Diary: My August life update

I haven’t been on Facebook or Instagram this month, but it has been a Full On time for me. I feel like it’s been around 3 months long, so much has happened. So I thought I’d share a little August life update of what I’ve been up to.

I visited the office

I’m currently doing an in house contract, and went into their offices three times. Although I’m working for a different part of Hachette to the last role I did in house, the office is on the same floor. It was so strange to be back, with everything so similar, when things are so different.

The last time I’d been in was in March 2020. After debating back and forth with colleagues about whether we should be in or not, we were sent home for “a couple of weeks”. Lol at all of our naive, pre-pandemic selves.

It was fun. I saw a few people, had the best falafel in central London, and easily surpassed my step count goal. But actually, I spent most of it in a basement car park, spray painting boxes. Never let anyone tell you that publishing isn’t glamorous.

It was also expensive (HOW much is the train???) and exhausting. Permanent employees are due to go back in 3 days a week this month, and I am very glad NOT to be doing that.

I started working with a new one-to-one client

Although in this case, as I’m working with him and his small publisher, it’s more like one-to-five! A fun project, though, that I’m enjoying being a part of.

I went on holiday with the kids

Last week, my kids and I went to Folkestone for 5 days. It was our first time away just us three, and our first time in Folkestone and it was WONDERFUL.

We went to the beach and ate loads of ice cream and ate out too much and generally had a wonderful time. They are such good travel companions, I feel really grateful to have two such good little buddies to hang out with.

We started work on the kitchen

Some of you may remember that in November last year, we had rats in one of the wall cupboards. Thankfully we did get rid of them, but ever since then I’ve been itching to get everything fixed behind the units. And then I started looking, and planning and.. Well. Here we are, it’s a full replacement job.

I optimistically thought most of the work would be done while we were away, but that didn’t happen due to the walls and floor being in a worse state than expected. Instead we returned to no kitchen and a lot of building work.

Feeling super grateful for selling the old house in June, which is what’s enabling this work. The existing kitchen was fine, externally, if a bit dated. But there were so many holes and cavities behind all of the wall units.

Also feeling super grateful to myself for putting things like bowls, cereal and spoons in easy to access places, and for saving some holiday money for a few more meals out! Now if only I could find the butter…

I blogged. A lot.

Normally I blog MAYBE once a month. This month I have shared 4 posts including this one. That’s a lot for me! I don’t know how long I’ll be carrying on with the ‘roughly one post a week’ schedule, but I’m enjoying it for now.

Stuff I wrote about:

• Quitting Instagram. I’ll write an update about this next week. After a month off I have a lot of Thoughts about how I’d like to return to the platform.
• How Journalling Helps Me (Plus my favourite journalling resources). Writing in my journal is still bringing me so much joy AND helping me clarify what I’m doing, work wise. Whether you already journal or not, I’d recommend having a squizz at this one.
• Marketing your book without social media. Sharing one resource I found super useful, and another I’ve created for authors.

I also created two freebies. One, I’ve already mentioned in above. The other is a workshop I’m running in September, all around helping writers develop their author platform.

I thought a lot about work and life and money

I’ve been feeling really reflective this month. I have been thinking a lot about the kind of work I take on, what I want to do next, and how I want to spend my money.

Also in there: will I ever be at a point where I feel like dating again? If I moved to a small flat by the beach and used my divorce money to live on, how long could I survive for without working? Can I halve my outgoings and spend the rest of the money buying forest land to stop development? Can anything I do make a significant difference to the world burning down?

I may or may not be having a midlife crisis.

So, that’s my August life update.

I also had family come to stay, met my cousin’s daughter for the first time (she’s already toddling!), read loads of wonderful books (sign up to the newsletter if you like regular book recommendations), and generally had a pretty good time of it.

How was your month?

Do you like these diary-style posts?

Let me know, as I loved putting this together, and might try to do them every month. Know someone else who would enjoy this post? Please do share it with them!