Procrastination, Facebook and Instagram

Hey fellow crafters, artists, musicians in fact anyone creative, what do you do to work best and get things done?, I really struggle with this, I have a million ideas and each day want to complete...something but bedtime comes round again and guess what...nothing is finished. Not sure if this is to do with having a family and children as 'normal' life gets in the way of spending hours on a project or do single, childless people feel this way too?
Do you think its because we are bombarded by so much to fill our minds and time?
I know I have a serious facebook addiction, I use the excuse its for work, well it is a lot but I bet if I worked out how many hours I clock up on Facebook doing nothing really except reading about life instead of living it, it would be a lot of hours.
I do love it, its informative, I have met some wonderful people on it, my fairs wouldn't do so well without social media but its a time waster.

I have just read this article in the telegraph about how workers waste an hour a day on facebook.  According to them:

 Top twenty personal things Brits do during work hours
1. Online banking
2. Check the weather forecast
3. Check/reply to personal emails
4. Read news sites
5. Research holidays and search for best deals
6. Pay bills
7. Browse clothes online
8. Browse social network sites
9. Call friends/relatives
10. Online clothes shopping
11. Book a holiday online
12. Update social network sites
13. Arrange nights out with friends
14. Book dentists/Drs appointments
15. Look for discount codes
16. Look at photos
17. Call companies and organisations for personal reasons
18. Read sports updates
19. Shop or sell on eBay
20. Compare insurance prices

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/10194322/Workers-waste-an-hour-a-day-on-Facebook-shopping-and-browsing-holidays-study-finds.html

This is office workers they have targeted, I wonder how many hours self employed people waste?

Instagram, have you got the app yet? I love it, I encourage people to get it, its a photo sharing site that's global, you can follow others on it and they can follow you, you can also search #hashtags for interesting things, I love it because when you share a photo it gives you the option of sharing to twitter, facebook, tumblr, flickr and email contacts all at the push of a button, this saves time and its great to update lots of your sites at once. I think Instagram is not too much of a time waster as there is only limited photos to look at unless you follow hundreds of people of course, but I pick and choose who I want to follow carefully, the only thing I hate about it is now the spammers have gone on it and they try and get you to get extra followers and likes, but you can ignore them.

So how much time do you waste?, what tips have you got to stay on track?

dear universe......

Dear universe if you are reading this, thank you, we have a dream, a dream which we really want to happen, were not quite sure how or when it will happen but have every faith that it will.
We live in a seaside town called Blackpool in Lancashire, UK. We have lived here all our lives, we don't fit in. We need to live somewhere that's warm, beautiful, rich in love and life. We live a different life to most in our area. We already have chickens. We have converted our back garden to be full of raised beds so we can grow our own veg and fruit.

We want to live in Portugal or France, Portugal first choice France second, we are going to have a house that's detached on its own land, the house needs to have at least 4 bedrooms, an open plan lounge/kitchen/dining room, another room that can be my craft room, a bedroom with a balcony that overlooks the mountains, big windows, wooden floors, a natural pool outside would be lovely as would a river/stream running through the land. An area for chickens, an allotment, an orchard and a large area for the dog to run around and for us to play games/sunbathe.

We are going to have an organic retreat, grow all our own fruit and veg, meditate, practise yoga and have affordable holidays for people who want to come over and switch off from modern life. Were going to have a couple of cottages at the bottom of our land that I will make all the soft furnishings for and decorate plainly to give a fresh airy feel for holiday accommodation.

I am going to run courses on pure living, these will be part of the holiday if required, I want to share my wealth of knowledge about living pure with anyone who is interested. I feel its my duty to share what I have discovered and feel many children and adults would be so much better off and healthier with the knowledge. 

We are both self employed, have two teen boys living at home who are home schooled, we rent our house ( have lived here for 12 yrs this September) so are free to move as soon as the opportunity arises.
We need to fund this dream and I am writing an ebook all about living without chemicals, I want it to have so many sales we can live out our dream. I am working on finishing it very soon

Thank you universe for already making my true love dreams come true, I have every faith in this one coming true too.

Wild swimming in River Hodder

 

 So my friend and I set off on a girls day out with the intention of wild swimming, well Shelli would be wild swimming I would be wild wading as I can't swim, this hopefully will be rectified over the next couple of weeks with river lessons, I'm pretty nervous about it but feel at 37 you should be able to swim and need to push through the nerves and learn something new. We droved for about an hour and found this wonderful place. The River Hodder is a river in Lancashire, England. The river is a County Biological Heritage Site. It rises on White Hill and flows for approximately 23 miles. We stopped under Cromwell's bridge, the water was clear and upon entering rather cold ( hence the shocked face second pic below)

 Once in though it warmed up and was such a lovely experience to be in the water, there were blue/green dragonflies hovering around, a heron stopped further up stream, fish were swimming around us, I was a bit worried about one going up my particulars!

 The water wasn't very deep but in a way we was glad as this was our first time in the river and it broke us in gently, it was such a brilliant feeling being so free and having a different perspective on the view. Our skin felt lovely afterwards with all the minerals in the water.

 We stayed in for quite a while then got out and dried off, we then led in the sunshine feeling so relaxed and listing to the sound of the tricking water and sheep now and then bleating in the field, after a while we went for a walk at the other side of the river to discover a deep area, it looks so inviting, can't wait to go back next week. In parts the scenery looked like France, with fields full of sweetcorn, high trees and a chateau type house, the area is so beautiful and green, I do love being in nature, Tolkien who wrote the lord of the rings was inspired by this part of UK, I can understand why, its magical.

We went for a drive and found ourselves at Longridge fell, what an amazing view, 2 old ladies stopped to talk to us and we asked if they could take our photo (hence the finger covering up part of the lens)

It was such a wonderful experience and I would recommend it to anyone, just don't go in canals, reservoirs or urban rivers. There has been much ado about drowning in UK but I think if you look at the statistics, its mainly young men, who probably have been showing off jumping in no doubt. As long as you are sensible, I see no harm in it.

feeling like your 12

I had a thought today, it wasn't a pleasant one, I came across another person online whilst on facebook (I'm rather obsessed by it) who I found incredibly rude. Now I don't know this person, shes a friend of one of my friends, I saw her comment on a post so replied with the advice that she should look into soya and hormone problems as she has lots of it, wasn't trying to be funny I genuinely wanted to help, unleash the fury, it was quite unreal, I realised I should maybe keep my opinions to myself, but I don't know about you but I presumed because she is friends with my friend she would be similar to us, would be easy going and nice.

Its made me look at this, just because you have a good friendship doesn't mean you will be friends with their friends does it, do you think we have different friends for our different parts of our personalities? do you think we have various friends to do different things with, to fulfill gaps in our lives.

It made me feel a little sick to be honest, a bit shaken, maybe my bubble of loveliness at home and the people I choose to surround myself with protect me from the outside world to some degree, I think that's why I love the homeschool route too, I know my boys don't have to deal with the bullies, mean folks, some may say its not good to shelter them in this way and they have to learn to deal with such people, but think about it for a minute, why do they?.

Can we not be happy and loved, can we not surround ourselves by good, loving relationships? Of course we can, its all about choice.

I guess that's the down side about social media, you cant really choose who and what your exposed to unless you only have about 5 friends on your page. Which is ok to do if you don't use it for networking.

I organise fairs and need to be able to share events with as many people as possible that's why I have so many 'friends' on fb, that's why I come across idiots who could ruin my day if I let them but I wont, I take a few minutes to look at why I'm feeling the way I do and move on.

can you spot the 5 yr old me?