Plan, organise and achieve

I already feel like going out and spending all of my pay cheque that I haven’t even earned yet. Yet I must resist as this job is a six month means to a life time of fulfillment.
I need to save as much money as possible in order to afford to go back and finish my MA.
So – here’s my frugal plan.
1. Bring in own sandwiches every day to save lunch money.
2. Save between £200-£500 per month depending on take home pay after tax and student loan deductions
3. Find and take driving lessons
4. Walk to work (this should be easy due to lack of direct bus and proximity to home).
5. Only buy cheap work clothes
6. Do not get back into habit of buying lots of luxury items to make up for the fact I have to go to work
7. Don’t go mental at Christmas
8. Don’t get back into the habit of having a haircut every six weeks – try to stretch it to 8 -10 weeks per cut.
9. organise my food shopping better to stop me not having anything proper in and then having to go to the little Tesco and buy expensive student food.
10. Stay away from Ebay. I’ve already caught myself thinking about starting up my vinyl collection again.

So far today I have FINALLY registered with the local vets, something I should have done about a year ago!! The main reason for this is the bloody cost of boosters and check ups but have discovered a thing called a direct debit payment plan MINT! It also includes free flea treatment, worming tablets and yearly vaccinations. Next on my list is the dentist whoop! I feel I can achieve anything at this rate.

This morning I paid my rent like a good, well organised tennant. Then I discovered that I’d already set up a standing order for my rent which went out earlier today. So, I’m such a good tennant I’ve paid my rent twice this month. The up-side of this is that I now don’t have to pay any rent until November and that seems like a million light years away!

I thought I had an essay due in on 3rd August, so two weeks before then I panicked and started reading hard. Then, a week before 3rd of August I found out that the deadline was actually 28th August. Mint! That meant I had time to write a better essay and to do more reading. Now I seem to have read a little bit too much and I’m overwhelmed by my topic as I have too much to cram into my assignment. The good thing is that I now have a really good idea about where I want to focus my dissertation and also some firm ideas about what would be interesting to look at for a PhD. Now I feel like I have a mamoth task before me and I seem to be putting off the starting of the actual writing. It’s funny how the first time I was at uni I was struggling to find enough information to make up the word count of my archaeology lessons and now I’m struggling to squeeze all the things I want to say into 5,000 words.
Tomorrow I will not leave the library until I have written a detailed essay plan and written the first sentence of my introduction (except if I haven’t done this before it’s time to go to band practice).

Today I’d like to do all of the following:
1. Make a lemon and poppy seed drizzle cake
2. Find a recipe for a lemon and poppy seed drizzle cake
3. Make a flan
4. Go to Robinson Library
5. Do at least 500 words on essay
6. Get footless tights (who is sstealing my footless tights? I’ve gone from 5 pairs to 1 pair in a week)
7. Get superglue to fix broken shoe
8. Get ingredients for all caking and baking activities
9. DO SOME MUSIC!! Sob – I feel like I haven’t had a good jam with my goodself in ages!
so…. I should probably get out of bed then….

I’d like the backyard to be a nice place. Or, at the very least somewhere which doesn’t look disgusting. This might be my Sunday activity. I might tidy the front bit too. What frustrates me so much about this house is that it could be really nice, it has all the basic attributes of a nice house. It’s just being neglected.

has been popping by to say hello lately. I was a bit washed out with the busyness of artistry last year that I made a concious decision to have a little break at the beginning of the year. Well now I can’t take it any longer, I must make. My hands have been beginning to fidget. There is nothingness within them where doing must take place.

Last week I decided I needed some sort of goal to work towards so I’m kicking my website back into action and going to start applying for some residencies. There are two this summer that seem to fit into what I want to do, but I know I have a lot to sort out beforehand.

Firstly I need to upload my CV on my website and put up some images in the form of projects/exhibitions. I also need to make some new work, so today I thought I would make paper. I have no idea what the paper will become (it’s still drying) but I know it seemed like the next logical step. Hopefully I can take some decent photographs over the next few weeks and I should have a good enough portfolio to start applying for stuff.

Up until about Christmas I was really in two minds about my Masters degree course. I was having serious doubts about whether this was the right course for me and also whether I was brainy enough to do it. Then suddenly something just clicked with me and I decided that the only way to confront these worries was to just have a go and see what happened. I got an email from my tutor yesterday to tell me that my first graded assignment that counts toward my final mark was ready to be collected. I don’t know what mark I got yet but my tutor included in the email the comments from the second marker which were;

“This is an excellent piece of writing. It is very concise and sets out the problematic clearly. What impressed me most was the fact that the explanations were immediately coherent to the interested non-specialist reader. She uses the vocabulary of the discipline very assiduously. Some punctuation missing on pp 7-8 but, apart from that minor gripe, for me this is a fine piece of writing.”

Which is pretty positive I think! So, that’s good, it turns out I might actually be bloody good at being an academic. I did try quite hard with this essay. If I’m honest though, I didn’t try my hardest. I can do this. I feel quite proud of myself because I had such a shitty time at Uni the first time around and I had to fight hard to get accepted this time with my lower second (by half a mark) under graduate degree. Exciting isn’t it, all this learning!

Useful things found whilst tidying
- The charger for my camera
- My stash of batteries
- My Frankfurter Weihnachtsmarkt Mug
- 2 memory sticks
- The cable that makes my ipod play through my stereo.

About a month ago Paperfaerie came into my room and commented upon the fact that I was using my bed as a desk rather than just using the desk in the study ajoined to my bedroom. I think at the time I said something like “Yeah, I prefer to sit on my bed.” Upon reflection I think that this is a lie and the issue might be that my study has been taken over by my crapola thus making it almost impossible to work in there. I need to remedy this and I think that as my studies become more intense it’s probably a good idea to seperate fun areas like my bed and work areas like my desk (although studying is fun at the moment).
I know that I see-saw violently between having an OCD attitude to studying; i.e. I must alphabetize everything in sight, knit a jumper and polish the silverwear before settling down to that essay and a more ‘I don’t confront it then it doesn’t exist’ approach to studying. I’d like to be able to go in there without having to hold on to the wall for support whilst I negotiate the many objects scattered on the floor and I’d like to be able to sit on the chair at the desk and I’d also kind of like it if, when I went to look for a certain book or article I didn’t have to get angry because I can’t find it because I’ve not filed anything in any sort of order. It’s time to make the dream happen! It’s time….to have a tidy up!