10 Things I'm Good At

Forgive me for shamelessly nicking this idea from Janet, Louisa and Sarah but I loved their posts so much that I wanted to have a go myself. My list is scarily similar to Janet's. I feel like we might actually be the same person, just with different coloured hair.

Anyway, I digress. This is a list of 10 things that I'm really good at. I am suppressing hard my natural inclination to add "but" to the end of all of these. These are good, solid things that I kick arse at and I'm not ashamed to blow my own trumpet.


Reading. Probably not a surprise to anyone who has seen the amount of books I own. I read a lot. An awful lot. Also I read mega fast. I take great pleasure in seeing the recommended reading time that programmes like Scribd suggest for a book. I usually come in at about a third of it.

On a related note...

Recommending books. This is always an inexact science because it's v. tricky to find someone whose tastes exactly match your own, however I've read enough books to make a decent stab at recommending titles to people who are in search of a particular thing.

Remembering places and navigating. I don't get it when people say they don't understand maps. Maps are easy. There's no room for you in my family if you can't navigate down Z roads in the middle of nowhere in search of elusive historical sites. I have a good memory for places too. If I've been somewhere once, I'll recognise it a second time, even if I come across it from a different direction.

Proof-reading. Not for nothing am I known as the Grammar Police at work. They bought me a policeman's helmet and everything. If you need your letter/email/article/leaflet/sign/presentation to be checked and edited, I'm your woman.

Buying presents. I hope I'm good at this... I think I am! I will not buy dull gift sets or generic crap for people. I pay close attention to little things that people say they like or mentions they make of things and then if they haven't already bought them, I'll snap them up for birthdays or Christmas. I think about things, basically.

My job. Which you would hope most people would be good at, right? Especially when they've been doing it for 10 years. But I'm not ashamed to say that I'm really good at my job. I work really hard and I get excellent annual reviews. It's a completely different beast from the role I started off doing in 2005 but ten years on I think they would genuinely struggle to directly replace me. Finding someone who can do all your admin, phone & email customer service for 120k visitors, be in charge of records management and compliance, run and help with some kick-ass events, manage 250+ volunteers, write the content for the websites, keep on top of social media, generally solve all the problems, run a booking system and deal with the myriad associated transfers/problems/date changes for 10k visitors a year, plus the million and one other things I get called upon to do that I can't remember right now, yeah, that would be tricky.

Budgeting. Go me: I saved up a deposit and bought my own house, all whilst earning less than the national average. I budget like a champ. Separate accounts for car spending and presents shopping and everything. I like to know where my money goes.

Being on my own. I live on my own, I quite often go on holiday on my own and I see absolutely nothing scary about taking myself out for a cinema date and meal. Love it. Work makes me be a lot more extroverted than I'm naturally inclined to be, so I truly relish time by myself. Company is all well and good but there's nothing nicer than pottering around by yourself. Solitary bliss.

Sleeping. Like an actual log. Face down in the pillows, looking like a dead person. Very little wakes me up. I have awesome dreams and the handy knack of being able to wake up, go back to sleep and pick up where I left off with the dream. It's great fun.

Decorating. I did have to delegate ceiling-painting to my dad, purely because I'm too short to do it comfortably, but almost all of the rest of my house was done by me and Mum. If there's a vertical surface, I either painted or wallpapered it (hey, I even peeled 47 layers of disgusting wallpaper off it first). I'm handy with sandpaper and a tube of Polyfilla. I can hang pictures. I can finangle carpet and lino cut-offs to fit inside cupboards (woo Stanley knife). I am shit-hot at putting together Ikea furniture. I own a toolkit. I am woman, hear me roar.