We’re not quite there yet… We’ve still a long list of tasks to accomplish before we officially move, but nonetheless as of today, we’re one step closer to our move! First thing this morning, I finally, officially, submitted our VISA application! It’s taken quite some time to get this far, as we’re a “De Facto” couple, the amount of evidence we need to supply is utterly endless. It’s been a strain to be perfectly honest, we’ve gone back and forth with our immigration lawyers for weeks, so I’m very happy to say that we’ve reached the end of the first phase of our move!
We’re not all the way there yet though, first we have to ensure our VISA is approved. Once we get that far, then things will happen very, very quickly… From a work perspective, I’ve pretty much handed over all my accounts, I’ve been training some new hires over the past 6 weeks or so and they’ve got up to speed very quickly. From a life perspective our “To do” list looks like this:
Await VISA approval
Book flights
Say final goodbyes to friends and family
Pack our entire life is to as few suitcases as humanly possible
Book a hotel in Melbourne
Once we then land over in the new, promised land:
Check into hotel
Open bank accounts
Find new home and move in to said home
Find and buy a car
Begin our new lives…
That last step there, is really the most important. The entire list is quite a lot of work, most of it has to be done within a week of landing in Australia, so I envisage it being fairly stressful, but once it’s all out of the way and we’ve begun to settle, we’ve got all the time in the world! I’m really looking forward to the silly things, like trips to Ikea to get our first sets of furnishings, making our house a home… Then, we can enjoy our new lives.
I’ve always been really good at managing my time, as I described in my last post I have a huge client list, but manage to stay on top of it whilst also helping out other colleagues. Sometimes though, I feel that my time would be better spent on other tasks?
I’m currently on my way down to London, on the 6:15 train out of Birmingham. From there I will catch the 9:12 Eurostar to Paris and head out for a 1pm meeting.
This is fine by me, it’s always worth seeing a client, but I’ll have spent the best part of 6 hours travelling this morning, through which I’ve been unable to do any work… This means that by the time I get back home (about midnight) I’ll have a day to catch up on.
I can’t help that feel, given the industry I work in, face to face client meeting are a slight waste of everyone’s time? Maybe we should make better use of Skype or GoTo Meeting?
It’s been said many times, if you go on holiday you won’t have a job to come back to. That’s really not so, but the case here is if you go on holiday, you’ll wish you hadn’t!
I have a fairly high workload, I always have… But that’s not for lack of trying hard, it’s just the way this industry works. I constantly have an (over capacity) 10 clients, alongside my work helping colleagues, plus general day to day house keeping. So when I miss a day, in this case two, I have to cram 5 days work in to 3, which just doesn’t look healthy!
I’m constantly working evenings and weekends, always learning more and trying new things. But hell, do I hate having time off!
I recently uploaded the above picture to Instagram, as a view to everywhere I’ve been in 2011. Whilst I’m sure some may find that impressive, for me, I don’t think it really is. I’ve always loved travelling, such as the old saying goes “It’s not about the destination, it’s about the journey” and I love journeys. You’re able to see so much, places, people, iconic buildings, beautiful scenery, it’s all there to go and see!
In the past 3 years, I’ve been more places than I could have possibly imagined. If I were able to show on a map, I would, but quite frankly, that’s a lot of effort given that the above image would generated automatically by iPhoto… haha.
My plan for 2012 is to see as many new places as possible. My brother and I have already started planning our next european road trip, heading straight for Berlin and moving east from there, so I’m hoping to be able to cover some good ground in that week! On top of that, Charleigh and I are also planning another trip in to Europe, I believe she wants to go back to the Eiffel tower again, but I’m keen to not just cover the same ground as this year. I want to make sure we see something new!
I also have a the prospect of heading out to the states again this year, at the moment it’s not been confirmed, so I won’t divulge any details, but if that’s goes ahead, I’ll be seeing even more sights!!
I am by no means aiming to write a comparative post, this is not about some situations being more stressful than others, I just feel it would be worth me writing this down.
I’ve written several times in the past about stress, how I deal with it, how I overcome it, but I’ve never really just written down the facts of what I find stressful or what might be causing me problems… Generally I think I appear very level headed with most problems, but I think at times that can be my downfall. Usually when problems arise, they are small and each individually is not that much of an issue, but as they start to build up they definitely get the better of me.
The facts:
I have a “maxed out” credit card which an APR so high, I only ever seem to be repaying the same amount and the debt goes nowhere
I have a huge over draft, which I pretty much live in
I have an extremely stressful job, managing the online retail efforts of 8 large retailers, including helping colleagues with other issues, sometimes working past midnight
Christmas is the busiest time for retailers, as such I’m working 11 hour days, just to get my regular work done
I’m trying to save up money for a deposit on a house
I’m trying to raise my credit score so that I can get said deposit
All of these things gradually build up… I’m sure there are a lot more I’ve missed off here, mainly because I’ve attempted to ignore said fact.
I try my best with the situation I have and OK, maybe it’s not as bad as your situation, or maybe mine could be worse… But there comes a point at which I just think, fuck it. Fuck loans, fuck work, fuck cars, houses, fuck it all. Surely I’d be better off living in a yurt somewhere in the Cotswolds?
My name is Sam Clarke and I’m a half arsed blogger.
For years, I’ve actively been writing, whether it be on a blog or simply for myself, I’ve always done it.. But something I’ve struggled with recently is sitting down and actually finishing something I started writing! I used to have a lot of time alone, I’d finish work and just sit online, writing, reading etc. Since moving in with Charleigh, we now spend that time doing other things (I’m by no means saying I’d rather be on my own), it’s just that, during the day I simply don’t have time available to blog or write as much as I used to!
Below are the last 3 posts that I started writing, but never finished. Maybe my next attempt will prevail!
A quick drive
Frequently, Charleigh and I will go out for a quick drive for something to do… More often than not we end up about 100 miles away, or up in Worcester. It’s great to get out of London and I really enjoy spending time in the car with Charleigh. We seem to sit in a silence, which is not at all awkward.
This weekend was no exception. Nina wanted to look after Ellie for the weekend, so we made plans to head out of London for the day, maybe do some shopping and get some lunch!
…
Time Management
Last week, Charleigh and I had a long conversation about the different methods of time management, ranging from personal time to work time. Essentially what we were working on was an ideal way in which we could impart good life skills and practices on to Ellie without it seeming like that was our aim. We eventually came to a conclusion which we’ve started putting in to practise this week and seems to be working fairly well so far!
The long time we spent talking about different ways to approach this, led to me think about how I manage my time, whether or not it’s the most effective method I could put in to practise and how I’d got to that conclusion in the first place!
To basically explain how I go about managing my work time, I thought I’d draw a little chart… Otherwise it could take me a lifetime to explain! haha.
…
Pseudologia Fantastica
What makes people lie?
I don’t agree that it’s a mental illness, I think that runs along the same lines as saying being overweight is an illness too… It’s not, stop eating… Also, stop lying. I say this, not because I have been affected by a pathological liar (Well, I have, but that’s irrelevant), I’m writing this because Charleigh has recently become the victim of a fictitious world in which a prospective colleague lived. The main story here isn’t something I particularly wanted to go in to detail on, I’ll leave that to Charleigh if she feels the need, I’m more interested in why people tend to create fictitious worlds in which to live.
At some point over the next 24 hours, Charleigh and I will have been together for 6 months. I don’t feel I have to go in to an explanation of how I feel about her, but I thought our day out in Bath yesterday was the perfect metaphor for my feelings toward Charleigh. Perfect.
As you may or may not know, I work in ecommerce. As such there’s always a lot of discussion in the office about emerging markets and different ways through which people are able to purchase online. Typically these tend to be things like new markets, opportunities in other countries and even new ways of marketing your own website.
The most recent of the emerging markets has been mobile commerce, over the last 4/5 years, this has taken off incredibly well, which I think is something a lot of us saw coming. Companies made small changes to adapt to this, things like making their site responsive and adaptive to mobile browsers. Some even went to the extent of making their own apps to allow their customers to make purchases. Obviously, this wasn’t something that everyone could do, but for the largest of retailers was really effective. I really saw how this effected different retailers and even saw the downside to which some suffered when they were “Late to the party”.
The newest market which is being pushed upon both the consumer and the retailer in equal measure, is Social Commerce. This one, I must admit has me slightly baffled. Some companies have been working, even dominating this space for quite some time. Living Social and Groupon for example have been the two biggest companies to really get this market going. But I must admit, I’m slightly concerned that there’s a limit to which this market can be pushed.
Typically with advertising markets like this, it’s all about making sure the customer is able to find the product they’re after. Comparison shopping engines for example, are heavily based around product data. Typically I find companies seem to think it’s more about product price than anything, but that’s not strictly true. There’s a large element dedicated to the “Trust” of the retailer, along with prices and data that make these marketing campaigns more successful.
My concern with social commerce, is that the aim is for example, getting customers to recommend products to their friends or family through mediums such as Facebook or Twitter, but surely there’s a limit here? Take for instance one ficticous user who posts a link to a pair of shoes they really like on Facebook. There’s a part of me that says, OK so maybe this person is advertising this product for free, it’s essentially pushing products to people who otherwise wouldn’t have seen them. But the conversion rate must be extremely poor? Just because a friend likes something, or posts a link somewhere, it doesn’t really mean I’m going to go and buy that product?
Maybe shoes were a bad example, who’s to say that social commerce might work incredibly well for one product vertical, Electronics I would imagine would fair pretty well here, but home furnishings, garden accessories, surely not?
I guess I’ll have to wait and see how effective this may, or may not become. But I’m sceptical at best.
We’re not quite there yet… We’ve still a long list of tasks to accomplish before we officially move, but nonetheless as of today, we’re one step closer to our move! First thing this morning, I finally, officially, submitted our VISA application! It’s taken quite some time to get this far,…
I’ve always been really good at managing my time, as I described in my last post I have a huge client list, but manage to stay on top of it whilst also helping out other colleagues. Sometimes though, I feel that my time would be better spent on other tasks?…
It’s been said many times, if you go on holiday you won’t have a job to come back to. That’s really not so, but the case here is if you go on holiday, you’ll wish you hadn’t! I have a fairly high workload, I always have… But that’s not for…
