Well, by the end of the week, I’d done a load of Pomodoros and got a lot of work done. Very productive indeed. I did start to wilt around mid-afternoon on Friday, though.
The morning began once again over breakfast with me reading the latest book for NetGalley. I’m really enjoying this Christmas story and looking forward to starting the next.
My first Pomodoro was writing up the day’s Pomodoro targets. This is really working for me as I’m not casting around at the start of each Pomodoro wondering what to do next. I’m not even wondering which chore to do in my breaks. But all the chores are being done long before the last break of the day, which means I’m also getting mini breaks as well.
I wrote Friday’s daily blog post, spent 25 minutes on social media, and 25 minutes doing a job search (for when this mad time is done). Then I had two whole Pomodoros working on The Fool, adding 928 words. That’s about right, around 1,000 words per hour. I’m doing 2 x 25 minutes, which is 50 minutes. So it’s about right.
The afternoon started well with some Monkey Dust admin. One of our favourite venues wanted to book them for a few dates next year. We were able to agree on three, so I think they boys will be happy with that.
There were no jobs I wanted to pitch for on the job board, so I went straight into my next Pomodoro, which was Richard Cadbury work. But I only managed one session in the end, adding 245 words. Then I started to wilt.
I did some admin for Goldthorpe Writers. I contacted one of our previous attendees to see how everything was going, and I logged in to NaNoWriMo to ask about the library being a possible write-in venue this year …
… and that’s where it went pear-shaped. Have you seen the new NaNoWriMo site? Go and have a quick look – it’s okay, I’ll wait …
Well? What did you think? I was totally thrown off kilter and ended up having more of an explore than I originally intended. I think they’re still ironing out a few bugs as it had only gone live about two weeks ago. I did manage to get a message through to our Yorkshire liaison volunteer, though, and he said he’d come back to me as soon as he found out how to do things as well.
We had nothing planned for the weekend, but it was busy anyway. Saturday was a glorious day and I managed to get two wash loads on the line before we went out to a farm shop just on the other side of the A1. We bought fresh and local produce from there and then went to visit the mother-in-law.
Then we went back home to drop the dog off and for the poet to watch the Leeds game. When we were ready, we went to a different supermarket to usual to get the rest of the weekly shopping. We’ve not been overly happy with the quality of the produce from our usual supermarket and Sainsbury’s was really the only one left locally that we hadn’t tried. I’ve resisted Sainsbury’s for such a long time, believing it to be madly over-priced …
… and that just goes to show how wrong I was. Most of the stuff we bought was cheaper than at Asda. I think that was the biggest surprise. About two things were about the same price, and about two things were a little dearer. But generally, the weekly shopping here cost around £10 – £15 less than it would have cost at Asda, and I’m taking the farm shop into account as well. Next week, we won’t even bother with the farm shop.
Saturday evening was spent chilling in front of the telly and we were up early on Sunday, hoping for another nice day so that we could go blackberrying and sloe-picking. But it rained. And it rained. And it rained. All day. So instead we busies ourselves with little jobs around the home, such as topping up all the garden bird feeders, tidying the garage, watching more telly and reading.
Sunday’s big news was that I’ve lost half a stone, or 7lb. I’ve not done anything on My Fat Year for so long because, well, I’ve been too busy doing other stuff. But yesterday I awarded myself a “silver seven”.
I baked a pear and almond crumble from the Weight Watchers recipe collection and I made some sugar-free sweets. We’d tried these last week, but they were a disaster. So I tried again this year and they were perfect. I’m not sure they’ll last the recommended “up to do days in the fridge”. I mean, there were only fifteen sweets in all … Next time I might do gummy bears.
I also did some prep work on The Beast Within with a view to working on that during NaNoWriMo this year. And before bed I did today’s first Pomodoro on the phone – I wrote up the day’s Pomodoros.
This morning is going to be my work again, as I have no client work in. Then this afternoon it’s the writers’ group.
