I promised you (me) that I'd update you (me) on my novel progress. Now that Nanowrimo is over I can say it's been a mixed success.

First up, I didn't complete my novel. That was a bit of a day dream really. Second up, I didn't reach 100,000 words by the end of November. I did get to 92,000. So, although I could get annoyed by my lack of completion, I'm satisfied (if not exactly ecstatic) that I managed to write as much as I did in November. Nano got me into a steady writing pattern that I'm grateful for.

So what next?

Well, most obvious answer is 'complete the first draft of the novel'. I don't even think there's that much to do on it. 20,000 words would be enough to get the story finished. If I could get back into the 1,000 words a day habit that would only be 20 days. 20 days! I could be finished by January 1st. Hey, now that sounds like a plan.

being a nanorebel

It's been a few years since I attempted Nanowrimo  but I thought I'd use the pressure of an end of November deadline to get my novel finished.

The 'Novel' has been a work in progress for at least 5 years. I've written over 200,000 words and had until recently only 50,000 words to show for it. Crazy. I know it's crazy. Stop saying that.

So, rather than start a new novel in November, I was determined to sit down and kick my existing work into shape. Armed with a copy of the beta version of Scrivener (now out of beta), I worked out what was going wrong and got rid of all the sections that were bogging down my writing.

The novel feels like it might finally get finished. I'm now back up to 85,000 and on target to get to at least 100,000 words by the end of November. I don't really see any reason why I shouldn't be able to finish it by end of November.

I suppose some good has come from this.

• The pressure of Nanowrimo has taught me that I can actually write fast if I know what the characters are meant to be doing. In one half hour writing sprint, I managed 1000 words.
• I shouldn't give up on something.
• My muse only cooperates if I show up to work every day.
• Walks are good at working out specific problems.
• When I don't know what's going to happen next, I shut up and listen to my characters. They've surprised me a few times by telling me exactly what they would do in certain situations.

I'll check in on 1 December and share with you where I've got to.

Keeping my Google+ streams simple

Google+ is great. I honestly believe it. I've used it to interact with people who share similar interests as me and it's been very rewarding so far. However, some people might struggle to get to grips with it at first. Coming from Facebook, the main 'Stream' can seem a bit barren until you start circling (following) others. And this was the tricky part for the first few weeks - knowing who to circle. 

Features have been rolled out recently that has helped immensely with this. Being able to search across posts, helps you find people posting about the things you care about. But the biggest thing in my opinion was the ability to share circles. This meant that if someone had gone to the trouble to build up a circle say of Authors, they could share that group with everyone else. If you were then to add that circle, you could suddenly have another 200 or so people in your stream. Great. More content.

Or not.

What this really led to was a lot of noise.

In my case, my friends were suddenly a drop in the ocean compared to this sudden inrush of posts from complete strangers.

Google haven't really posted any advice about how to 'fix' this.

In the meantime I've adopted some advice from a fellow Google +er. 

1. Create a new circle called 'Following'.
2. From your Circles page, drag it to the start of your circles (top left-most position).
3. Go through your circles and select those that you want to interact with. For me this is friends, and those from my other streams that I've interacted with. 
4. Drag those people into your Following circle.

And that's it.

If you've got a lot of people in your circles this might sound like a lot of effort, but I've got 1000 people and I raced through my circles in five minutes. If you think you've missing someone, you can always add them later.

Now, I have my following stream appear directly underneath my main stream. I ignore the main stream and generally click on the following stream to see what's going on. I've kept all my other circles as well and still use them when I want to immerse myself in the Authors or Artists stream.

what has gone wrong with the morning routine?

Time for a little honesty now. I hate getting out of bed in the dark and as such my morning routine has really suffered. For over four months I was getting up before the rest of the house, going out for a run and getting back in time to do some writing before the children woke up.

Now though, the running has taken a back seat. And that back seat, is on the back of a bus, somewhere a million miles from here.

I still am out of bed every day before the kids get up, and that’s still an achievement. A lot of days, I’m able to get some writing done before they are awake. But selfishly, I want more than that.

It was much simpler when I woke up, threw my running gear on, and ran a mile or two before working. But now that I’m not doing that, there’s a horrible feeling of guilt that I’m not doing enough. I understand that this is normal and doesn’t mean anything of the sort. The reality is that I’m up and about, looking after the kids, going to work, and still making good daily progress to by novel. All of this is good stuff. I shall make a note.

Good stuff.

Let’s see what tomorrow brings.

the new batch has arrived

We've been prepping the chicken shed for the last few weeks and today we went to get our new flock. A nice little poultry farm in Tarleton.

Two White Stars that will lay white eggs, and three brown hybrids (can't for the life of me remember what the farm called them). So, in a few weeks time that'll be around 30 eggs a week (usually count on 6 a week from each hen).

They seem quite settled in the chicken shed. Only two of them chose to venture outside in the run though. Not surprising since the White Stars have been raised in a barn and have never even seen outside. Hoping tomorrow, once they see the brown ones go out again, they'll get braver.

Had to clip their wings as well today. Good excuse to handle them. They can be very cute when you're holding them.

Hope Freddie Fox keeps away.

productivity versus simplicity

I used to be a big follower of Leo Babauta's blog Zen Habits. Several years ago, the site used to be a great place to go to for simple productivity advice. I honestly believe that the advice I picked up from that, and his book 'Zen to Done' has helped keep me sane in the workplace. However, now that Leo has changed track somewhat and is happy to throw away the productivity advice, it feels right that I should reconsider what I've learnt and look at how I want to continue going forward.

I've been following the advice in Zen to Done for about four years and have a list of 3-4 'Most Important Things' to do each day. This has been great as it allows me to focus on tasks that will add value rather than tasks that will keep me busy.

The weekly review is the checks and balances part of the system. Once a week, I look at my goals, my tasks, my notes, and get things ready for the week ahead. This is a good time to be honest and evaluate whether the work I'm doing week in, week out, is contributing in a positive way to my goals.

The most important tool in my productivity arsenal (not sure if that's good, that I'm using military metaphors), is undoubtedly Remember the Milk. This task logging website has been at the core of my work for over four years. Essentially just a way to create tasks and organise into lists, its beauty lies in its tagging system and the flexibility to use whatever system you like to manage your work. Although free, I've been a paying pro member for the last couple of years just because I value it so highly. Whatever productivity system I choose to go with (or not), there's always going to be a place for Remember the Milk in my day to day life.

So, am I happy with my productivity system or should I throw it all away like Leo suggests and follow a simpler path? My system with Remember the Milk is anything but simple. If I tried to explain to anyone what I was doing with it, they'd be confused by the second sentence. But it does work well for me. Would I like it to be simpler? Yes. Would I like to throw away the productivity system completely and just follow my passions? Yes.

But, I live in a world where that simply isn't possible. I have a job that demands that certain tasks get done by certain dates. I've got a busy family life that's only going to get busier as the children get older, and I've got dreams I want to see fulfilled. My overriding concern through life is to be happy. And right now that means having some control over my day, whilst giving my dreams the attention they deserve.

Any thoughts?

chrome vs Internet Explorer - the rematch

I can't seem to make my mind up.
I mentioned a while ago that due to some issues with some of the websites we use in work, I'd switched from using Chrome to using Internet Explorer. I was quite happy with this - for a time. Then recently, a few things have happened that have made me reassess this:

• The sites that were causing a problem before, started working with Chrome.
• Our IT department stopped blocking Dropbox. I was an avid user of dropbox for syncing my files between several computers. When IT blocked it, I switched to using Windows Live Mesh, which was OK, but it didn't give me some of the features of Dropbox like iPhone access, or version control. Now that dropbox is available to me, I've no reason to use Windows Live Mesh (which was made easier when using Internet Explorer).
• Google went mad and started refreshing all of the UI for their major products. I guess this would work OK in Internet Explorer but it was like a siren's call bringing me back to the Google fold.

I feel a bit bad about leaving Internet Explorer behind, but it's still a fair bit away from where Chrome is offering me.

running update

I am still running. Admittedly not as often as I was when I started the new habit. In April, I started off by running every day, and this continued until probably the middle of July when I started allowing myself a day off here and there. Right now, I'm getting out about four times a week. The biggest hurdle has been the darker mornings. I hate getting up in the dark as it is, and getting up to go outside when it all sounds a bit miserable out there - well on some mornings that's been just too much. However, I have been out in the dark and wet, and once I'm out there and running I can't say I really notice it. The aim has never been to get fit; I have no plans to take part in any races. The point of the running was to get me up in the morning and find that bit of 'me' time before the house wakes up.

Even if I choose not to go running, I don't lie in bed. I'll get up, grab a coffee, and sit down to do some writing. This new morning routine has been hugely impactful on my happiness. Every day, even if I get no time to do anything else that I might want, I know I've had that little bit of time in the morning to write. This makes it so much easier to commit to time spent with the family, playing with the kids, being present for them. And when it comes to the crunch, that's what I want to be. A dad who was present.

keeping blogs simple

So, I've moved my blog again back to its original home. I've been using wordpress for a while but since the latest update to Blogger, I thought I'd bring the blog back under Google.
Interested to see if this gets any hits from my Google+ contacts.
I think this qualifies as a move towards keeping my life simpler. I was finding it very tricky to find what I needed to do in Wordpress. Hopefully, the new Google user interface for Blogger will be an improvement.

simple drawings

I wrote in my notebook last week three words. I don’t yet know what the impact of this act is going to be, but right now, I’m pretty enthused about the possibilities. And the words were:

learn to draw

In my job as a technical writer, I often find myself needing to convey conceptual information to an audience. In the sphere of accounting, a lot of the material is very dry, but we deal with technology and computers – things that aren’t necessarily part of an accountants’ vocabulary. Illustrations and diagrams would help with this, but I don’t really know where to start, and when I do start, I get hung up on the tool to use and find myself floundering in the sea of endless artistic possibilities.

A colleague goes into meetings armed with felt tip pens and A3 paper, and rather than taking notes, he draws the information he wants to absorb from the meeting. As a business analyst learning a new subject, he finds this the easiest way to digest lots of information quickly. I saw the drawings, and was immediately jealous. What he was producing was simple, colourful, effective, and perhaps most importantly, looked a whole lot of fun.

I decided to follow through my original thought and learn to draw.

Thinking about it now, I used to enjoy drawing when i was younger. It used to feature in my creative work as a child. When I wanted to tell a story, it wasn’t automatically prose I chose to use, it was comic book form. To keep myself entertained, I’d occasionally take a picture I’d like and try to copy it. This wasn’t something that I was encouraged to do, I just decided to go and do it. If I found it a good creative output when I was a child, there’s no reason why I shouldn’t feel the same way about it now.

This last weekend, I paid a trip to the library and came back with a couple of books on drawing. I visited the stationers and picked up some artist pens and sketchbook. I’ve been looking on the Internet for the kinds of drawing I like, And I’ve been drawing! Very quickly I’ve found the style of drawing I want to get started with: contour drawing with pen. As a beginner, this simple line drawing technique produces not unpleasing effects with a minimal amount of skill and practice. It might not be the kind of work I want to include in my technical writing, but for now, it’s a stepping stone on my path to becoming a better artist.

And how do I think this fits in with my primary means of expression, the written word? Surely, the two complement each other. Training your eye to see is a skill crucial to both artists and writers. I mean, it’s all about evoking images in the observer, and whether that medium is through words or pictures, that telepathic trick of getting the observer to see what you’re seeing is universal.

still running

There have been few changes in my running routine since I started the daily run. The most significant has been allowing myself to take a day off if I want to. Giving myself permission to do that didn’t open the floodgates to daily excuses like I thought it might. Instead I’ve found myself taking one or two days off a week. What I haven’t changed is that even if I don’t go out for a run, I still get out of bed at pretty much the same time. In almost three months I haven’t got out of bed later than six a.m.

The early mornings are important to me and I hope they will form the keystone for my morning routine forever. Waking up before the children tell you its time to wake up gives you that little bit of a head start on the day. I’ve at least downed a cup of coffee and got showered before anyone else wakes. Small victories like this help keep me in a good mood for the rest of the day.

What to do with that head start though? I’m a writer so my first priority should be to contribute something to my writing day. However, I still haven’t identified when my muse is most productive. Rarely at six a.m. do I find it easy to crunch out a thousand words. But I’m equally struggling if I write very late before bed. I have a feeling, I’m most productive at around mid-morning but that is extremely inconvenient when you’ve a full time job to commit to. I guess it’s actually a bit of compromise and I’ve trained myself to write when I can.

can I do a week’s work in 4 hours?

No. But Tim Ferriss’s book – The 4-Hour Workweek has plenty of great ideas that I’ve already started to use after only taking two days to read.
I’m not planning to start my own business so chunks of the book are rather wasted on me but some of the things I’ve taken on board are:

• It’s better to ask for forgiveness than to ask for permission.I haven’t had an opportunity to use this yet but I know that in my job there’s bound to be ample opportunity.
• Get yourself out the office and away from management control. I already do this two days a week and it’s great but what about taking more? I find that I am reluctant to work from home in case it upsets other people in the office – despite it suiting the way I work, and making me more productive.
• Don’t plan to retire. Instead, take the things you might want to do when you retire, and spread them throughout your life when you’re best able to enjoy them.
• On a similar theme, pull a bucket list together but don’t wait until you’re at death’s door to work your way through it. Do it while you’re fit and well.

I thought it was a great book. Lots in there to make me think about how i view my life and of those around me. I’m going to start work on a bucket list and see where that takes me.

writing tools

I’ve been on a decluttering splurge recently, and that includes my computer and the programs that run on it. Ever since I got my new laptop, I decided that I was going to use it for my writing primarily and I didn’t want to risk slowing it down by installing programs I rarely used, like for instance, iTunes.

So when it comes to writing, I want to use the smallest number of programs. I already have Office installed so that was what i was going to use to continue my writing journey. To help organise my novel, I was also well into using Onenote (a fabulous program) for my research, and Excel for keeping track of scenes. And then I had to go and read about scrivener.

On the nanowrimo forums, Scrivener is mentioned regularly, but it’s historically only been available on Mac platforms so was out of bounds for me. Until, that is, the developer started work on a Windows version. This Windows version is now in beta, and going against my rules of only installing necessary programs on my laptop, I downloaded and installed the Scrivener beta.

It’s no overstatement to say that this program is bloody brilliant. If you’re writing a novel, screenplay, or some other piece of prose. this program is worth a try. No, I’ll go further – you must download and play with the free trial of this software. You won’t regret it.

But why is it so good? Because it’s been designed by a writer to do the jobs that he wanted it to do. A clean writing environment lets you work distraction free to get your words down into ‘documents’ that can be rearranged in many different ways as you shape your work. One of my favourite features is the corkboard, a visual representation of your documents as index cards that gives you a simple way to feel the shape of your work. I love this. One thing that I was beginning to realise was going to send me into an early grave as I worked on redrafting my novel, was tracking the blasted thing in Excel. The thing had become so massive that i dreaded opening that spreadsheet. Now though,I can use labels attached to each of the Scrivener ‘documents; and track it in the actual program I’m using to do the writing – you can’t do that in Word.

So having another program on my laptop is actually a form of simplifying. It’s taken several onerous stages of writing my novel, and melted them together into a delicious piece of software. I’m actually excited again about writing again, and Scrivener is a big part of that.

chrome vs internet explorer

I’ve been using Google Chrome since it first appeared, cool engineering  comic and all. I practically stopped using Internet Explorer at all. Chrome had all these cool things like tabs, and later came the extensions, and web apps, and so on.

But all these extra things were its undoing for me. Whenever I needed to check something on the Internet for work, I’d see the little gmail extension icon with its delicious unread email counter, vying for my attention. Sure, I could disable the extension but what would be the point of that? Disabling those extensions that were there to make my life easier made me wonder what I was getting out of Chrome at all.

My company is another factor. Most of our internal Internet sites, just don’t work very well with Chrome. I even went so far as to install an Internet Explorer extension into Chrome so it could render selected pages in ie. And when I click a link on one of our portals or a sharepoint site, to open a document, Chrome never did the right thing. So, for those sites, I manually switched over to Internet Explorer.

And there’s more. I like using Windows Live. Might not be very trendy but their programs have come on leaps and bounds in the last few years. And I use Office 2010 (the best), and liked that I could link documents up to my Skydrive site. And whilst I could edit my Office documents in the Chrome browser, if I ever needed to do anything more complex in the full Office suite, Chrome didn’t support opening a web document into my local program. So, I was still stuck in the position of not being able to give up Internet Explorer.

Let’s not get started on synchronising bookmarks between the two browsers. If I was going to use both Chrome and Internet Explorer, I would have to keep the bookmarks between the two programs in sync with each other – some how. It’s not straight-forward, and not something you’d want to do on a regular basis.

So I came up with a solution. Microsoft helped make up my mind by releasing Internet Explorer 9.

I stopped using Chrome.

It was a bit weird at first. I felt like I was letting an old friend down. I’d watched Chrome grow up. But, the conflict between using two browsers just wasn’t worth it. So I surrendered. But surrendered to Microsoft (never thought I’d do that).

And I love Internet Explorer 9. It links in beautifully with Windows 7. Looks good, and It’s fast.

No more conflict.

simple running update

A few weeks ago, I mentioned that I was taking a different approach to running. This time it was going to be more about cultivating a running habit than building up to longer distances or faster times.

So three weeks on and how are things going? I’m pleased to report that I’ve been running every morning since I made the commitment. That means for the last three and a bit weeks, I’ve got up at shortly after 5am, to go for a run. I haven’t taken any music, or attempted to track any of my runs. And it’s been pretty good.

I know that things would have been more difficult if the weather hadn’t been so great, yet there have been mornings when it’s been raining, and I’ve still managed to get out of bed. Leaving the gadgets at home has speeded my getting out of the house.I find that I don’t miss the music, and to be honest, it was becoming an extra chore to find something I actually felt comfortable running to. Those ten to twenty minutes each morning, are a good time for me to ponder on what lies ahead for me that day. It’s probably as close to meditation as I’m ever going to get.

If I continue this until Tuesday, that’s a whole month I’ve been doing this. I’d wish myself luck, but right now, I don’t feel I need to. I know that I can keep this up.

living simply in a caravan

I’ve just come back from a holiday with the family in a caravan and it was a reminder of the things that are important in my life. It was a 38 x 12 foot static caravan so not exactly small but considerably smaller than my house. Travelling all the way to the east coast with a four year old and a baby restricted what room there was for the things I might want to take on holiday. A lot of the car was packed with stuff for the baby: Pram, travel cot, high chair, nappies etc. We needed to take food and towels so that took up another chunk of space. So even with an estate car and a roofbox, we found ourselves pretty crammed in for our journey.

But we spent a great week in the caravan and it got me thinking a little about some of the things I think I need but could probably do without.

• Sky TV – Great for entertaining my four-year old. Great for watching stuff when we want, but really, do we need so many channels?
• Xbox 360 – I hardly play this but it’s good for the occasional movie.
• Nintendo DS – Haven’t played this for months.
• My DVD collection – Don’t think I’d miss this – apart from my Doctor Who DVDs.
• My books – I’ve recently got a Kindle so my paper books are pretty much redundant. They still take up a whole load of room though.

It was interesting to see how my four-year old daughter coped without her boxes and boxes of toys. We restricted her to a small bag of toys, and she didn’t complain about not leaving the rest of the stuff at home. This makes me pretty tempted to start reducing the amount of toys she’s got in the house.

Out of my possessions, it was clear that my laptop and my Kindle were very important to me and I used both every day we were away. And although the lack of Internet was good at first as it let me focus on some creative writing, it’s definitely something I can’t live without in the longer term.This isn’t because I want to stay connected – I couldn’t care less about twitter updates or facebook updates. I want to have access to my blog and be able to access creative writing websites.

If the holiday makes me make any changes to how we live now that we’re back home, I’ll let you know via the blog.

simple running

I quite enjoy running. I’ve been an on/off runner for the last ten years I suppose. It probably started around the last time I was a member of a gym getting fed up with the membership prices, then seeing others running around the neighbourhood with all the freedom you could believe.

I wanted that.

And I’ve had it. But it comes in bursts of enthusiasm before petering out. If i were forced to put a label on it, I’d say I was a summer runner, finding it much more difficult to pull my running gear on when it’s blowing a gale outside in the black of a winter’s morning. But even that description isn’t quite right either. I’ve managed to lose my enthusiasm in the middle of long summer months, and reduce my running efforts to once or twice a week, before dropping them completely.

But I’m not a fool. I know that exercise is good for me. Especially so for someone who spends so much time sitting down in his day job; I need to get off my butt and lose a few calories. So, I’ve decided that from today, I’m starting running again.

Now what website should I use to track my runs? What mobile app should i use on my iPhone to keep me motivated? What’s the best music to get me through hard stretches?

Those were seriously the first things I thought of. Not how great it will be to get some fresh air on my own, or won’t it be nice to be able to eat without feeling quite so guilty. It’s sad isn’t it? But once I thought a bit more I realised it was these same things that are meant to motivate, that are actually holding me back. I want to go for a run. I don’t want to enter a marathon. I want to be alone with my thoughts. I don’t want to listen to some dance tracks with a good running beat. i want to put my running shoes on, and be out the front door in five minutes. Not faffing around the house, grabbing my iPhone, making sure the app is running, stopping when a GPS signal is lost, getting home and uploading, then following a rigid training plan.

No. i don’t want to do that. So I’ve decided not to.

I’m going to run. Simply. Run.

Jodrell Bank

My dad took our family to Jodrell Bank when i was little – probably close to 30 years ago. Things have changed with a brand new visitors centre and new exhibition centre, but the most impressive thing there is still the Lovell Telescope. It was impressive when I was a little boy, and it was even more so now. That thing is huge. Seeing it on the television diminishes it somewhat. What a feat of engineering. Whilst we were there eating our picnic alongside it, the telescope would regularly turn on its tracks – impressive.

Now the geek in me can’t help but look at a radio telescope and think one thing – ‘the end is near but the moment has been prepared for. but alas, it transpires that Doctor Who didn’t film there. Shame.’

Manchester Airport Viewing Platform

We went on a great day out yesterday to Manchester Airport’s viewing platform. We took binoculars and Mandy took her camera with high zoom lens but we couldn’t compete with the hard core plane spotters. The guy next to us on the large viewing platform had all of that, plus a radio tuned into the (what I presumed to be) the chatter from air traffic control. It’s strange the hobbies we find ourselves falling into. I don’t suppose his passion for plane spotting is any different than mine for a certain 50 year old TV show about a man flying around in a police telephone box. Although I’d still wager that society would label him slightly below me on the ‘normal’ scale. Those of course who can recite every fixture in their football team’s history are considered perfectly ‘normal’. <where did that digression come from>

A surprise highlight came when we approached the restaurant on site. In a large covered hanger adjacent to the restaurant, Concorde’s distinctive shape peered out at us behind a wall of glass. You can pay to have a tour of Concorde but with the two kids in tow, we thought it might not be the best time to do this. Even behind the glass, Concorde evoked strong feelings of British pride, and a strong sense of pathos. Such a distinctive powerful piece of engineering, retired and left as a museum piece. I don’t understand all the reasoning behind its retirement but it seems tragic that we don’t have anything comparable to replace it with.

don't let software get in your way

Today I got round to starting my new short story - this is an accomplishment in itself. I'm often guilty when it comes to my writing to put more effort into the process, than the actual writing. A case in point was my efforts this morning.

I've been browsing through the nanowrimo.org message boards recently (I've made a commitment to taking part this year after a 4 year gap). One of the threads was discussing the various software available to writers, and from a post I followed a link to a piece of software called ywriter. I thought I'd have a play with it and see if it would help me organise myself enough for plotting a short story.

After ten minutes I stopped and realised what I was doing. Sure, I'd made the effort to start another short story, but I'd made it that little bit more complicated than it needed to be. I already have Word 2010 on my laptop and I love using it. I already have Onenote and I love using that too. Why then was I so keen to try another tool? When I recognised I was asking these questions I paused and considered what I was doing and why that particular piece of software might not be a good thing for me:

• Ywriter like a lot of writing software is geared towards writing novels not short stories. I'm not sure I'd get much benefit from the organisational features of the tool.

• It introduced another writing environment into the mix. As I've said, I'm using Word 2010 for most things and loving it.

• Due to installation restrictions I wouldn't be able to install it on my work laptop. This restrict me working with it to my home laptop only.


• Learning software, no matter how good it is, can be a distraction from the practice of writing. And writing's what it's all about for me.

So my next steps shouldn't surprise you. I uninstalled it.

Sure, the next time someone recommends some software, I'll be eager to see what it's like, but unless it simplifies the writing process for me, I won't be using it.

Why I no longer have any friends

I've been looking at my habits with my iPhone recently. All too often I found myself checking the twitter and Facebook app to see what's new in the world. Even after being out at work all day, I'd find myself picking up my phone and checking status updates to see what I'm missing. It's addictive. With the 80 people I'm following on Twitter and 50 friends on Facebook, there was always something to 'catch up on'.

And then I realised that what I was missing was spending more time doing the things I wanted to do. Like playing with the kids, or reading, or doing the writing that I always claim I don't have time to do. Twitter and Facebook rather than helping forge connections with people, was actually driving me away from those closest to me.

My solution was simple. I looked at my Facebook friends and spent 5 minutes defriending anyone that wasn't a member of my family, or a close friend. This brought my number down to 16. That's a good number. I can manage that. I can look at that list of friends and see how I might be interested in what they have to say. A great side-effect of this I hadn't thought of until I went through this exercise, was that I'm much happier to share a bit of my real uncensored thoughts on Facebook. If like me, you have a lot of colleagues in your friends list, you might be reluctant to share your true thoughts.

After sorting Facebook, Twitter was easy. I set myself the target of going from following 80, to a rather arbitrary 10. It took less than a minute.

Today, my iPhone has stayed on the mantelpiece all night. I haven't felt that compulsion to check it once. And tomorrow in the office, I can actually converse with my colleagues to find out what's going on in their lives.

what kinds of mistake are you making?

I attended a change workshop at work today. This month's theme was "Mistakes, when they do happen are viewed as learning opportunities’’. This is a worthy topic for discussion and we ended up sounding out a lot of perspectives from different parts of the business.

However, at one stage we were taught about the different types of mistakes (apparently there are 3), the different types of responses to mistakes (again there are 3) and asked to make connections between them.

It all seemed a bit overkill. Why restate such a well known adage? I've decided to focus on the original and best:

'learn from your mistakes'.

What's wrong with that?

 

the start

First things first. I don't expect to ever become a minimalist - right now, I'm not even sure what that would really entail. When I started thinking about doing a blog on simplifying my life I didn't for one moment think that would lead to any drastic change in how I lived my life.

• Have you ever sat down when you've suddenly got an hour or two free, only to waste time considering the best ways to fill it? Should you watch that DVD that's still shrink wrapped; read that magazine from last month; do some reading… For me that debate happened frequently enough to want to make a change.


• At work I've been getting a reputation as 'the organised one'. I've been asked to share some of my tips with others and that in itself has made me look again at how I organise my time and work. To me, organisation and simplicity are natural bedfellows (although others disagree).


• A need to find focus. Inspired greatly by the work Leo Babauta has written at zenhabits.net I've come to appreciate that focus is an incredibly powerful method of achieving greatness. I've seen how my lack of focus over the last few years has ultimately led to the stalling of a big writing project of mine. Looking at how I can find focus in my life is therefore vital in how I see myself moving forward again with my writing projects.

So this is why this blog exists. What I want to achieve is explore how simplifying aspects of your life can have a positive impact. If you're anything like me, if you feel there's too much noise in your life, then this blog may have something in it for you as well.

Is my house haunted?

I don't believe in ghosts but I desperately want to believe in them. Wouldn't a world where ghosts existed in, just be so...cool?

The young me used to believe in anything that was a bit off the norm. UFO's - check, Alien visitations - check, Loch Ness Monster - well, who doesn't. And Ghosts - big fat double-tick mark next to that one. Mum even told me her great ghost story once, can't remember what prompted her to blurt it out, but she was convinced she'd seen a ghost.

But as I grew up, I got more cynical and read more, and really came to my own conclusion that if they did exist, we'd surely have some kind of proof by now. I mean, we're technologically advanced enough to send the Hubble telescope into orbit, and build the Hadron Collider but you're telling me we can't even get some hard evidence that the spirits are among us?

Being a cynical grown up I'm naturally going to be a bit disturbed when my four-year-old daughter starts saying things that don't sit with my world view. It started a couple of weeks ago when she started crying for no evident reason. My wife was in the garden and heard Emily crying inside. She asked her what the matter was - there were real tears streaming down her face, my wife thought she'd seriously hurt herself. Emily said she could hear someone talking and it was scaring her. Not once did Emily say 'ghost' which for me, makes it all the more disturbing.

Two nights ago, after putting Emily to bed, there was the sound of running footsteps heading from where Emily's bed is, out onto the landing, then back again. Rather nonchalantly I assumed it was Emily being unusually restless. When I heard Emily start to cry I went up to check on her. Emily was sitting in her bed, upright. I asked her if she'd been out of bed. She said she hadn't. I asked her which room she'd been running to. She said she hadn't left the bedroom.

Last night, Emily woke me about four times. A couple of times it was the usual woes of her bedding needing straightening, or she can't find her monkey toy. But about half past three, I woke up hearing her talking in her sleep. I'm a pretty light sleeper so it really doesn't take much to wake me. There were lots of mumbled phrases and I won't pretend to remember them now, but she wasn't happy and seemed to be arguing. The last time she woke me, she was crying and upset. She told me that someone was in her room and she could hear breathing (BTW I'm getting a load of goosebumps writing this). I reassured her that there was no one in the house and that she'd just had a bad dream. She went on to explain that I shouldn't go in my office again - the door to my office is left open at night and from where Emily lies, she can see straight through into the room - although she accepted that I would eventually have to go in there to earn money to pay for the electricity.

I lay there with her for about an hour whilst she slept, not for one moment trying to tie together any of these separate occurrences. She is only four, and four-year-olds have vivid imaginations and do odd things pretty much on a daily basis. But tonight, I've closed my office door so she can't see in, and turned an extra light on, and when she calls me in the middle of the night - which will no doubt happen - I'll get myself out of bed just that little bit quicker.