Anna Aden Writes

I've been super busy over the holidays so I've not had the time to update my blog. Lots of things happening, good things. Looking forward to tomorrow and I'm making a cake. Spending the day with family and friends. Merry Christmas everyone! -----------------------------------------------------------  Check out Bigga Day's books on Smashwords.com https://www.smashwords.com/profile/view/bigga Apple iBooks https://itunes.apple.com/us/artist/bigga-day/id595585425?mt=11 Barnes and Nobles http://www.barnesandnoble.com/c/bigga-day Kobo http://store.kobobooks.com/en-US/Search?query=Bigga%20Day&fcsearchfield=Author

Despites all my good words, I am slipping back into old bad habits and overloading myself with things to do. Distractions. Everything is important. So I've decided to get tough with myself and focus on my major goal. The one that will be most beneficial to me and a causality of that will be writing this blog daily or near daily. So I'm going to be focusing on my major goal and push myself to focus and I think all the other activities, and I mean a lot are diluting from the process. This means getting rid of non-value adding activities. Oh dear, I sound rather corporate. My week so far. If Pilate nearly killed me, then in Yoga was the firing line. OMG! What is it with these gym classes being so dynamic! When I mean dynamic I mean break-into-a-sweat dynamic. I'd never hadn't had such a difficult class - obviously I was the largest. Okay - let's go fat-shaming- don't you just love that word? I was the fattest by a long stretch. And the unfittest. My body was ou...

On Friday my boss got bored of me talking about my eating plan and how I only used my gym for the spa facilities, so let's just say I forced to put my money where my mouth was and ended up booking five exercise sessions. Yes, hard to believe I've been with my gym for over a year and have NEVER ATTENDED A GYM CLASS. Mainly, because I like the spa and thing food reduction is the way to lose weight also just thinking of exercise exhausts me. I needed to book them via the website but having never done it, my password failed so I rang, in front of my boss, the gym to book it. Proof. They are mainly low impact classes so nothing too strenuous or so I thought. Come Saturday, I'm down the gym for my pilates class with all these fit, slim and trendy people. It's a 9AM class so basically like a work day for me. I thought pilates was gentle. Not. I say this having done it for about three years in a dance school - yeah I was once about twenty pounds or ten kilos lighter - and the ...

Yesterday. Didn't get round to writing this up. So had work, colleague's birthday which meant cake day. It was a planned cake day so okay. After work went the library to do some work. Today - Morning Got the bus, and still reading Pretend You're Mine.  Is it good? Bad? Well, that is hard one. Its entertaining and good to pass the time on my daily commute. It's much better than reading horrible news items. Lucy Score is a good writer, not too sure about her premise but it's entertaining in such a way I'm laughing at the characters. A large of amount of disbelief needs to be suspended however it's good fun. There are parts that are so ridiculous that I had to roll my eyes, but hey I'm still reading. I'm on chapter ten and it's about sixty or something. I reckon about 90k words. It's about a woman who arrives in a small town and shacks up with a man. Literally shacks up. Sharing the same bed shacks up. Ya'll need to read it. Caution ...

Morning Did some work at home before setting off to the office. Read some  Pretend You Are Mine (PYAM) by Lucy Score, then I switched to doing my grammar lesson. This Kindle mobile app is really cool. Nothing much to add to the book however I'm learning probably not to rush out and buy books on Kindle - I bought a lot so my reading list is very long.  As for Score's book, it's okay - the heroine has stopped with the whole he's hot. Stood on the train and saw a dude bring out his to-do list, and allocate times against it. I was impressed and made a note to try it at work. Afternoon To do list isn't going well but there is some progress. Big obstacle to diet was that pudding was coconut and jam sponge cake.  I LOVE COCONUT AND JAM SPONGE CAKE! Managed to overcome temptation to buy a piece. Then red velvet cake - oh boy!  Had boring jacket (baked) potato and tuna. I can't do this jacket potato tomorrow. I just can't. Had some tinned peaches for pudding...

Weekend. Watched a movie Rumour has it... with Jennifer Aniston. She is one of my favourite actresses, so I enjoyed it. The Christmas party was very good. Had lots to eat. There was turkey, ham, lots of home made cakes, stuffing, roast potatoes, jollof rice, rice and peas, festival dumplings and lots of other stuff. It was nice music, wine and Christmas crackers. The best mulled wine I'd tasted in years! There was so much selection I didn't have turkey since I'm going to probably have that at my work do or on Christmas day thought my sister said it was delicious. And Momma AG who is a vegetarian said the rice and peas was awesome. She also love the Christmas pudding with brandy sauce. I opted for red velvet cake - all the cakes and sweets were home made. Yum!  It was our local Catholic Church's Christmas party. Mostly the congregation but also lots of people they invited along. I sold ticket for the raffle,  Must add it was also a fundraising event for the bui...

I was on the bus yesterday and saw someone reading an email in this format so decided to adopt it. I just thought it was simple and clear and easy to write Morning. Did ten minutes writing for new project. Yes, said I wouldn't, but pull of writing is hard to resist. Wrote up my previous day and posted. Grammar mistakes and all. Thought about uploading mini videos clips but no real time. Waited on the bus, and peering over the man next to be reading an email found this style. Thought I'd try it out on my blog. Nice and simple. A bit like taking minutes, however it impressed me so here it is. Ran for the train, some chick wearing some funky looking boots. Gold chains at the back, wish I could have taken a picture. Was bad. Got breakfast from Sainsbury - a bagel and au raison pain, plus a fancy sandwich for lunch. Got to work and started on my work write up. It took about thirty minutes Midmorning Decided to eat sandwich lunch early. Genius Boss enquired if it was late breakfas...

Conflicting goals are very common, I'm finding out. What is most important? What is the one that makes a real difference to your life. This is where I have to get real. I have quite a few. Some are day-dreams - kinda like completing my novel and putting it on Amazon. Others are tedious but will have real life value, however take a lot of effort and effort to push through. So all my goals make a difference. Some give me hope and fuel my future dreams and ambitions. Others are more realistic but humdrum since they are work related. Put it this way, life is more than work. So I guess there lies my conflict. One is about professional development and the other is about creative development. However professional development takes up more time and on a deeper level lacks the satisfaction a creative work would give me. Anyway enough moaning about things. So I've SMARTed my professional development goal, which I've been calling the personal goal. So Specific - I want to complete the...

The team lunch was booked and paid for yesterday. Lil colleague and I went to pay the deposit in the late morning. Nothing interesting happening apart from we might have an inside christmas lunch again. We get a special season menu for a special price. The thing is during this season one gets to eat christmas dinner about a few times, so actual christmas dinner may be boring. Still not sure what I'm doing this year. Started off on my pre-ultimate assignment. I drew a blank and decided about writer's block. Then I thought about writing a story from one of those internet story generators. So I did. Basically it was about ways to combat writer's block. Anyway I just needed 800 words and I'm near 900. Just a bit of cutting and editing would do now. After which I need to rewrite the pasage using some other stuff. I popped into my online critiquing site where someone had posted something about a work colleague taking advange of them. I guess what took me aback is that fro...

Lots happened at work today. Sat in on presentation meetings with Head Honcho which again was a master class in my profession. I'm learning to learning. Normally sometimes as a pro one can get defensive about certain things and comes over slightly agitated so having working for two high cablibre pros is worth more than their weight in gold to me. One learns not only technical skills but also communication skills. I've also taken to reading the industry trade rag. Yeah, I know, taking career seriously. Venue rang back and confirmed we can order either from the al carte menu or christmas menu. What is now in disccusion is the discretionary service charge. Anyway I'm just going to pay the deposit and see what comes up. It's a nice venue, we are getting an airy dining room - away from the crowds - overlooking the beautiful garden. And it seems everyone is happy with it. Well mostly. Fabulously Glamorous gave me a mediation piece which is very truth. I've pondered on ...

Happy Ist of December. 25 days to Christmas and 26 days to the SALES!!! The time management planning is coming along fine, though I managed to overdo it which is a no no. I got engrossed in my assignment and went on until the early hours of the morning which is another no no. Now I'm a bit tired because I have a long day ahead. However it was because this long distance or correspondence course I am on, comes to an end soon. Well I'm not sure if it had already. I thought I had an extra year but it seems I just delay and procrastinated, and now doing all my planning I found out I actually joined it in much earlier than I thought. The effect of implusive buying things at christmas. This was the picture of the fireplace in the pub where I had dinner on Sunday. I just noticed that one tile is missing from the fire place and had been put by the side. How interesting. There are a selection of pubs around but this is the one we gravate to most. Nice staff, good food and pleasant ...