Skip to main content

Planning for summer fun

My list of things to do by September is coming along nicely (read the story behind that here). Soon after starting it I remembered something about setting goals: they need to be SMART. That's Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic and Time bound. (Can you tell I'm a trained life coach? Not a practising one though, except on myself).

 'A walk on the south coast of England' looked very nice on my list but admittedly also a bit vague. I mean the south coast of England is quite a long stretch of land and what I had in mind was a day trip to coastal Sussex or thereabouts. Cornwall, yes, want to go there too but too far to get there and back in a day. So I did some research, found the part of the coast I particularly want to see and wrote down 'A walk is coastal Sussex in late July/early August (pick a date according to weather reports)'.

 Looks much better, doesn't it? It's a much more detailed and clearer instruction to myself. How likely am I to bail out and convince myself that staying in my back garden with a good book would be much more relaxing? Quite but far less likely than if I'd kept the ambiguous first version of the goal there. If I manage to get someone to go with me I'd increase my chances even more because then I couldn't back out quite so easily. I have someone in mind so I'll drop them an email.

On my list of things to do this summer: a walk in coastal Sussex.
Image: Seven Sisters by Marc Berry Reid on Flickr

So - here's my list of things to do this summer:
  • A walk in coastal Sussex in late July/early August (pick a date according to weather reports)
  • Go to a West End show/musical
  • Go to Notting Hill Carnival
  • Join a group. Any group.
You may notice that there's no mention of signing up for online dating (what's that all about? you may ask. Find out here.). I'll keep on waiting for that wonderful man to appear in my life all naturally. You never know, one day the doorbell might ring and... Or not. But I'll risk it for now.

I am, however, very happy to report that I've already bought tickets to Mamma Mia! the musical to go with a friend on my birthday in August, combined with a meal in a Mexican restaurant (I love Mexican food) beforehand. I'm very much looking forward to it.

I also realise that I'm my own worst enemy. After a long period of inactivity it's not very easy to break the routine, even if is rather boring. I do believe however that my 'get up, go out there and do something' muscle just needs to be flexed a little bit to get it used to being used again.

I'm also making a conscious effort to say yes to all invitations that I get and attended a work do yesterday evening. Maybe it was the wine and nibbles that lured me there... I felt good about going, though, and that's the main thing.  


Image: my own! I'm going to go out there and take many more. That's fun, too.

I hope you've got your list of fun stuff to do this summer ready by now. What's the first item on your list that you're going to do? I'll start researching groups to join in the London area right now. I really need to improve my social life.

One thing before I go -  I've got an 'About Me' page now, check it out here. Till next time.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Getting started

It’s been far too long since my first post. How did this happen? Well, I sort of panicked, thinking ‘oh no, now the blog is live, I’m going to have to do something!’ and then of course froze and did nothing. Hence a little cooling down period. Or should I say thawing period, allowing myself to return to a temperature in which I can function. I do have an excuse of being unwell over the last few days so I couldn’t have gone out last weekend anyway, but that’s just really lame. I shouldn’t even have mentioned it. I’m happy to report though that immediately after posting my first blog post, I seemed to develop an ‘excitement awareness’ and started coming up with ideas of what to do and even started a list. An idea of a holiday I’ve been wanting to go on for a few years now sprang to mind and I started looking into it. In fact, booking it was going be my task for the first week. What happened? My recurring health problems held me back. But then another thought came to mind. What if I use...
Post a Comment
Read more

Making 2014 count

Christmas tree in Covent Garden, London You may have noticed the lack of images of Christmas trees here (see my previous post) . I did take some, they just never made it here until today (I’m putting one up now to show that I really took some). Stress took over in December. Work was very busy and come evening all I wanted to do was to forget about doing anything unpleasant and just do what I fancied. And it wasn't blogging. At first I was stressing about not producing any content for my blog and then I started questioning whether the whole blog was a very good idea after all. Yes, over the holidays I was seriously considering deleting this blog. My two blog posts that I’d crafted with care and excitement and fear, too. No more. Then I wouldn’t need to stress about blogging. But then the year changed and I was setting goals for the new year and came across the question of the blog; yes or no? It would’ve been much easier to decide ‘no’ but somehow I couldn’t let myself do that...
Post a Comment
Read more

Bucket loads of fun

I'm taking my list of things to do by the end of the summer to a whole new level. I'm going to create a bucket list. You know, things you want to do before you die. In a way not a very cheerful thought but at the same time quite elating, I find. I have a list of goals I want to achieve somewhere and even though I'm sure it's titled 'Things I want to be/do/have before I die', it just doesn't quite have the same ring to it as a bucket list does. There's an urgency attached to 'bucket list' that appeals to me right now. Something that I hope will keep it from getting buried under a pile of invoices, bank statements, to do lists etc. I'm very aware that the reason I'm thinking about writing my bucket list is because of the mid-life crisis I'm going through and the slightly panicked thoughts I'm having at times, such as 'there's not much time left anymore while I'm still more or less able' which is sort of ridiculous ...
Post a Comment
Read more