At the beginning of the year, I made a promise to myself that this was going to be the year that I stopped taking my good health for granted and made more of an effort to take care of my body. I joined the gym and was going 2-3 times a week, as well as going out for lunchtime walks whenever I could. I was really proud of myself that I kept this going, but I have a confession to make.

Since breaking up with my ex in August, I have surprised myself with my emotional resilience, but for some reason I haven’t been able to get any enthusiasm for keeping in shape. I’ve also resisted going for walks at lunchtime and spent my breaks sitting in the staff lounge, which is hardly inspiring. Actually, it depends who is in there, but you know what I mean, fresh air is much better for you. Today it was sunny, so I hooked up to my iPod and went for a walk in the park.

While I was still feeling enthusiastic, I booked myself onto the bums and tums class at the gym. I can’t believe I have been so lazy, I can even see the gym out of my office window, that is how little effort is needed on my part to go. The class was good fun, but challenging too. There are only so many squats and lunges you can do before you want to run away and then realise you can’t because your legs have actually turned to jelly.

It was only when I was in the shower afterwards that I realised why I had been resisting the gym. For a split second while I was under the water, I started to plan my evening in my head, which included going “home” to my ex. Then I had to stop myself and put a new picture there. Sure I will have an association with the gym and my old routine for a while, but now I need to build a new one. It’s just a matter of replacing the old pictures with new ones.

Who knows what they may look like?

My intention was always to blog first, think about money later. That “how much is your blog worth” widget was a bit of a joke to start with. Over a year into my blog, I can say with confidence that my interest in blogging has definitely kept on going, through many ups and downs. But recently I’ve been thinking about how to make some money from my blog.

Let me be clear, I don’t want to get involved with those sleazy sales letters and mail lists that turn out to be a load of spam. I’ve signed up to enough of them to realise that the majority are a load of rubbish, and are just there to hook you in to buying something. But I would like to be able to get more readers for my blog, and hopefully offer something that is of value to them. If I make some money out of providing people with something they value, then I don’t have a problem with that.

There seem to be many ways of monetizing your blog: adsense, promoting affiliate products, sponsorship and loads of others. However, I came upon this report by a cute guy with big hair called Yaro Starak who is a professional blogger and provides online training for aspiring bloggers. It’s called the Blog Profits Blueprint, and sure, he promotes a paid product within it, but unlike some “free” reports it actually offers valuable information that you can use. Plus I quite like cute guys with big hair There is even an audio version which is the version I downloaded, and there is about an hour of useful stuff.

Whether you decide to buy his course or not, I’d still say this report was worth downloading, it costs you nothing and there are plenty of good ideas in to help you improve your blog whether you wish to monetize it or not.

Just a quick post to say that Vegan Month of Food is almost upon us. Throughout October, there will be yummy vegan foodie posts taking over blogland, it will be like a mini-revolution!

If you want to see who else is participating, or would like to have a go yourself, get yourself on over to the Post-Punk Kitchen now!

I have just completed my first vegan cake – adapted from one of my mother’s omni cookbooks. But you will have to wait until October to see the results!

I wish the local pony club wouldn’t use our front path…

Enjoy Wordless and check out my favourite wordless post of today.

I was looking for something else and the book fell open at this page. Rather appropriate, given what I wrote in the previous post.

Failure is an opportunity.

If you blame someone else there is no end to the blame.

Therefore, the Master fulfills her own obligations, and corrects her own mistakes.

She does what she needs to do and demands nothing of others.

Yep, the universe know what it’s doing all right!

A little while back I blogged about how failure is an essential step on the road to success. Well, I still believe that I am on the road to a successful life, however I have just pulled over for a little while to admire the view

Since I split up with my ex, I have been looking at buying my own place. If you are thinking that goes against everything that everyone else is doing at the moment, then you are right, but I never let going with the crowd influence me before, I’m not about to start that nonsense now. The house that I was buying (that’s not it in the picture, that is a fantasy house that I could never afford!) turns out to have so many problems with it that I have decided not to buy. I will be several hundred pounds out of pocket due to the cost of the survey that gave me the bad news and solicitors’ fees, but I know that by pulling out now I am doing the right thing. Apart from the money, I just don’t need the aggravation, and with a house that’s 150 years old, chances are that there will always be something that needs doing.

Problems included:damp, dry rot in the timbers, floor needing repairing/replacing, chimney flashing needed replacing, gutter needed replacing… the list goes on and on. Sure, I could get an estimate and get the value of it off the house, or insist that the vendor gets it fixed before I buy, but here’s the other thing. The vendor is what is known as “mortgagee in possession” which basically means that it is a company that bought the debt after the previous owner had their mortgage foreclosed. Maybe I’m superstitious, but part of me was never 100% comfortable with getting a house at a knock-down price on the back of someone else’s misfortune. Coupled with the fact that the way house prices are going at the moment I could end up seriously out of pocket should I need to sell, it was starting to feel like a millstone I don’t need and I hadn’t even signed anything yet. My feelings this evening since reading the surveyor’s report have gone from hope, to disappointment, to a kind of relief. I was starting to feel that I was being taken along a rollercoaster ride, and I’m happy to get off and say “no deal”.

But as usual, I learned something. I now know a lot more about how one goes about buying a house than I did a month ago, including the seemingly endless cast of characters chasing your cash. I also would advise anyone thinking of buying a house (if anyone still is) to pay for an independent survey. I’m not sure how it works in other countries, but here in the UK, the onus is on the buyer to make sure they have all the information they need before making a purchase. It may cost you, but it means that if you do decide to buy you are making an informed decision. I could have saved £300 ($600) by not having a survey, but then paid £71,000 ($142,000) for a money pit of a house. Part of me feels foolish for getting this far involved, but I am glad that I am only losing a couple of hundred pounds rather than tens of thousands, and then throwing even more money at an “investment” that’s never going to come good.

I am also lucky that my folks are happy to have me here. Sometimes I feel a bit like I am taking advantage of their good nature, even though I always make sure I am paying my way. But they would rather have me here than make a really bad decision on buying a property, I’m sure. They have got used to me coming back after failed job situations and failed relationships, and we get on pretty well. The road to success has some interesting detours sometimes, and if these things build character, then I have some to spare.

Picture credit *Susie*

Photo credit: jurvetson

During the last month or so, my head has been a bit of a crazy place to be. I have been tempted to give up meditating, because when I do, some days it feels as if my head is going to explode. That twenty minutes each morning is the one place where I can’t escape from myself. I see my thoughts go past, like carnival floats, and try not to get caught up in them. I just watch them pass, making an effort not to get involved in the drama, but this is not easy. On other days, I will have a sublime experience, I will see the purple light and feel my consciousness beginning to shift. Sometimes you need to work through stuff to come out on the other side.

When my thoughts about what is going on in my life are overwhelming me, I have thought about giving up. Deep down, though, I know that it is exactly at times like these that a ritual like meditation is especially valuable. It has helped me get into a new routine, a new normal, for the time being at least.

At the moment, this routine is working for me:

6:20 – Alarm goes off, get up, go to bathroom, clean teeth. Then I will have my 20 minutes meditation, sitting on the bedroom floor. It’s nice not being banished downstairs to meditate anymore!

After meditating I will have a shower, breakfast and leave the house about 8am. I like a nice leisurely morning routine and would rather get up early so I can wake up nice and gradually. I am the sort of person who likes a nice routine in the morning. Other times of day I am more flexible, but in the morning I get a lot of comfort from doing things nice and just so.

I have read that it can be beneficial to have a second meditation session in the afternoon, for example after returning from work. My afternoons tend not to be so structured as my mornings, so I will stick with the morning routine, and maybe fit in a couple of afternoon sessions. I think that you benefit more from doing these meditations on a regular basis, around the same time of day, every day.

What do you think? Do you find a routine helps you in a morning? Or do you hate the very idea?

I don’t often write about my job in any great detail, for obvious reasons. But as I shared my apprehension about the Jobs Fair I had been organising since July, I thought I would let you know how it went, and what I learned from it.

Friday was the Christmas Jobs Fair. Maybe a little early for Christmas, you may be thinking? I totally agree, however most of the stores in town recruit for their seasonal staff around this time as the run up to Christmas begins in earnest towards the end of October, and by the time the Christmas lights get switched on around the end of November, it’s murder in the mall, and I stay well away. Seriously, between mid-November and the end of January, I won’t go in to town, it’s way too claustrophobic for me.

After what seemed like forever, the day arrived. When I didn’t get the number of replies I had hoped for by the end of August, I set out cold calling every store in town. I went through the phone book, and although the first call nearly killed me, I soon had a sales patter going and managed to get another few businesses on board that way.

Friday arrived. By 9am, my student staff had arrived and employers were starting to show up. So far so good. 9:30 came and then I noticed that the hall was starting to look rather empty. So I decided to call some of the businesses that were supposed to be coming:

Business #1 – Oh, sorry, we don’t know anything about it (this after replying to my initial letter, confirming verbally two weeks ago and having received an information pack earlier on in the week).

Business #2 – Well, we’ve decided not to recruit any seasonal staff (thanks for letting me know)

Business #3 – Oh the guy who was coming was taken ill yesterday (I’ll send him a get well card then – ironic as this business was a greetings card store!).

Seriously, this was about the worst thing that could happen. “OK,” I said to myself, “Stay calm”. I went back to the hall and looked around. I did some positive affirmations in my head. Then, at 9:50 (we were due to open at 10), the local council arrived with 6 staff members. At least I had plenty of room for them! I spread them out on to a couple of the tables which had been left by the companies which had dropped out.

The photographer came mid-morning as planned. At least there were some exhibitors and students for her to photograph. At about 1pm, a guy with a camera and one of those furry mic things arrived. I had no idea he was coming. And I had to do an interview. OK, so it was only a short interview, but had I known he was coming, then I could have prepared some kind of blurb. After about 4 takes he had something he could use. It’s going to be put up on the college website, so I hope I don’t sound like a total moron.

By 2pm, it was all over. Although we had experienced a few quiet moments, over 400 students passed through the doors, and I got loads more registrations for the Job Shop (more paperwork for Monday!). I was so glad when it was finished, but I learned that yes I can organise an event, and next time it’ll be even better. I learned that cold calling is not that scary when you realise it is all a numbers game. I learned that next time I organise a college event to be prepared to talk about it on camera! I also learned that when things beyond your control go awry, the show must go on.

If you haven’t heard of Susan Jeffers, I’m willing to bet that you’ve heard of her best-selling book Feel the Fear and Do it Anyway! You might not know that Jeffers received countless rejections of her manuscript, including one editor who commented that “Lady Di could be cycling nude down the street giving this book away and no-one would read it”.

I first heard of Susan Jeffers some time in the mid-90s on a daytime talk show. They were discussing Feel the Fear, and I identified with it. I was in my late teens at the time and I was building up my self confidence from a base of practically zero. It was around this time that I first experienced depression, and the fact that someone had written a book which could have been for me personally touched me deeply.

Through Feel the Fear, we learn that there is only really one fear, the fear that if x, y or z thing that we are scared should come to pass WE WON’T BE ABLE TO HANDLE IT! And there it is, whatever happens, good, bad or just plain frustrating, you can and will handle it. You will handle it because there is no other option!

Whatever life hands me, I’ll handle it!

Susan Jeffers knows what she is talking about. As a young woman, she did the expected thing of marrying young and having two children. However, she had that feeling that she should be doing more with her life (how many of us have that feeling but ignore it?). Susan went back to study and eventually gained a PhD in psychology. After ending her first marriage of 16 years she went to work on the Floating Hospital in New York as executive director. That time of being single and meeting challenging situations of some of New York’ neediest people head on gave Susan a lot of the experience she draws on in her writing.

Susan lost one of her breasts to cancer, so she has had plenty of life experience in “handling it”. Just before leaving the Floating Hospital and starting her writing career, she met her current husband Mark Shelmerdine. Through wisdom and insight which can only be gained through experience, she shares with us in matter of fact yet caring way, how we can carry on despite what may be going on in our lives, that no matter how bleak things may seem, we don’t know what may be waiting for us around the corner.

This short You Tube clip captures the essence of Feel the Fear beautifully.

Say yes to your universe

What makes Jeffers special for me is that although she advocates positive thinking and focusing on the best of who you are, she also encourages her readers not to deny the pain that life sometimes causes. Pain is not simply caused by a lack of positive attitude, she argues, but is part of life’s experiences. Sometimes we all have to visit the Land of Tears. Lift yourself out of the victim mindset and find strength from the challenges that life is giving you. Accept them and grow from them, that is the difference between the pain of YES (growing pains) and the pain of NO (denial).

Rediscovery

My friends and family know that I love to declutter and that includes books! The majority of books, I read, enjoy, learn from and pass on to someone else (excluding reference books which I refer to). Following the breakup of my relationship of nearly three years, I rediscovered End the Struggle and Dance with Life, which I have been re-reading. I figured that since I had kept this book, it must be good, and since life was feeling a bit of a struggle, a re-read seemed appropriate. I was not disappointed! I also found the cassette tape of Inner Talk for a Confident Day, fortunately my car is so old it still has a cassette player!

I will leave you with one of my favourite affirmations from Inner Talk for a Confident Day, which I listen to on my car stereo when I feel life dragging me down.

Today, I take the time to truly care. I reach out and touch. I open up to the pain in other people’s lives and respond with compassion.

Thank you Susan for the inspiration that you have brought to so many people’s lives around the world.

If you would like to read about other heroes of healing, please visit the Heroes of Healing group writing project at Heal Pain Naturally.

This a tune from the “Doug” cartoon which was shown on Nickelodeon in the early 90s, re-enacted by some strange youths. (Note: these are not our students). Who would have thought the humble bean curd could have inspired such a thing?

Please forgive me, it’s been a weird old day, what with the Jobs Fair (3 employers dropped out this very morning), I am relieved it is over until next year and at least I have some experience of event organising to build on now.