happy 4047 everybody!

It’s chinese year of the TIGER… grrrr. Came out of my house to see a dragon earlier – COOOL! Missed it the last few years, video below.

So for me, as usual, I set my resolutions at CNY – mainly because, the start of the years always a weird point to do things and there’s always lots going on.

Last years “no platic bags” was generally good, hard at first but worked out. The greener me went well, sold the car (saved bucks and the environment) and I made some good progress on a number of projects.

So what for this year?

1) No more Mr Nice Guy – I’m taking a much firmer, no-nonsense approach with companies that don’t pay up on time. Training is all paid up front anyway,  as it has been, but no longer am I going to tread gently with organisations that take months paying. My payment terms for project work remain 50% up-front, but I won’t do ANYTHING till that’s paid now (no strategy meets esp.) and 50% on completion –  BUT I’m adding a discount for people that pay within 7 days of the invoice… and using the EU 8%+BR+£30 per overdue invoice.

2) More Mr Nice Guy – I kept this pretty quiet, but I wrote an eBook and a publishing agent has got interested – if I can write a draft of a full book by april, he’ll take it to the London book fair – yikes.

3) More downtime – been working faaaaaar too many hours, saying no to a few things.

4) A charity challenge – any suggestions for this year?

Hey ho… not sure anyone reads here anymore – if you do, say hi.

Luke

The habit is firmly broken! I try to always use re-usable bags when I go out – a few times I’ve slipped up – 32 times actually. I donated all £32 to Julias House that I raised.

Now that seemed quite a large number to me, being more than one every other week.. it did make me wonder how many I used before.

Time to start planning this years resolutions, as with most years I’ll be setting them on chinese new year.

Can’t wait till February… damn new years resolution swimmers were clogging up my lanes last night!

Wow… 3 months since my last post, how did that happen?

I will start using this again in the new year, I’ve finally nailed the techy stuff I’ve been struggling with and I’llupdate here soon.
All I have to add is that I’ve only used 32 new carrier bags this year, something I’m quite proud of.

What to resolve for 2010???

Hello world! So I update bits of my life in so many places I don’t write here that often, sorry…

My march to more sustainable, responsible living continues:

1) No more carrier bags – win
– used 2 since June, donated the first half of the money to Julia’s House for the parachute jump. Its actually quite hard to break the habit, try it.

2) Sell the car – done
– A few reasons, but mainly –> I don’t need one! I was getting lazy and using it when I didn’t need. So I sold it. Also to encourage me to plan a bit better and use public transport (I get loads done on the train). I’m going to work out how much it cost me to run across the year and compare to a year without.

3) Own an electric car by 2012 – that’s the plan… if someone can make one that does > 100 miles!

4) Do more meetings over the web – I’m trying to cut down some of the meetings I do that I don’t really need to do face-to-face. First proper one this Wednesday.

5) Don’t eat air-freighted food – bye bye sugar snap peas 🙁

6) Your ideas – suggestions please.

I failed, twice this weekend in my mission to have a year without using new plastic bags.

#1 went to wilko (woop) and Lidl (I love lidl) with a reusable bag… no problem there, except I needed some cleaning stuff, so I had to resort to using a new carrier bag to separate them from the foodstuffs = bugger £1

#2 walking in town later on, I realised I’d forgotten to buy a couple of things I needed for the flat… I then find myself in a dilemma… do i buy the items and stick another quid in the pot… or set a reminder to get them another day when i have a bag? = another £1 to charity

I was doing so well! it’d been nearly a month since I last used one. Must add up the pot, see how many bags I’ve used in 3 months… ooh a Q1 review! Bum, that reminds me its time for end of year stuff…

UPDATED: Q1 review = £10 that’s not bad