First up, sorry for the really bad pun. It's somewhat indicative of my desperate state of mind as this week, as I wrestle with my latest mission - to resist the temptation to resign. It could be quite a good idea for you to adopt this mission too, to avoid you joining dole queues and getting far too familiar with daytime telly.
Here are a few reasons why you should resist the urge to resign:
- At your latest dinner party, someone tells you that you're an excellent cook and should open a cafe. Although this may sound like a valid reason, remind yourself that although your duck and couscous was undoubtedly extremely tasty, you can't guarantee that every patron at your cafe will be just as drunk and rambling.
- You have a mortgage/rent that needs to be paid regularly. And you are not talented at busking.
- Your husband likes to spend money on bike parts, and you like to spend money on shoes. And the money has to come from somewhere. Especially for the shoes. (I know it's a cliche, but that's the way it is.)
- The grass is not always greener on the other side. in fact, sometimes it's astroturf.
- The current job is building character. (I just don't know what kind.)
Hmm. I'm not doing a very good job of convincing myself. I'm going to watch some telly.
Tuesday, 20 November 2007
Monday, 5 November 2007
Mission 019 - A spot of mending
Buttons. They were bound to come up sooner or later.
Last Monday or Tuesday I had a button come off a jacket. It's still off, and I have been wearing the jacket sans button, regardless. What a lazy slob.
Now, I think there's a fairly good chance that, like me, you've got something tucked away in a drawer that needs a spot of mending to make it wearable again. Maybe you're even wearing it. My jacket is just a hint of a vast mending pile that includes:
Pair of dress shorts with split seam
Dress with ironing mark (awaiting customisation and transformation into new dress)
Trousers that need hemming
Top with unravelled shoulder seam
Half-made cushion (just needs one side of the zip doing)
Trousers with missing button.
No wonder I have nothing to wear.
So my latest mission for me, and you, is this: Make a start on the mending. Even if you just sew on a button. It'll take you all of five minutes (and most of that will be spent finding the needles and thread) and you'll wonder why on earth you've been putting it off.
Last Monday or Tuesday I had a button come off a jacket. It's still off, and I have been wearing the jacket sans button, regardless. What a lazy slob.
Now, I think there's a fairly good chance that, like me, you've got something tucked away in a drawer that needs a spot of mending to make it wearable again. Maybe you're even wearing it. My jacket is just a hint of a vast mending pile that includes:
Pair of dress shorts with split seam
Dress with ironing mark (awaiting customisation and transformation into new dress)
Trousers that need hemming
Top with unravelled shoulder seam
Half-made cushion (just needs one side of the zip doing)
Trousers with missing button.
No wonder I have nothing to wear.
So my latest mission for me, and you, is this: Make a start on the mending. Even if you just sew on a button. It'll take you all of five minutes (and most of that will be spent finding the needles and thread) and you'll wonder why on earth you've been putting it off.
Friday, 2 November 2007
Pet update
As of this evening, the pet mission is back on. Our first set of critters are going home to their owner, as she's now out of hospital. Someone from the cat charity is coming to pick them up tonight.
The funny thing is, that only this morning I had the fleeting thought that i would quite like to see the back of them. If only for the reason that last night one of them missed the litter tray and deposited a large poo and a puddle on the floor of the bathroom instead. Then they shredded the newspaper surrounding the tray to create a poo, piss and paper installation of impressive proportions. It was a really great way to start my morning.
So from tonight, we are once again sans pets. There might be more arriving Sunday. Hopefully they will be better acquainted with their litter box. I'll let you know.
The funny thing is, that only this morning I had the fleeting thought that i would quite like to see the back of them. If only for the reason that last night one of them missed the litter tray and deposited a large poo and a puddle on the floor of the bathroom instead. Then they shredded the newspaper surrounding the tray to create a poo, piss and paper installation of impressive proportions. It was a really great way to start my morning.
So from tonight, we are once again sans pets. There might be more arriving Sunday. Hopefully they will be better acquainted with their litter box. I'll let you know.
Thursday, 1 November 2007
Mission 018 - The only way is up.
As soon as I wrote this title, I was reminded of that grating track by Yazz that sat atop the NZ singles chart for several weeks in 1988. Not a great start. But please hang about a couple more minutes. This post gets better.
My blog is rated by Technorati at 4,446,976= in popularity. (This is out of 110.4 million blogs, so is either quite good, or quite bad, depending on how you look at it.) But this is not good enough for me. So my new mission is to bump my rank up. I don't expect to reach the 100 top blogs, or even the top 100,000. The top 1,000,0000 will do, for now.
Then of course, there's the Google ranking. And although you can find me if you type in Susanonamission with no spaces, you won't find me on Google any other way. (Google Susan Wills and you'll get an American pro-life activist, a ceramic artist, a lawyer and a winery owner.) There are, unfortunately, many people with my name out there. All American, I think. So I've been doing lots of research about how I can improve the ranking of my blog. Problogger is an especially good source, although ironically, in a recent post, he says 'Forget about page rank and concentrate on good content'.
So first, please help me by going to Technorati, here , where you can create an account. Then search for my page Susanonamssion and choose it as one of your favourites. Thank you. Another thing you can do is link to my page if you have a blog and would like to recommend my blog to others. Either of these things would be great.
And here's what I've decided to do about the blog content.
Given that my blog is quite self-absorbed, I've decided to open my missions up to everyone. Now you can share in my achievements, surpass me, or fall behind as you choose. Of course, some missions will be more achievable for you then others. Mission 015, Chips, for example, will be quite easy for you, as you don't work near the cafe downstairs (unless you are one of my colleagues reading this). Feel free to take on this mission as your own. Just in case you need a reminder, here it is again: ' Increase the ranking of Susan's blog'.
Again on the content note, for more waffly posts that don't fit here so well, I have also started a new blog, Four Zebras in the Road. This one is more for me to waffle at will about all sorts of things that don't fit into my/our missions and is still being refined a bit, although I have high hopes for it. The main pic is one I took in Namibia in September. I think it's rather attractive. Do you?
My blog is rated by Technorati at 4,446,976= in popularity. (This is out of 110.4 million blogs, so is either quite good, or quite bad, depending on how you look at it.) But this is not good enough for me. So my new mission is to bump my rank up. I don't expect to reach the 100 top blogs, or even the top 100,000. The top 1,000,0000 will do, for now.
Then of course, there's the Google ranking. And although you can find me if you type in Susanonamission with no spaces, you won't find me on Google any other way. (Google Susan Wills and you'll get an American pro-life activist, a ceramic artist, a lawyer and a winery owner.) There are, unfortunately, many people with my name out there. All American, I think. So I've been doing lots of research about how I can improve the ranking of my blog. Problogger is an especially good source, although ironically, in a recent post, he says 'Forget about page rank and concentrate on good content'.
So first, please help me by going to Technorati, here , where you can create an account. Then search for my page Susanonamssion and choose it as one of your favourites. Thank you. Another thing you can do is link to my page if you have a blog and would like to recommend my blog to others. Either of these things would be great.
And here's what I've decided to do about the blog content.
Given that my blog is quite self-absorbed, I've decided to open my missions up to everyone. Now you can share in my achievements, surpass me, or fall behind as you choose. Of course, some missions will be more achievable for you then others. Mission 015, Chips, for example, will be quite easy for you, as you don't work near the cafe downstairs (unless you are one of my colleagues reading this). Feel free to take on this mission as your own. Just in case you need a reminder, here it is again: ' Increase the ranking of Susan's blog'.
Again on the content note, for more waffly posts that don't fit here so well, I have also started a new blog, Four Zebras in the Road. This one is more for me to waffle at will about all sorts of things that don't fit into my/our missions and is still being refined a bit, although I have high hopes for it. The main pic is one I took in Namibia in September. I think it's rather attractive. Do you?
Mission 017 - 50,000 words
I've spent much of the day researching blogs. Partly for work (might be doing a work blog), partly to see what else is out there. One link led to another and eventually I ended up at NaNoWriMo, the site for National Novel Writing Month. I actually joined this last year (or was it the year before?), and didn't write a word. This year, I seem to have ended up there the very day before it all kicks off, which seems like quite a nice piece of serendipity. So I joined. Again. And my new mission flowered into being: to write 50,000 words before the end of November 2007.
I know NaNoWrMo isn't the way to instantly produce a work of prize-winning quality. But it's a way to produce A Work. Which is a start. It means writing around 1700 words a day, and no, I can't cobble together the 30,000 I've already written on Untitled Novel 1. They have to be all fresh – quite a steep challenge if you're in full-time work. But not necessarily if you work as an in-house copywriter and seem to be hitting a quiet patch...
We'll see.
I know NaNoWrMo isn't the way to instantly produce a work of prize-winning quality. But it's a way to produce A Work. Which is a start. It means writing around 1700 words a day, and no, I can't cobble together the 30,000 I've already written on Untitled Novel 1. They have to be all fresh – quite a steep challenge if you're in full-time work. But not necessarily if you work as an in-house copywriter and seem to be hitting a quiet patch...
We'll see.
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