Hi all…
Well, I’ve been back to work for about six weeks now and it is cra-zy! Trying to juggle a six month old baby, a toddler, a web design business and run a house doesn’t leave much time for writing.
On the upside, I have been getting in a lot of practice by offering copy-writing to my clients. So at least I’m kind of getting paid to write – just not the content I would normally choose.
Following on from the Four Hour Chef, I decided to go back and read the Four Hour Body (it was published at an earlier date). I’m used to Tim’s style now, and enjoyed all the crazy experiments he did on himself to test the best ways to lose fat and gain muscle.
As a new mother, I still have a bit of pregnancy weight to lose. I gained over 20kg with both pregnancies, but thankfully I managed to lose all of it plus a bit more after the first one. However this time I’m not willing to wait for so long to see results.
Well! That was a whirlwind of a week! My maternity leave ended on the 24th, so it was back to work for me. I have no idea how I am going to juggle two kids – especially the four month old – plus keeping our house in order (and I mean just preventing it from turning into a slum), and doing web design. As you may have noticed, writing doesn’t even get a look in, which is extremely depressing.
I also followed some forum dude’s advice and submitted Zen Queen to a bunch of different websites to promote a freebie (I was only going to do one a year but it sounded too good not to try). I’m at the end of Day 2, and so far, there has only been a very small amount of downloads – so it looks like there are more factors needed to achieve the same result I got back at the end of 2011.
It was a bit touch and go there for a while. I had a few days off from writing and lost the incentive to keep going with my manuscript. But then I rallied and got back on track – only to get sidetracked with my previous story – the one I started before NaNoWriMo. I think it was because a new season of The Bachelor started and my other story has a reality TV component to it.
I’m loving this book so far! It’s not all about cooking – and to be honest, I actually bought it because the reviews said as much. I’m a vegetarian so I’m not interested in how to cook meat anyway – but it actually talks more about techniques, and gives you a foundation to cook any meal.
I actually really enjoyed the non-cooking parts on learning how to learn. My personal favourite was the way to memorise long sequences of numbers. I’ve always been a bit of a geek and loved little tricks to remember random facts. When I was six, my librarian read us the book Tikki Tikki Tembo and said if any of us could remember the boy’s full name by lunchtime, we would get a sticker. I was so worried I’d forget by lunch that I went back at recess. I still got my sticker, but I remember it even now almost 30 years later!