Why be like the other sheep?
A desert city by the sun. Friendly people, good food and a fascinating culture and history. What more could I want?
Following on from my Friday Flickr album on the Sultan Qaboos Grand Mosque a couple of weeks ago, I thought I’d put together an album from the rest of my stay in Muscat. Continue reading “Friday Flickr – Muscat”
Upset and angry at the result and kicking myself for not having booked flights sooner.
To say I was disappointed would be a massive understatement.
Devastated, shocked, bewildered, angry, upset, frustrated … there aren’t any words that could come close to describing how I felt when I woke up on Friday morning and heard the results of the referendum. The one word that I definitely wouldn’t use to describe my feelings that morning is resignation. Continue reading “What Brexit Means For Me”
Is there anything more enticing than a long white sandy beach and a dazzling blue sea?
I’m not a lying on the beach person, but I love to discover a gorgeous beach when I’m out walking and I’ll happily sit and read or just gaze out at the sea for a while before moving on. Continue reading “Friday Flickr – White Sand and Blue Sea”
It’s not the money that’s important, it’s the lifestyle that money can buy.
This seemed like a fun thing to do, but actually made me realise that what I want in life really isn’t that unattainable. Continue reading “1000 Times Your Salary”
Sultan Qaboos Grand Mosque in Muscat, Oman is a pleasant way to spend a couple of hours.
It’s over two years since I spent a half term visiting a teaching friend in Muscat. Our holidays didn’t match up and so on the first day, whilst she was in school, I took myself out to explore. The Sultan Qaboos Grand Mosque seemed the obvious place to start. Continue reading “Friday Flickr – Sultan Qaboos Grand Mosque”
A World Heritage Site comprised of a little red houses.
I’d detoured to Luleå on the advice of a Swedish lady in the hostel in Jokkmokk. I was looking forward to seeing a city not many foreign tourists (or Swedish ones for that matter) get to and also visiting the World Heritage church village, Gammelstad.
I ended up having a very frustrating weekend and leaving without a particularly good impression. However, the village was interesting and all those little red houses did look very pretty, so I’m still glad I made the effort and went to see it.
I wrote about my time in Luleå here and about my visit to Gammelstad here. I’ve now put together a Flickr album with the pictures I took in Gammelstad.
To access the Flickr album click on the image below.
Why a church village?
Sunday services used to be the only time people from farms spread far and wide could get together to catch up on news and socialise. Because the farms were spread so far and wide over often inhospitable terrain, it wasn’t that easy to get to church and back in the one day. The solution in the north of Sweden was to build a small house near the church that could be used for an overnight stay. As everyone had the same idea, whole villages of little red houses sprang up around remote churches. Gammelstad near Luleå is the largest and best preserved example and thus is now a World Heritage Site.
I often get asked what’s the worst job I’ve ever done. I don’t have to think for long to answer. Cleaning chicken sheds on a kibbutz in Israel is by far my worst job ever. No contest.
The chicken sheds were the size of Wembley Stadium.
It was cold, but when you are given a brush and told to start sweeping something that size, you know you’re not going stay cold for long.
For the best part of a week, six hours a day, we swept. And swept. And swept. The movement – swing out arms, pull arms in, step back, repeat – and the monotonous swish, swish, swish of the brushes scraping the hard concrete were hypnotic. It was impossible to hear the tinny radio way over in the far corner and we were spread too far out to chat. Not that it mattered as chatting would have involved opening our mouths; it was bad enough breathing the chicken poop in and feeling it settle in the back of your throat without having it take a direct route through your mouth.
The fine ammonia powder got everywhere. As we brushed it created a cloud of dust that got into every pore, into our hair and ears as well up our noses. The taste stayed for days afterwards. No matter how many drinks we drank or how much strongly-flavoured food we ate, that taste overpowered everything.
As the minutes merged into hours and the hours merged into days and our blisters merged into callouses, we’d blink and realise it was time for a break or for lunch, or even the end of the day. Time stood still, yet at the end of the day it seemed like no time had passed at all.
That blank time allowed the mind to wander. So many memories, thoughts, stories would flit and flicker their way through my mind. I’d forget where I was and be transported to places I’d been to years ago, to my childhood or my wild teenage years. And sometimes I’d be transported to the future, to places I wanted to visit and to places I had no idea I wanted to visit.
It struck me how quickly the human mind turns in on itself when it has no external stimulus. Would this be how I’d cope if I ever found myself in gaol? Or if I was stranded on a desert island? (If I ever have to choose between the two, I’ll have the desert island please.)
The breaks were always welcome. Time to stretch out stiffening limbs, then sit down with a cup of bad coffee and chat. Usually about the chicken sheds – we couldn’t get away from thinking about them even on a break. And we all found we were having the same experiences. A kind of multi-tasking meditation. Why sit and do nothing, when you could meditate and sweep a six inch deep pile of chicken shit off a floor the size of a football stadium at the same time?
As all things do, sweeping the chicken shed came to an end. We stretched, yahooed and got ready for our next task.
This time we were outside. Yes! Fresh air! But it was cold. And raining.
We had to clean all the metal tubing and piping that takes feed, drugs, water and who knows what else, into the sheds once a new batch of chickens are installed.
The small metal parts were freezing to hold and the taps we were washing them under only flowed with cold water. As icy raindrops pelted the back of my neck and cold drips ran from my hair down my face, and as my fingers slowly went numb and I worried about frostbite as I held cold metal under cold water, we talked (yes, we were close now) and actually found ourselves reminiscing about the good old days of sweeping and thinking. Yes, we decided. Eating chicken shit was preferable to this.
Finally the days of cleaning the chicken sheds came to an end. Stretching out on the veranda of the volunteer accommodation, sipping a well-deserved beer we watched as smoke curled upwards in the distance.
It was coming from the chicken sheds.
They were on fire.
They burnt completely to the ground.
Electrical fault they said.
I won’t repeat what we said.
Defining my purpose in life
A couple of weeks ago I determined my unique combination of skills and experiences and came up with 5 bullet points to highlight this combination. I then took it a step further and identified 5 key descriptors which give a very condensed overview of who I am and what I do.
This was taken from one of the exercises in a book I stumbled across in Oxfam and have been finding really useful. The book, ‘Brand You’ by John Purkiss and David Royston-Lee, is a step-by-step guide to determining your own unique skills and experiences and developing these into a coherent and easily identifiable personal brand.
I read through the book pretty quickly, but over the last few weeks I’ve been going back through it more slowly, completing the exercises as I go.
I’ve already identified my talents, values and unique combination and feel like I’m gaining clarity with where I want to go with my blog, website and life as a whole. I already had a pretty good idea about this, but the book is helping me articulate it and give me a clearer focus.
This week I’ve been thinking about my purpose. As the authors say,
‘A sense of purpose helps you focus your efforts, making your life meaningful and enjoyable’.
I can’t argue with that!
If I’m clear on my purpose it will be easier to communicate who I am and what I do to others. If others understand what I’m about right from the beginning, those that don’t like what I do or the way that I do it will weed themselves out, leaving me with the people who will support and encourage me.
The book stresses the importance of differentiating between goals and purpose. Your goals are not your purpose.
Goals are short-term motivators; once they are achieved you need to make new ones. Your purpose, on the other hand, is limitless; it’s the way you want to live your life. Goals are still good, but as a means of working towards your purpose rather than as an end in themselves.
The authors use a diagram of a pyramid to illustrate how your aim, goals, plans and tasks cascade down from your purpose. Always start with the purpose at the top as it’s only once you know this that you can start to identify aims, set goals, make plans and complete tasks. And it’s always in this order.
The example given in the book is of someone whose purpose is to improve people’s health. As a way of working towards this purpose they aim to cure sick people. Ways of doing this include qualifying as a doctor and writing a book; these are the goals. Plans to achieve these goals could be going to medical school and gaining writing experience. Tasks could be passing exams, carrying out research, making notes, washing hands between patients and applying for student loans.
Following this example, I put together my own version of the purpose pyramid.
The wording may need some tweaking, but on the whole I’m quite happy with it. And the path I’m on is becoming a lot clearer.
What’s your purpose in life? Do you think infographics like this are useful?
Why I like flowers
There’s something about flowers that draws me in. I love bright colours – no-one could ever accuse me of having a dull house, my decorator even joked he needed to wear sunglasses when he painted it – and what’s more brightly coloured than an array of vividly blooming flowers?
When I live or travel in hot countries, I love the way colourful flowers just seem to be everywhere. And they grow so abundantly – pick one and three more seem to grow in its place. The only things that seems to do that in my garden in the north of England are the weeds.
So flowers represent more than just colour to me. They represent warmth, sun, an outdoor life, good times.
As it’s half term this week, I’ve been spending a lot of time in my garden and yard trying to get things looking nice after a winter of neglect. Fortunately the weather’s been quite good and already I’m seeing the benefit of my effort as flowers are beginning to blossom. If only I could believe it will last …
But in case the good weather doesn’t last and my flowers go back into hibernation (I do live in Manchester after all), I’ve put together an album of flower pictures I can browse when I’m sitting inside looking out at the rain.
Click on the image below to access the Flickr album.
Trying to get one step closer to living the life I want to lead.
I’ve been reading a few books and blogs recently about self-development. I’ve never really been into the whole self-help genre and I suppose self-development isn’t really all that different, yet I’ve found them useful and I’ve been inspired to do lots of self-evaluation otherwise known as ‘where do I want to go with my life’.
I’ve realised that the two things most important to me are time and independence.
When I think more deeply about this I realise it’s because I want to do so many things – I’m curious, want to explore, travel, read, cook, have varied interests, go places, learn, experience.
To do these things it’s obvious I need to have lots of time. However, doing lots of things costs money (even for a cheapskate like me), and acquiring money usually means giving up time. It can be a vicious circle. When I have time, I haven’t got the money; when I’m earning well, I haven’t got the time. Swings and roundabouts. Or should that be a see-saw, with one side constantly outweighing the other?
Independence is important too, because if I have commitments and other people or things relying on me, then I can’t just take off when I like and do whatever I like. Likewise, if I’m relying on other people then I can only do things when they want to and if they have the time and money to do them to.
I’m fortunate to not have anyone who really depends on me (some people might consider that to be a misfortune, but then I’d say we have different priorities regarding what’s important in life). And after spending years travelling solo and starting a new life in a new country on more than one occasion I’m not lacking in confidence when it comes to doing things on my own and so never feel like I’m dependent on someone else.
The more I think about all of this, the more I realise I don’t like being an employee. Having a regular salary is liberating in some ways – I always know the bills will be paid and when I travel I don’t have to pinch pennies because I know I’m still getting paid – but in other ways it’s the complete opposite. It’s so easy to become reliant on that regular income that the ‘what ifs’ of giving it up become so daunting it actually becomes restricting.
I switched from a regular full-time job with a monthly salary to agency work two years ago.
I haven’t regretted it.
I get as much work as I need and although it’s much lower paid than when I worked in a permanent job I can still pay my bills. This is partly because, knowing I want to be in a position to prioritise time over money, I’ve made sure the overheads for my day-to-day life are as low as possible. I’m working towards making things as maintenance free as possible too, so that I save even more time and money.
I still have that feeling though, that I can’t turn agency work down because what if there isn’t any next week? What about the school holidays when I don’t get paid at all? What if I have a unexpected big expense?
So now as well as ensuring my outgoings are low, I need to look at the other side of the equation and work out ways of ensuring my income is maximised without me having to barter large amounts of my time and independence in exchange for it.
Making my website successful could be one way of doing this. As could publishing the book that’s been sitting on my laptop for the past year. There are also other things I could do like workshops, leading walks, expanding my property empire (does two count as an empire?), freelance writing, tour leading, speaking engagements, buying and selling …
I have so many ideas, but have been really slow about putting any of them into action. Not because I haven’t wanted to, but because I’ve let myself get so bogged down with teaching assignments.
So from September, I’m going back to day-to-day jobs where I can be finished for 3.30pm and don’t have to do any work at the weekends. If I don’t earn so much, it won’t be a problem, because I’ll have other income streams.
At least that’s the plan. And now I’ve said it out loud maybe I’ll actually try to follow it.
