Anna Aden Writes

Happy New Year!  I hope everyone had a good time, I saw the 2020 watching the London Fireworks and digitally with family! With 2019 behind us and lessons learnt, we move forward to 2020 and a new decade unless you use another type of calendar and believe me there are loads around!  So with celebrations we move into the New Year. My 2020 Goals This time I'm just going to focus on three top goals though there is plenty I want to do. Normally I overwhelm myself with about ten but I think streamlining is the way forward for this year. 1. Complete my novel-in-progress fit for publication This is carried over from 2019, and I'm committed to finishing it in May but it's something I want to complete this year. If you have been following my blog, you'll also know I've done a few workshops and courses. The last one was the Faber Edit Your Course where I got a reader's report with some comments.  2. Fitness and Weight loss This comes up every s...

This was my most prolific year blogging, and as at now I have published 208 blog posts this year and I'll probably do a couple more before the year ends. At first I started writing everything day, hoping it would help me with editing my novel-in-progress, but it didn't. Then I branched out to doing blog features for everyday such as  weekly film/movie post,  places in London,  the state of my desk Editing my novel 52 week money challenge other features  Eventually, I got overwhelmed and decided to cut back, in fact I changed the schedule a few time and in the end due to a busy offline life. Towards the end, I was only doing blog topics and finally  I ended up just doing the 52-week money challenge - which I saved £1,004 in cash from, the rest in IOUs. What I learnt from Blogging To get blog hits or build an audience, a blog needs to be about what people are interested in and you get that by being specific. It's simply that. However h...

This isn't bad for a year's long challenge which has been tedious, cumbersome and boring! The final cash savings was £1,004 and the IOUs were £374. As frequently with this long term saving projects there was some double counting - I think mostly to do mixing up weeks so I had to got by the cash savings! The Details On Boxing Day,  I went down to my mother so she could assist in the counting. To help with this count down, I asked Ma who willingly obliged as she had been keenly reading my blog posts about this. Sis acted as an independent observer. Well she was on the sofa while Ma and I counted the cash and the IOUs. At first there was a debate about what surface to use, and Ma and Sis advised it was best to use red since that represented money and wealth in many cultures, so that was taken on board. As a result we used the Christmas table runner. We poured the contents of the money pot on the table and proceed to sort out the cash in diffe...

Happy Holidays! This was touch and go because Christmas is an expensive time, and I wasn't sure if to put in a final IOU but I thought it was good to end on positive note for the year. So I get the cash together from my bank accounts.  I'm posting this earlier in the week - basically week 52 - because I have other stuff to do, like buy Christmas presents - I tend to be late.  I guess it's probably a good time to do a final review.  Review of 52 week money challenge This challenge is based on saving money 52 weeks of the year, but the caveat is you save the according to the week number. So in the first week of the year £1 or $1 is saved and this increases as the year goes on until the final week of the year - week 52. What's good about it  1. It highlights saving. So as result, I did review my 'proper savings' plan which is a regular amount each month.  2. It is fun to start with! 3. It simple to understand. What's not so ...

So it's my festive effort. I was considering putting in an IOU but decided since it was penultimate week of the year it was best to find the cash. Also before I start spending on Christmas presents, I thought just to get some cash out and put it in the box. Happy Holidays