My One Resolution For 2015 –
I want to write one thank you letter each week.
People are always quick to make a complaint when items purchased do not perform as expected but how many of us take the time to write positive notes to the companies who make the reliable products we use constantly?
I won’t be posting all the notes here as I write them – 52 letters of mine might be a bit boring for everyone to read. However I will take the time to keep you updated on who I have written and any replies I might receive – maybe once a month. If I do that as a thank you gratitude style link up, then anyone else reading who feels in the mood can join in too..
On The Blog In 2015
I’m not sure about the amount of time I’ll have to blog in 2015 so I’m not going to make any firm commitments – I will try to keep to my Mon – Wed – Fri schedule. I am not sure if I will keep doing Shoe Sundays but I do intend to spend some serious time in January writing posts here and on Rewatch Breaking Bad for the next few months, so I may well write and schedule Sundays for 3 months in advance and then see how I feel in March/April and how busy things will be.
Why Will Things Be Busy?
I’ve made the decision to go back to school this year. I’m not going to give you any of the details today – I will post a protected post next week for those who want to know more and the password will be available to anyone who emails me asking for it, as I will put in some details which I do not want made public.
What About This Blog?
I do want to keep the blog going and I will be making a very determined effort to write things ahead and schedule them out. That worked really well for me in November and if I can get some blog posts written and scheduled before school starts.. well, I know myself, and I know I’ll do a lot better if I don’t have the pressure of having to write something 3 or 4 times a week
What About A Blog Redesign?
This has been on the cards for a while now. The Other Half and I just have to find a spare weekend to sit down and make it happen. I still love the current design enormously and any new design will keep the same colours. However the base template is really old now, and I am wanting to move in another direction.
I’m loving the Adaption theme which I am using over at Rewatch Breaking Bad. I’m hoping we can take that and bend it to suit my purpose. We’ll give it a good try, anyway. I am not sure when this will happen – I’d love to see it in the first 3 months of this year.
One Thing I Will Not Do
I will not allow the blog to go dark for a long time again. Blogging is important to me. The friends I have made via blogging are important to me. Even if I cut back to posting twice a week or take a couple of weeks off, I will make an effort to have something scheduled at least once a week, and I will try to make that something worth reading. :)
Over To You?
Is there anything you would like to see here? Any subject you would like me to write about? More recipes? More chickens? More links to things I am reading? Book or movie reviews? Food reviews?
Would you like me to do (or would you mind if I did) a week of Lite N Easy food posts – I still get a lot of traffic for those posts and I feel a bit like a 2015 update might be in order. Plus, I miss those Fishermans Pies.
You can’t get Fishermans Pies in the supermarkets at all – once upon a time you could. I even wrote a letter back in the day to the company that made them, saying how much I loved them. An actual letter, on paper! I’d eat those things for dinner every day of the week for an entire year, without complaint. Seriously they are that good. :)
I’d maybe try making Fishermans Pie myself though I am not much of a fan of cooking fish. I’d probably use leek and onions, a boneless form of fish – Check out Good Fish Bad Fish – Barramundi might work – and use my white sauce which I make for Chicken and Bacon pasta, then bake it with a cheesy potato mash on top..
I’d like to do some Jane Austen adaptation reviews this year. I am a huge Jane Austen fan and I know I have some readers who are also big fans.
I love the idea of writing thank you letters! I don’t think I will do one each week, but I’ll make the commitment to expressing more gratitude in 2015.
Best of luck with school. I am happy to see that you will still be blogging. I am not in school, but I work full-time, so maybe doing a schedule like you mentioned is something I should give a try?
Happy New Year, to you!
Melissa I think having a blog schedule is a great idea for a couple of reasons – mostly for your readers so they know when to expect to see something from you, but it is also very useful for me as a blogger so I can plan in advance and schedule things in advance.
I do have one caveat for my own schedule where I will allow myself one post which is off schedule during the week. If something timely happens and I want to blog about it that gives me a way to do it without causing chaos. I also will re-schedule posts (I call it bumping) that I have written which are not time related.
I should probably write a post about this – and I will, adding it to my list of posts I want to write in January. :)
I love the idea of thank you letters; I think the giver feels nearly as good as the recipients. That’s exciting about going back to school. I should have done so to get a master’s degree, but never did and now it’s too late since I’m close to retirement. Blogging is important to me also, even if few read. Writing is a great outlet for my emotions.
I seriously gave a lot of thought to Law School about mid 2014. I spent some time hanging out at the courts and if it did not cost an obscene amount of money and likely involve writing essays which I despise, I probably would have gone for it.
I don’t think it is ever too late to go back to school and every time I have been, I have had adults in my class ranging from recently adult to recently retired. I saw a lot of retirees at the enrolment day, and I made a pact with myself that if I ever get to retirement age I will study visual arts and really have a good go at learning to paint.
I was doing a course about four years ago and one of the people in the course had been a driving instructor for over 40 years and now he wanted to do something different – he actually got a job teaching photography at the school we were going to because he was very good at it. He still has the driving school because he is very good at that too, but he was able to hire another instructor to use the dual control car when he wasn’t using it.
I think it is never too late – and sometimes taking a course can be an amazing way to find like minded people. :)
I’ve applied to do my Masters this year, but have not heard back yet, so I may be studying too.
I don’t do resolutions as I’m always trying to change things for the better. But one is to stop forgetting I have tea brewing in the pot!!
Happy New Year.
I don’t usually do resolutions myself either. The start of a new year can be a good time to say this year I will do X – I have already written a couple of letters in December to get in the habit for 2015. :)
Next I will sit down and come up with a list of companies I want to write to this year. It is made slightly more difficult by the fact that we do a lot of shopping at Aldi now, plus some at Costco with a lot of Kirkland Signature products and I can’t just write 52 letters to Aldi and Kirkland. :)
A few blogs might sneak their way into my list of thank yous to write – I think Terry from Hencam is well overdue a thank you from me, for all the excellent chicken keeping advice she posts, up to and including the occasional chicken necropsy and I mention that in case anyone heads over there and stumbles upon one – she does give plenty of warning before posting any images, unlike our news media these days.. I don’t think I could do that myself on our chicken pets but the other half might give it a try – I recently had one done here and it cost me $360, plus the body had to be sent to Wagga Wagga which is about a 600km drive.
I’ve been wanting to get back into writing, but I’ve been holding myself back from doing it. I have some decent keyboards and lots of thoughts but just don’t make the time to put the thoughts into words…if that makes sense…
This may be a good suggestion for a fisherman’s pie recipe if you do not have one already. I’m sure you could substitute the barramundi for the cod in the recipe, but I have to say that cod is one if my favourite fish to cook with.
Chef John’s Fisherman’s Pie
You’ll also probably want to adjust the quantities to make a smaller batch since this is for 6 serves. ;)