universe at the moment, and I want to try and eliminate as many distractions as I can to ensure I stay on track.

It is also important to point out that I write these blog entries the day after. I write some notes in an actual real diary, type it up, go to sleep, and then re-read it and publish it the day after.

Monday was all about reminding myself about how brilliant I can be now that I have a tidy house, and therefore a tidy mind. I re-read the business plan I wrote over Christmas and the New Year. It’s pretty impressive stuff, if I do say so myself, and after some organising, planning, and pep talks to myself, it's time to get on with it.

No distractions remember. No TV, no socials. Just me and my ideas.

And so, for the first time in what seems like years, I had some time to myself to do things I wanted to do. There was no one in my ear telling me to do this or do that, meet a deadline for a project that I shouldn’t have been involved in, and no one putting me under pressure to do some work for them that I had no motivation to actually do.

It was lovely. One of the end results is this very blog post. Having read it back, it iis very wishy-washy and full of the best type of nonsense - words I typed up freely and in my own time.

I adapted and corrected my Business Plan too, and have a good understanding of what my first goal of this new version of The Legend of Skippy has to be. We are going right back to the very beginning…of the day! Start the day the right way by making your bed. We will explore this in more detail over the coming days as I create the media around this idea, and I will share it all with you through this very blog.

I did more things too! I sold an unwanted computer and laptop to a gentleman who wanted something for his kid to use for college and university. It is the first time I have sold some technology for a few months, and it felt good to do it.

And that was my day - planning, typing, getting motivated, and selling.

On the evening I had a casual meeting to go to, the Hartlepool Referee’s Association monthly meeting (I have been a football referee for 6 years now, a great way to get some fitness into my life), and we had this rather brilliant presentation from an Assistant Referee, who works at the Championship level in the English Football League about, about communication and working as a team. He showed us some contentious video clips around key match decisions, and gave us the time to talk amongst ourselves about what was the right decision in each scenario, all in such a way to encourage us to come to a unanimous decision. It was good, I really enjoyed it.

And just like that my first day of working on my own projects has ended. What a good day it was.