This week has felt quite different to me. Despite a fair few sleepless nights (for no reason other that not being to shut off my brain), I’m starting to feel more like ‘me.’ Whether that’s just because I’ve spent few weeks doing nothing but lying on the sofa recovering, or whether it’s because the days are starting to get a bit longer and it feels like Spring isn’t too far away, but I have felt pretty positive this week.

Firstly, a couple of things I forgot to mention last week. I watched a new film on a sleepy Saturday night in – the cartoon Hotel Transylvania. It was a mildly amusing look at the monster world of Dracula and friends, and his daughter’s adventure into mixing with the human world. I also took a new opportunity last week, signing up to an agency that offered to run a facebook advert advertising my upcoming Wellbeing Retreat. After a slow and shaky start, with problems getting hold of the agency in the few days after I’d paid them my money, I’m still undecided about the success of the £100 I invested in the advert. It should run for 30 days, and the agency is reassuring me that it’ll pick up towards the end of the campaign as people have seen the advert 4-5 times before they click. The jury is currently out.
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So, on to this week. Matt was away on his brother’s stag do this week, so I had the weekend to myself. I went to the cinema twice, seeing ‘Room’ on Saturday evening – a great, psychologically-interesting film about a girl who was abducted at 17 and locked in a garden shed, and then has a child. The story follows how she creates an interesting world for her 5-year old, and their eventual escape and journey to recovery. Its numerous Oscar nominations are well deserved. The second film on Sunday was The Revenant – a long, and rather tedious, film about Leonardo Dicapro crawling around in snow, eating raw animals and keeping himself warm by gutting a recently dead horse and sleeping inside the carcass. It was about an hour too long (at 2.5 hours) and felt fairly self-indulgent on the part of the film makers. The story also had a complete disregard for the dangers of hypothermia, with every character getting their only clothes soaking wet will-nilly before rolling around in the snow. My advice would be not to waste your time, but for god’s sake, give Leo an Oscar – he’s long overdue. 

Following The Revenant, we headed to the nearby Indian/Nepali restaurant Everest and enjoyed a great meal. I took a risk, not choosing my normal korma, with a new curry option – honey chicken. This essentially turned out to be a korma, with a squirt of honey added to the top.
Tuesday saw a day of networking meetings, first meeting the rather lovely Angus Hay from The Smart Resource, a marketing guru who was recommended to me. Following a number of pushy sales calls from advertising agencies over the last couple of weeks following my first forays into paid advertising, Angus proved a breath of fresh air, with a business model of simply providing free advice to new businesses, with no catch, just a trust-building approach so that when your business is able to invest in marketing more heavily, you’re more likely to choose Angus to help you. Angus also counts as my interesting person this week, in a meeting that started with an apology for him being drugged up on painkillers following some dental work, and a good 1.5 hours of solid, creative marketing advice.

I then moved to an Edinburgh Businesswoman’s Club networking/training event, looking at how to have ‘A Totally Awesome Year,’ followed by a networking dinner with fellow coach Nicola Mcleod and friend Nikki Cinderey. This added another restaurant to the list – the highly recommended Chaophraya, with its delicious thai food. Thursday saw a trip along to the NLP Grapevine, a networking and training evening provided by NLP Edinburgh who I did my NLP Training with. This week’s focus was on creatively managing conflict, and it was lovely to reconnect with some old friends.
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I also got back on track with my 30-minute walks, with a trip up my local Craiglockhart Hill at the weekend, and finished off another colouring picture. The cover has remained off of my piano, but I probably only managed about 10 minutes playing, while waiting for some posters to print.
My learnings this week are:

1. Paid advertising is scary. Although its tempting to fritter away money at a low investment rate, research shows that you can get far better results (or indeed, will only see a result) by upping your budget quite significantly. The balance of spend vs reward is a bit of a voodoo art and something I’m trying hard to embrace with confidence.
2. Tiredness and sleepiness are different things. Most evenings this week, I’ve been extremely tired, struggling to keep my eyes open. However, when I go to bed, I just can’t get to sleep despite being so tired. All suggestions welcome.
3. There’s probably a link between me being busy getting out and about with friends and promoting my business this week, with feeling more optimistic and productive. Who’d have known…..?

So this week really has been slow progress on the 30 things of 30 for 30 challenge. I spent most of the week on the sofa, sleeping or catching up with business stuff that I can do from the sofa, although I have been enjoying the fruits of my soup-making marathon last week (the curried lentil, carrot and cashew one is particularly tasty!) I have only made it out the house twice this week – once for a short walk to the newsagent and once for my mountaineering club Burns Night Supper. While I was supposed to be heading off to the mountains this weekend, I have (for once) listened to my better judgement and decided to stay at home to continue recovering, rather than sliding around in the snow and ice up a mountain.
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It was at Burns Night that I took another opportunity – it’s a tradition for people to perform, either reading some Burns poetry, or singing an old Scottish song. I was asked if I would like to do something, so I took the opportunity to learn a new song, and chose Wild Mountain Thyme. Although it’s a fairly well-known folk song (versions by Bob Dylan, Ronan Keating, Marianne Faithful, The Corries, Ed Sheeran, among many others) I didn’t really know it, having only heard it a couple of times in a sing-along at my scout mountaineering course. Upon investigation, it turns out the words were written by Robert Tannahill, a contemporary of Rabbie Burns, and therefore making it a suitable song for such an occasion. So I learnt the tune, spent most of the evening at the support being nervous and then performed my song to a room of about 60 people. Opportunity taken!

For Burns Night, I also went for quick and easy hairstyle using my regular hair-up thingie, it only takes about 20 secs to do. My new healthy eating 1200kcal a day regime is slowly paying dividends – I have now lost a further pound since regaining my pre-Christmas weight last week.

In my recovery, I have finally read my first adult book of the challenge – an old favourite of mine, Born Free. It’s a true story about a lion cub, whose mother is killed, and gets adopted by a South African couple, lived with them for 3 years and is then released back into the wild. It’s a heart-warming tale, and full of interesting insights into lion (and human) behaviour.
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I also had one networking meeting this week, where I met with Jon, who runs Walkabout Scotland. I was put in contact with him from my day at the Melting Pot freelance office last week (another networking opportunity I attended) and we met up to discuss hints and tips on running an outdoors-based business. Through the conversation, I also sneaked in a few coaching questions to help Jon figure out and cement his goals for this year, hence counting a coaching freebie given!

So, I wanted to spend a bit of time looking at progress on the Challenge. Being 12 weeks through, it works out that I should be approximately 7 items into each challenge of 30 things if I’m going to progress at a steady pace.
For some things, I am progressing ahead of schedule:

• 9 different restaurants eaten in
• 9 new films seen
• 22 alcoholic drinks tried
• 8 different hairstyles
• 11 opportunities taken
• 10 blog posts written

There’s some that I’m going slowly on:

• 5 recipes
• 5 soups
• 4 random acts of kindness
• 4lbs lost
• 5 pictures (master pieces) coloured in
• 3 coaching freebies

And there’s some that I have barely or not even started yet – I’ve got some catching up to do!

• 1 new munro climbed
• 1 cake baked
• 0 hello/thankyou in languages (well, none documented)
• 0 new artists/albums downloaded
• 0 songs on a playlist
• 0 ski runs (and with no ski holiday booked – this is looking very unlikely!)

There were also some things that I was supposed to being every week. One was to do a 30 minute walk every week. Although I started well, this has fallen off in recent weeks. I was also meant to be playing my piano for 30 minutes each week, and I must admit that learning a new song for Burns Night was the very first time my piano has had its cover taken off since my birthday – the poor neglected thing. Playing the piano is something I really enjoy, and I’m not exactly short of time, I just don’t think to do it…….so not sure why I haven’t!

Learnings for me this week are:

1. Recovery can take longer than you expect and sometimes you have to just accept that you can’t do stuff in the short term to enable you to do it in the long term. E.g. Short term pain (or a boring weekend at home) for long term gain (a quicker overall recovery.) This is a change to my normal approach of ‘what the hell, it’ll be ok.’
2. Wild Mountain Thyme is a famous song. When you tell people you’d never heard of it before last week, they snigger at you and make loud exclamations of ‘Really?!’. A bit like when you tell them you don’t really know who David Bowie was.
3. Even when you really enjoy something and commit to doing it, you can apparently not do it for reasons unknown to yourself. 

A bit of a quieter week this week, and with good reason. On Wednesday, I had a new experience (I can’t quite bring myself to count it as a new ‘opportunity’) as I had keyhole surgery. It was a simple operation, and nothing serious (they were removing a simple cyst from one of my ovaries) but scary nonetheless as it was my very first anaesthetic, and I had to put my complete trust in a room full of strangers that they could safely do their job. All went well, although I have barely moved from the sofa since.

So, in terms of the Challenge, I was mainly busy this week in the kitchen, before the op, trying out different recipes and making vats of nice healthy soups, all ready to aid my recovery when I came out of hospital. Firstly, I made Spinach Soup (4 servings), which, despite the spinach being a minor ingredient compared to the amount of potatoes in it, still came out a horrible, or, as I like to call it, ‘healthy’ green colour. The type of colour that makes you really appreciate there must be something terribly good for you in it. I am yet to try it, as it was put straight in the freezer.

Next on the list was Curried Lentils, Carrot and Cashew Nut Soup (6 servings). This one appealed to me mainly because I’ve never heard of anyone putting nuts in a soup before. The end result looked pretty good (and the spoonful I had before freezing it tasted pretty good too) The process for making it was a bit tedious though, involving grating 6 carrots, which takes a surprising amount of time and makes your hands really cold if you’ve only just removed them from the fridge. I’m also not sure what grating the carrots achieved, given it only take about 10 minutes to cook carrot anyway, and the whole thing ends up blended.

My third soup was Mushroom Soup. Other people’s mushroom soups are firm favourite of mine, so I was excited to try this one. Having chopped 1.4kg of mushrooms (yes, 1.4kg!) there seemed few other ingredients – one onion, some stock, and supposedly some sherry, but I didn’t have any so I left it out. Surprisingly, the finished result tasted like someone had blended 1.4kg of mushrooms and not much else. Luckily, I really like mushrooms! Given I had run out of room in the freezer by this point, I did get to try a portion on Wednesday evening. Perhaps a little cream would help the next 3 servings along a little……
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With all this cooking, I took a new opportunity of a culinary theme this week and learnt how to make chicken stock. It started with a roast chicken that Matt decided to cook, mid-week, for sandwich fillings. A few days later, I was left with a chicken carcass and a load of bones, which I would normally just throw away. Knowing I was about to undertake the above soup-making marathon, I figured I could put the chicken to good use, and boiled it up for a couple of hours with an onion and some herbs. I’m again yet to taste the results, as it went into one of the soups which is now frozen for next week. 

Also on a food theme, I started my normal January health kick last week and I’m pleased to report it has paid off, as I’m now back to my pre-Christmas weight, so hopefully I can start progress again on my challenge to lose 30lbs! I tried 2 different recipes this week, both lunch-time concoctions, and both from a Cambridge Weight Plan recipe book. The first was a Chicory, Goat’s Cheese and Pear Salad. It didn’t go entirely to plan, as I couldn’t find any chicory in Asda, but it worked just as well (probably better, as least bitter) with normal salad leaves. I sliced pear over the salad, toasted some pine nuts for a minute or two in a frying pan, and warmed the goat’s cheese under the grill. I also cheated a bit by using a ready-made dressing rather than making my own, but needs must. Some might not agree that a salad counts as a recipe, but for me, I don’t usually make salads, and even when I do, I would never have thought to include this combination of ingredients.
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The second recipe was called ‘Cheat’s Pizza’ and was a low calorie alternative to real pizza, using a wholemeal pitta bread as the base, and adding passata, mushrooms, peppers (from a jar) and mozzarella and cooking in the oven for 10 minutes. Super quick and exceptionally tasty!

This week saw my first new ‘reconnect with 30 old friends’ as part of my challenge. Facebook informed me one morning that I had been friends with Ollie Henson on Facebook for 8 years, along with some pictures of us on a walking holiday in Morocco together. I shared this with Ollie on Facebook, and an hour or so later, he messaged me saying he was in Scotland, just about to start the long drive home and could he pop in and see me in Edinburgh? I offered him a bed for the night and we had a good chin-wag and a reminisce over old times. Who says that technology makes us less connected?
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Finally, this week saw one new hairstyle, a pull-through plait (modelled below) and a new film: The Danish Girl. I really enjoyed the film, marveling at both the performance by both lead actors, and also the bravery of the character through what must have been a difficult and challenging experience. 

Three things I learnt this week:

1. When you make soup from predominantly one ingredient, it tastes like something made from predominantly one ingredient………and doesn’t magically taste like a delicious soup….. obvious I know, but a learning for me nonetheless.
2. David Bowie – having previously only been aware of him in passing, I have learnt about many of his songs, personnas, films and how much he meant to people. I have also learnt that not knowing about David Bowie seems to be a point of ridicule and bullying among my friends and seemingly a mark of failure on my parents for lack of musical education.
3. You use your stomach muscles for pretty much everything. Since having mine cut open, I’ve realised just how much you use them, not only for obvious stuff like getting up off the sofa and turning over in the night, but also for flushing the loo and pouring a cup of tea. 

Firstly, Happy New Year! Wishing you health, happiness and harmony in 2016.
So, following the Christmas and New Year break, I now have 3 weeks of the ‘30 things of 30 for 30 Challenge’ to catch up on writing about, and its been a busy few weeks, so lets get started!

Narrowly missing the last week’s edition was an opportunity I took while staying with my Gran. My cousin is currently studying shamanic healing, to complement her qualifications already achieved in massage and reiki, and she offered me a healing session. I’m pretty sceptical about these things but open to giving them a go, with the theory they can’t do any harm. The session involved lying down for about 40 minutes while my cousin wafted incense around me, placed healing stones on my energy chakras and even ‘shook up’ my energy with a rattle and culminated in a list of thoughts and recommendations that had come to her during the session. While I have no evidence that the session had any effect or not, at the very least it was nice to lie down peacefully for a while, and her thoughts were at least thought-provoking.

Just before heading away for Christmas, I wrote 2 letters, one to my Grandma thanking her for the Christmas money she sent, and one to my Gran, thanking her for the stay I had at her house the week previous. I have since received a phonecall telling me that my letter was ‘very cheeky’ – not least because I addressed it to ‘Granny Barton,’ a name she really doesn’t like, and which I did purely to get a reaction. My Gran is so predictable!
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We then headed down south for Christmas, first stopping at Matt’s parent’s house for 36 hours, where I ‘took another opportunity.’ Faced with the prospects of doing Matt’s expenses (I help him with his business invoicing and accounting every couple of months,) and which was overdue by a month, Matt’s mum had other ideas, and I readily accepted the opportunity to go out for a walk in the local area with her. We enjoyed a beautiful sunny day, a good girlie chat, a beautiful waterfall and a nice pub lunch, and were still back in time for me to do the bulk of the expenses. Much better use of a day!

​We then headed further south, to my Mum’s in Ely for Christmas itself, starting with a fantastic carol service in Ely Cathedral. I decided to enter the festive spirit of things with fantastic Rudolph hairdo I’d seen on Facebook, modelled below. Christmas Day saw another new hairdo, (messily done) with inspiration from the book that my brother bought me ’30 Hairstyles’ accompanied by a box of 9 different hair accessories. 

​Christmas Day itself was a quiet affair, until the evening where I took another ‘opportunity.’ Whilst we were all relaxing in front of the telly in the evening, my Mum had other ideas and suggested we all play some Christmas games. Which is how I found myself building a tower out of spaghetti and marshmallows that could hold a tennis ball for 15 seconds (highest structure wins (Matt’s)) and also building ‘a Christmas Tree’ like structure from 30 plastic cups (highest and most aesthetically pleasing structure wins (mine!)) finally, we played the Christmas card game – where Mum has cut old Christmas cards in two, with one half of each spread around the house, and we are given the other halves, one by one, to run around the house and match up pairs. My brother won, having employed several pushing and cheating tactics.

​Mum’s partner Peter’s family arrived on Boxing Day – his 3 kids, their partners and various children aged between 6 months and 3. We started with the morning just with Harry, Peter’s 8 month old Grandson, who I absolutely fell in love with. With Harry’s Dad playing golf and Harry’s Mum off to the Boxing Day sales, I got to look after Harry for most of the morning, and I’m claiming him as the ‘interesting person’ I met this week (certainly my favourite so far.) What I learnt from my time with Harry is that: blowing raspberry is fun; watching my mum have a raspberry-blowing conversation with a baby is every more fun; and that nappy changing really isn’t all that bad. (It was my Mum’s turn to change him when it was the bad one!)

I did manage one random act of kindness that evening. With Harry’s parents comfortably seated and enjoying the Christmas spirit(s), Harry became to get tired and cry. I offered to take him for a walk around the block, in the dark, in his pushchair to help get him to sleep so his parents could continue a well-earned rest. Harry was obviously very tired, but also massively curious, so would be nearly nodding off when a car would go by and he’s wake up trying to look at it. After 2 trips round the block (and standing in some dog mess) I finally got him off to sleep.

Following Christmas, I headed up to Lochearnhead (10 hours on a minibus from Ely to Scotland) for my annual trip with Scout to help lead on a Winter Mountaineering course. This is always a fun trip with lots of old mates (although I’ve seen them too recently to count as catching up with old friend) It did however count as a new activity for my exercise list – Winter Mountaineering. We got a good couple of days using ice-axe and crampons. Although we did 6 munros during the week, they are all ones that I’ve done before, so didn’t count towards my Challenge.
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As you can imagine, the festive periods saw a few more alcoholic drinks get added to my Challenge list. At Mum’s, I had an Amarula (South African cream Bailey-like drink) and also a Mojito cocktail made by my brother. In Lochearnhead, my fellow leaders were most accommodating in letting me try glasses of their favourite tipples, so I had Ginger Wine, Port, Whisky (they all taste the same to me, so different whisky’s don’t count as separate drinks for me) and also some home-made Sloe Gin. This now takes my drinks total to 22 out of 30!

My Dad is normally at Lochearnhead, helping as a driver, but unfortunately his DBS (criminal record check) renewal paperwork was not processed in time, so he was unable to come. I rang him most days and send him a Lochearnhead scout station postcard to try and help him feel part of things.
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The festive season finished off with a new film, the one everyone is talking about: Star Wars: The Force Awakens. I thoroughly enjoyed it (once I got over the loud volume in the IMAX and the 3D effects making me duck at low-flying debris.)

So its now back to the normal working week with a bit of a bump, but I do have some interesting learning to reflect on.

1. Mountains make me really happy. After finding November and December, with their dark nights and limited work, really quite difficult, I felt amazing over New Year spending time in the mountains. Nature and the company of good friends really does make the world of difference. I need to work out a way of getting more of this in my life.
2. Babies are fun (this I knew already) – watching grown adults, normally very sensible, playing with babies and doing all sorts of stupid things can be even more entertaining.
3. Despite rarely being in contact because he’s so busy and important, my brother must actually read my blog, as all of his Christmas presents to me were based on achieving Challenge items. I love you, Bro!