Update from London

Just spent a minute or so before I started writing this to think of a witty title... nothing came to mind so I went with the most straight forward description.  I am currently sitting on my friend's couch here in London.  I have been staying with her for a week, this morning she left to go on holiday for a week so I'm staying and house sitting for her until she gets back.  I've been in europe now for nearly 10 months, still exciting back quickly running out of money (just cracked open the credit card) and more frequently finding myself thinking of home.

One of the reasons I'm looking forward to getting home is to set in motion several business ideas.  I won't mention all of them here, never know who could be listening, but I shall discuss a few.

• Adelaide Marketing Poker Game- had this idea just the other day.  A way to combine my interests; organising poker games, playing poker and marketing socialising and networking.
• Company to manage my websites- set up a company owned by me that owns all of my website interests.  Should make it easier to do tax and provide possible benefits.  I can make some business cards as well :)
• Trending topics blogs- I'm so glad I decided to keep my Adelaide Poker blog even though I'd stopped updating it.  I've now had a total of three advertising requests and made a few hundred dollars from it.  I'm saddened that I deleted my Australian Blackjack blog as I could've had similar requests had I kept it.  However an idea has emerged... what if I create blogs for a number of trending (up) subjects for the prospect of future gains if that topic becomes popular and people want to advertise.  It could take a couple of years so it would ultimatley be an investment in the future.

Heres a list of my blogs and what I'm doing with them:

Test Blog

6 Posts, last published on May 6, 2010 – Simply used as a testing ground for designs, themes, etc.  Still usable if I need it.

Monsoon Gifts Glenelg

1 Post, last published on May 4, 2010 – Blog website for my parents gift business back home.  Hopefully I will do some more with this when I get back home.

Slideshows for Blogger

2 Posts, last published on May 1, 2010 – I did quite a lot of research about slideshows for blogger and I wanted to make a blog to collect and display that information.  Like so many of my projects, my motivation went way down and it has been left unfinished.  I would like to get at least a basic form of the information up there.

Simple Clean Websites

3 Posts, last published on Apr 14, 2010 – Website for a internent marketing information and freeland website creation and internet marketing services.  Has a few posts, needs a lot of work.  Will continue it or reporpose the idea and content elsewhere at some stage, probably when I get home.

Le Castel

1 Post, last published on Apr 11, 2010 – Website I created for 'Le Castel,' a chateau accomodation business that I worked at for 2 months in Normandy, France.

Adelaide Poker

23 Posts, last published on Jan 22, 2010 – I have already mentioned this website a few times.  Currently negotiating an advertising deal which may see it updated as soon as next week.  If not it should see some updates from time to time starting from when I return to Australia.

The Greatest Blog Experiment

15 Posts, last published on Aug 27, 2009 – One of my first blogs to form a directory of other blogs and a community focused on exploring them.  It had some traction but wasn't really my cup of tea and requires a lot of work for very little return.  I don't intend to update it any more.

The Summer of Morris

7 Posts, last published on Aug 26, 2009 – This blog.  I intend to keep it going and would like to update it more often.  Its a personal blog where I can post whatever I want and won't be looking at making money with it.

Get A Real Job!

41 Posts, last published on Jan 21, 2007 – My personal poker and bonus whoring blog from when I was heavily interested in poker.  I don't intend to update it any more.

Everything Up Until This Point is Absolute Rubbish!

When you read the title of this post you must do it in an Irish accent, especially the 'Absolute Rubbish' part. I've just finished watching Black Books and Bernard seems to say it quite a bit.

Anyway, I started this blog some time ago as a journal and motivator for 'The Summer of Morris,' a three month period in which I was going to better myself in a number of different ways. I had a list and everything but of course, like so many of my other projects, it fell flat on its face after just a few weeks. However, I did manager to complete 2 or so things from the list so I'm counting it as a win.

From now on, I'm going to use this blog to document my various projects and keep you abreast of life.

Luckily I just completed my LinkedIn profile which has a summary of what I'm up to...

I have recently completed a Business Double Degree of Management (Marketing) and Business (Property) at UniSA and I wish to pursue a career in Internet Marketing.

I'm taking a year to travel to Europe (Dec 2009- Dec 2010) including a working holiday in France. I'm hoping to line up an internet marketing internship in France for 2-6 months if possible.

My work experience up until now has been in Office Administration including data entry, mail outs, digital and manual filing, scanning, customer service and document processing.

In the short term, my goal is to get a temporary job to earn some extra money for my overseas trip in December 2009.

I'm also planning on setting up a travel blog to cover my trip which will double as a web design/ internet marketing portfolio for some freelance work I'd like to do while overseas.

I've recently been contacted by someone wanting to put a banner on my Adelaide Poker Blog which I haven't worked on in like two years. I have had some requests before as the blog is a PR 2 and still has some decent Search Engine rankings and I was going to throw this one in the trash as I did with those but I just thought what the hell so I replied and it looks like it might go ahead. I'll make some time to do a few new posts and tweaks to bring the site up to date, slap up the banner and hopefully it will bring in a tidy little profit.

The other thing I've been doing lately is the Adelaide Flash Mob. A flashmob is a large group of people who assemble suddenly in a public place, do something unusual for a brief period, and quickly disperse. We hold participatory events in and around Adelaide, mostly in the Mall, and our events could broadly be described as street performance. Check us out on the web and facebook if you want to get involved.

Hello Again...

Its been 4 weeks since my last post- a pretty disapointing performance- but thats not to say that I haven't been working on my goals throughout that time. The past three mondays I've said to myself that I would update this blog but each time I just didn't get onto it, but today I thought that I REALLY had to get onto it.

There are a couple of reasons why I haven't been updating the blog frequently like I said I would. I have thought about what to write in this post many atime and came up with a standard reason to excuse my absense. This is that its a busy time of year with lots of stuff on etc etc and I didn't have the spare time to keep the blog updated. Now, while the lack of time was certainly a factor, it was definately not a large contributor.

The main reason was the same one that has been an obstacle my entire life and is what this blog was meant to help me overcome; my procrastination and laziness. I can always muster so much enthusiasm and motivation but when it comes to getting started and then continueing, thats where the problem lies.

In addition to that, I realised that the resulting benefit from doing these long 'planning' posts probably wasn't great enough to overcome the time lost preparting for, planning and writing them. However, I think that I can find a happy medium between these two forces by doing short, sharp and shiny 'planning' posts, therefore not wasting much time, but still leading to some benefit.

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As I mentioned above, just because I havne't been updating the blog it doesn't mean that I haven't been working towards my goals. Below is a list of my goals with the ones that I have done significant work on highlighted in bold.

• Break bad habits ie. Fingernail Biting
• Poker- Improve online and live play
• Magic- Improve card manipulation skills and learn card tricks
• Diet- Bring diet up to healthy level
• Flash Mobs- Organise plenty as well as MP3 Experiment Adelaide
• Work- Improve productivity, speed and quality
• Clean teeth twice a day without fail
• Fitness- Get fit, improve basketball skills, maybe do weights
• Do Jobs- help out mum at home doing jobs etc
• Have shorter showers
• Take accurate phone messages and overcome phone phobia
• Improve personal hygiene
  
• Remember peoples names
• Read more books/ articles
• Improve vocabulary- do word puzzles in paper
• Business/ websites- launch websites and start making money from them
• Blog- maintain this blog
• Anger Management- improve
• Catch up with friends more
• Keep room tidy

These are the goals that I've done some work on but need some additional time and effort to make a solid impact:

• Poker- Improve online and live play
• Magic- Improve card manipulation skills and learn card tricks
• Diet- Bring diet up to healthy level
• Work- Improve productivity, speed and quality
• Clean teeth twice a day without fail
• Fitness- Get fit, improve basketball skills, maybe do weights
• Have shorter showers
• Overcome phone phobia
• Improve personal hygiene
  
• Keep room tidy

Which leaves the following goals which I haven't really done anything with yet:

• Do Jobs- help out mum at home doing jobs etc
• Take accurate phone messages
• Remember peoples names
• Improve vocabulary- do word puzzles in paper
• Blog- maintain this blog
• Anger Management- improve

In addition, I've realised that while I want to acheive all my goals to better my life, I should still do things that I enjoy doing even if they don't really have any other use, such as watching good movies, dvd's and tv shows.

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Below I'm going to give some brief sentences which show what I've acheived:

• Almost all my fingernails are past the end of my fingers
• We've had two Flash Mobs this summer, and we have a related event coming up this Saturday
• I finished reading 'The Jesus Dynasty,' and am now reading 'The God Delusion.'
  
• I've built and launched one of the two websites and its gaining popularity. I've now made a total of US$80 from this business venture.

Here are some brief sentences outlining my plans for acheiving my goals:

• Play Sit n Go's at Full Tilt and focus on playing ABC poker
• Analyse similar websites to mine and work on improving my structure and content
• Practice to overcome phone phobia
• Eat large meals to cut down on snacking on junk food
• Scout locations and activities for MP3 Flash Mob

If I can keep my posts to something simple like the two sets of dot points above then I might be able to acheive the happy medium mentioned earlier.

Past Week Overview

Its been about a week since my last post, because, as you know, I have been away on a camping trip. The conditions of the trip made it difficult to stick to some of the rules I'd laid down to help myself achieve my goals, but I'm willing to let it slide as it was very different circumstances to day to day life.

Since the beginning of this summer I think that I've done a good job easing myself into it but I need to really buckle down and start getting things done now that I'm into the basic swing of things. I'm going to start going to bed earlier- around 10, so that I can get up earlier and have more daylight hours to do stuff in.

I'm going to start spending the time each day to plan and reflect in this blog to keep myself on track. In order to do this I'm going to have to cut down hte length of each post I think because at the moment my posts are pretty disaorganised and take ages to do. This will be teh structure of future posts:

Day 4-9 Recap

Key Goals:

• Break bad habits ie. Fingernail Biting
• Magic- Improve card manipulation skills and learn card tricks
• Flash Mobs- Organise plenty as well as MP3 Experiment Adelaide
• Work- Improve productivity, speed and quality
• Clean teeth twice a day without fail
• Have shorter showers
• Read more books/ articles
• Business/ websites- launch websites and start making money from them
• Catch up with friends more
• Take accurate phone messages and overcome phone phobia

High Points

• Got website up and running and is now getting linked to by other websites and gaining more and more traffic
• Had a sweet camping trip which was great opportunity to catch up with some mates
• Started reading a book again that I had started ages ago but never finished
• Spent a lot of time planning for Adelaide Flash Mob #2

Low Points

• Still find myself biting my fingernails subconciously
• Planned to overcome phone phobia at work but chickened out
• Become distracted in the shower with thinking and go over time

Goals to focus on this week

• Break bad habits ie. Fingernail Biting
• Magic- Improve card manipulation skills and learn card tricks
• Flash Mobs- Organise plenty as well as MP3 Experiment Adelaide
• Work- Improve productivity, speed and quality
• Clean teeth twice a day without fail
• Have shorter showers
• Read more books/ articles
• Business/ websites- launch websites and start making money from them
• Catch up with friends more
• Take accurate phone messages and overcome phone phobia
• Diet- Bring diet up to healthy level
• Blog- maintain this blog
• Do Jobs- help out mum at home doing jobs etc
• Fitness- Get fit, improve basketball skills, maybe do weights
• Keep room tidy

Plans for today

• Do supplementary assignment for uni
• Work on this blog
• Work on website
• Flash Mob planning
  

Day 2 & 3 Recap

The last two days have been pretty jammed full and I haven't had a lot of time to post in the blog. I have been working hard on my website as I want to get it up and running before I go away on Thursday. However, I have still been doing planning on how to acheive my goals, I've just been doing it in my head and not writing it down. Once I come back from the camping trip though, I'll have more time to sit down and lay plans for the implementation of my strategies to achieve my goals.

Today and Sunday, as i mentioned earlier, I spent a lot of time working on getting my website up and running. Its been an exciting time with some obstacles to overcome but I worked through them and now have over 30 pages up. I should be able to sort out the remaining glitches and add some more pages to get the site live by Thursday.

I've also been spending a lot of time planning for the next Adelaide Flash Mob. Most of this planning has involved throwing around ideas/ dates/ time and place on face book and also discussions with other people. We've set the date at Sat 15th December, after i come back from my holiday.

In other news, I'm beginning to see why its been so hard to not achieve some of these goals before. I've caught myself absentmindedly biting my fingernails a number of times already because its just an automatic thing that I do without even thinking about it. To counteract this, I'm trying to replace the bad habit with something else such as crossing my fingers which is a habit breaking method which I have read about.

I've already learnt that in order to be successful at this, I need to plan and I need to be constantly mindful of my actions- these are things I'm going to work on.

Tuesday & Wednesday's Plans

Over the next couple of days I'm going to be working half days at my job. I'm going to focus on getting my website up and funning as discussed and also on planning the next Flash Mob.

Day 1 Recap

Day 1 came and went yesterday without too much excitement. I was able to start implementing the strategies to achieve my goals. I've decided to start things off gradually rather than jumping into it with an all or nothing approach, to avoid a system shock and giving me a better chance to adapt and make a smooth transition.


My Goals

The goals that I most notably worked on yesterday were:

• stop bad habits
  
• have shorter showers
• Exercise more- improve basketball skills
• Clean teeth twice daily
• Improve diet

I haven't bitten my fingernails at all this summer and all my showers have been less than 4 mins long, I've also cleaned my teeth morning and night. We had a 2 1/2 hour long basketball training session which was good exercise, but highlighted the fact that I need to work on my shooting skills. My plan for this includes buying a basketball and setting up the ring in the back yard so I can put in a bit of practice each day.

One of the most notable things that came out of yesterday was my realisation of my addiction to soft drink. After basketball training I often feel a strong urge to go and buy a coke, because it refreshing but also because it will replenish my sugar levels and give my a pick up. Coke is obviously not good for my teeth or my diet so I'm going to try and combat this buy drinking Powerade which is meant to be excellent for re-hydration and replenishing energy stores, while not being so bad for your health.

Plan for Today (Day 2)

I'm going to have a fairly relaxed day today, mainly working on my website business which I hope to have up and running before I go away camping on Thursday (the 6th). I might also spend some time practicing my card manipulation skills. I'm probably going to a party tonight where I'll get to see a lot of my old school mates so that should be pretty cool.

My Goals

• Break bad habits ie. Fingernail Biting
• Poker- Improve online and live play
• Magic- Improve card manipulation skills and learn card tricks
• Diet- Bring diet up to healthy level
• Flash Mobs- Organise plenty as well as MP3 Experiment Adelaide
• Work- Improve productivity, speed and quality
• Clean teeth twice a day without fail
• Fitness- Get fit, improve basketball skills, maybe do weights
• Do Jobs- help out mum at home doing jobs etc
• Have shorter showers
• Take accurate phone messages and overcome phone phobia
• Improve personal hygiene
  
• Remember peoples names
• Read more books/ articles
• Improve vocabulary- do word puzzles in paper
• Business/ websites- launch websites and start making money from them
• Blog- maintain this blog
• Anger Management- improve
• Catch up with friends more
• Keep room tidy