I started off this month with a week just relaxing and getting ready for my new lifestyle. I ended up taking lots of walks around the local area ending up in places I haven’t been in a very long time. This just added to the new sense of freedom I have found.

I still have to make some money though so I couldn’t spend the whole month wandering aimlessly. I do still try and go for a walk most days as this helps clear my mind and lets me focus better on whatever I am doing. I think my plan is to relax into things and see what works best for me.

I have tried experimenting a bit with my work pattern. There is bound to be a bit of trial and error until I find the right balance. Hence the lateness of this post, maybe I let the balance slip a little too much this morning… Feel good after the lie in though.

Progress

I didn’t set myself too much to do this month as I knew there would be a bit of adjustment required to my new lifestyle. So here is my review of how I got on with the tasks I did set.

Make Some Money

The majority of my income this month has come from the contracting work I managed to gain from my previous employer. I am very grateful for this and so I have been very keen to make a good impression in return. I ended up spending a lot more time on this project that I expected and so that didn’t leave me with as much time as I would have liked on my own projects. The good news is that I am really enjoying the work and find it much easier to get really stuck in now that I can focus on one particular task for an extended period of time.

My mind has still been working overtime though thinking of other possible income streams so I think I should make it a priority to get something started in the coming month. As I started the month off with a short holiday it is probably a good thing that I squeezed in those few extra days though otherwise I would have had to start dipping into the emergency fund already. It is good to know that even straight out of the blocks I pretty much have all the bills covered at least.

Update My Bucket List

I have updated my actual Bucket List as I had planned but I also wrote a post explaining the thought processes behind creating the list. I hope this may help anyone else who may be interested, get started with their list and also help me when I come to update the list again.

Added Bonus

I also managed to get my licensing nailed down. I have been talking about doing this for a couple of months now and I finally got around to it. You should be able to see the the license information at the bottom of each page with a link on Some rights reserved which links to some more detail on my, recently updated, About page. It’s fairly short so please have a quick read if you get a chance.

Goals for September

Create Additional Income Stream

I have a few ideas of how to make some money but still haven’t really put any of them into practise yet. This month I plan to set myself the goal of tying down and creating something that has the possibility of making me some additional money.

I was going to put an expected monetary value on this project but I think that may be reaching too far within a month as I will still be working on other projects at the same time. So for now I am just going to leave it that I should have a possible income stream up, and hopefully running, by the end of the month. If doesn’t have to be anything earth shattering I just want to make a start. I can look to expand on in down the line.

Lose Some Weight

Right I think it is time to make this a priority. I weighed myself at the start of this month and was a bit surprised. I have obviously let myself slip a bit recently…

I have weighed myself every week since, hoping to slowly drop a few pounds with all the walking I have been doing, but no change. Not a single pound over the whole month!

I don’t think Shirley and myself overeat, in fact our portion sizes are fairly small. I don’t think we eat too unhealthily, there is the occasional pizza or chinese take away but they are very infrequent, and we regularly reach the recommended five a day of fruit and veg, to be honest not every day though. I suppose we have got into the habit of having a dessert with every evening meal but most of the time that is simply a yoghurt. Surely that is not enough to put me over the edge.

So with the walking and the reasonable diet I am not losing any weight at all. I need to do something to kickstart myself. Not sure whether to start a diet or try some more physical activities but one way or another I aim to lose at least 4 pounds this month.

This shouldn’t be too much, I hope to lose more, but if I put a hard figure to aim at I think there is more chance of me achieving something. If I just said I plan to lose some weight then I could say I have achieved the goal even if I only lost half a pound, which would in fact be quite disappointing.

Write Something About Canada Trip

When I first starting thinking about starting this blog I was going to write about a recent trip to Canada I had just been on with Shirley. It was all still fresh in my mind and I was going to pretty much write a journal of the places we went to and the things we saw.

Well that trip was last September so a year has passed and I haven’t touched the draft posts I created all those months ago. One of the reasons the posts never got off the ground was that I still haven’t got around to editing all of the photos I took out there. Well now I have a bit more time on my hands, and I have finished editing wedding photos, I can get on with that task. Then hopefully I can do a bit of a write up on the amazing trip we had and show off some of the photos along the way.

I am not sure it is going to be the day to day journal I orginally envisioned, after all it was a year ago, but I hope to at least cover some of the highlights.

Is there anything you think I should write about in the future? Let me know you thoughts below.

Image: Pete O’Shea