Time & Tech

I'm always a little intimidated when I see tweets saying "just scheduled blog posts for the next 3 months. Yay!!"

My initial reaction is always "woah, REALLY??", accompanied by a mixture of being massively impressed yet slightly sickened by their organisation. Mostly I'm gobsmacked these super-efficient bloggers have the time to write that many posts at once. Do they write super fast? Write really short posts? Already have a massive stock of beautifully edited photos?

Not that I've ever sat down and timed myself but I reckon a blog post can take me anywhere from 30 minutes to 4+ hours, depending on interruptions/how helpful or awkward technology is being/how many photos need editing etc. I'm better and faster when I get into the swing of things. Like with any creative project, I find that as soon as I've started on one thing it sparks off all sorts of ideas. This is where a good notebook is essential, or all those fantastic ideas swiftly disappear into the mist. Where I tend to fall down is finding the time to get things written up and having the equipment available to do it on.

My problem at the moment is that my blogging is restricted by available technology. I'm the happy owner of an iPad and much as I love that for internet browsing, social media and games, it's not ideally set up for blogging.

Neither is my netbook which is getting a bit old and knackered now. It's so hard to edit photos properly on such a small screen, plus it really needs a serious sort out as it's painfully slow at the moment. I mostly use my work pc to blog on (again not the speediest machine in the world but at least it's a proper size) and that means blogging time is restricted to my lunch breaks, or after work. There's only so much you can squeeze into that time period!

This is me when Blogger and PicMonkey both decide not to play ball. It happens often.

I'm plugging along nicely at the moment and have forced myself to be a bit more productive and get things written up and scheduled. It's definitely helped. That feeling that blogging is a chore and that I'm way behind on things hasn't hit me for a while. Weekends start to get quieter for me at this time of year and it seems a shame not to curl on the sofa and get some blogging done. It's going to require a new machine though! I've been looking at Acer laptops and Acer tablets as they seem reliable and reasonably priced (a winning combo, especially so close to Christmas!) but then an ex-colleague popped into work the other day and she had a fab Microsoft Surface tablet with a keyboard/cover thingy and it was so nifty I want one of those too! Decisions, decisions...

How much technology does one girl need?

Organising My Life

I sometimes think that my entire life is written down in one way, shape or form.  I blog. I tweet. I email incessantly.  It might be the digital age but I still like to write as well and it's an odd day when I'm not lugging around one of my 9000 notebooks. I use the notes function on my phone every now and then but let's be honest here, deleting something you've done is NOT as fun as drawing a big line through it.  All the to-do list apps seem to tick things off and that's just not right.

The bulk of my life goes in my diary. When I say diary, I mean writing-down-your-thoughts-diary, not appointment diary. I don't like to call them journals as it always seems a bit American and annoying but you know what I mean. The stack of notebooks in the above photo contains my life for the past 5 years or so.  I started writing a diary a few years before that (in the pre-blogging era) after reading a lot of autobiographies and books of diaries/letters.  It really struck me that we don't have that sense of physical documentation any more. I really don't think anyone will ever want to write an autobiography about a normal girl in Liverpool but if they did, what would they have as a document of my life? A load of scribbled notes and an overflowing email inbox?

I don't write it with any grand sense of purpose.  It's just there as a way of clearing my head at the end of the day and recording what's happened.  It's also very useful for recording what I've read that day - I'd have no chance of remembering them otherwise.  It takes up a certain chunk of time each evening but it's part of my night time routine now and life would be weird without it.

I'm fussy though.  My diaries must be A5 sized and have plain pages.  You wouldn't think they were that difficult to find but the A5 notebook market is about 98% occupied by ruled pages and I hate ruled lines for proper diary writing.  My current one is a beautiful Rob Ryan design.

When it comes to appointment-type diaries, I swear by Paperblanks. I've tried a few different designs and they're all really beautiful. One constant is the size. I struggle with A5 sized diaries for everyday life but these mini ones are big enough to write everything in, small enough to fit in my handbag and deliciously chunky to hold.

Oh work.  So chaotic at the moment that I'm running two massive A4 notebooks full of stuff to do.  The green one, as you can probably tell from the above photo, contains my daily to-do lists. The stripy one is full of slightly longer term planning type stuff. I'll get it all done one day.

For sheer kitsch value I have also this one.  It contains all my novel writing-related ideas and lots of middle of the night scrawls! Does anyone else get their best ideas when they're drifiting off to sleep?

The only thing I didn't have a special notebook for was my blog.  I'm trying to be more organised with it this year but up until a couple of weeks ago that organisation consisted of some scrappy bits of paper, vague ideas in my brain and some draft blog posts with just a title and a sentence written. Must do better.

I saw Rosie's post about personalised planners at the end of January and it spurred me into ordering one for myself.  A short while later this arrived:

The size I chose and the length of my blog name don't quite mesh, but I like the simplicity of it this way.

I chose the beautiful illustration that Sarah did for me on the front cover.

And an Instagram snap of one of my best ever charity shop moments for the back cover. I ninja swooped these Georgette Heyer hardbacks off the shelf in the Oxfam shop in Harrogate last autumn.  They were SO cheap!

A little bit of personalisation on the contact info page...

And a pretty starry header for the top of the pages, and it was done! Well, almost. I also added in a to-do list at the bottom of the other page (we have established that I love a to-do list, right?) and chose the address option for the back pages in the hopes that I might finally get round to writing them all down in the same place. 

I'm super pleased with it.

Storage

Ok, not the most fun concept in the world, I must admit. But I'm one of those weirdos who gets a great sense of satisfaction from putting things away. Probably because I don't do it that often so it's all a bit Mary Poppins-ish to me. My preferred superpower would definitely be the ability to click my fingers and have things snap back into place. Until the wonderful day that happens, I'll just have to do it all by hand.

Yesterday was spent getting the bedroom back into shape. I've been a complete slattern whilst I've been writing so it was in a right state. Amongst the many things that needed sorting out were my suitcases. I love these cases. Pretty and practical.



This is my tights case. Now A Thrifty Mrs, guru of all things organisational and thrifty, has recently written a very good post about organising your drawers but I am not that good. I can organise the heck out of my tights though. No more rummaging through a drawer desperately hunting for the right colour and getting them all tangled together. Not for me.

I roll them, stash them, and this way I can see exactly what colours I've got. Patterned dark tights lie flat on the right hand side because frankly, rolling them is a waste of time. They just look black and you can't see the patterns.

(Most of the coloured tights are from Dorothy Perkins. Their 80 denier tights are wonderful. Loads of different shades and they are practically impossible to ruin. Keep your eyes peeled in the sale too - you can often get them for 50p or £1)

As for the other cases, they hold:


Gloves and woolly hats.


Summer clothes that get packed away so I've actually got space in my wardrobe for all my winter clobber.


And old clothes that I can't bring myself to throw away. That black thing with the blue beaded fringing? I used to go clubbing in that when I was 17. Look at the size of it!

Now if you'll excuse me, I'm off to dust the bookshelves. I may be some time...