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.
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.
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.
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!
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:
Learnings for me this week are:
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
- 5 recipes
- 5 soups
- 4 random acts of kindness
- 4lbs lost
- 5 pictures (master pieces) coloured in
- 3 coaching freebies
- 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!)
Learnings for me this week are:
- 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.’
- 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.
- Even when you really enjoy something and commit to doing it, you can apparently not do it for reasons unknown to yourself.
RSS Feed