Perfectionism can be our enemy

Hello again

It's been six months since I cancelled my account and it felt like meeting an old friend when I logged back in today. I'm starting over in every respect. A year ago I lived in a beautiful big old house in New Zealand with a husband, 2 dogs, 2 cats, 2 chickens, 4 goldfish and 28 tropical fish. Now I live in Ireland in a small rental with one dog. I won't say I'm happier than I've ever been but I'm happier than I was a year ago.I arrived back in Ireland at the beginning of December and I launched

Coming up against a brick wall - and climbing over it

Every time I get stuck I stop. No matter what I'm doing if I come up against a brick wall I seem to have lost my instant ability to move it out of the way. This has happened to me with the topic of reviews. I don't like writing reviews. As a writer I should write far more than I do (for other writers) but I have some inherent dislike of them and when it comes to something I haven't actually tried ... well then I'm banjaxed altogether. It's not that I don't have the imagination to write them bu

Batteries recharged

I took a day off yesterday. Way before WA I was a geek/nerd/in love with my computer and this is my downtime as well as my job so to get away from it I have to leave the house. I don't actually think there's anything wrong with this - it's who I am - but I do know that I need to step back and relax with humans every now and then. So, I went off to an appointment in the city (Auckland is 2 hours away from us) with a most interesting man. He's a doctor, software developer and now is starting a r

Are you a 'gonna'?

When I was fifteen I spent a summer working in a hotel in a busy seaside resort on Ireland’s east coast. It was a mecca for young people at the time and, suffice to say, work was not the reason I was there - which was unfortunate as the owner was a bona fide dragon lady. She’d ask if I’d completed a task and my invariable response was “I’m just gonna do it Mrs Mac”. It never went down well and as she was surrogate mother while we were under her roof, she had

Indexed in less than 2 hours!

I published my third WA site today and in less than 2 hours it's been indexed by Google. I put this down to everything I've learned here at WA over the past few weeks - I launched the site with everything it needed to be indexed - but I really didn't expect it to happen this quickly. Cool bananas.

Softly softly catchee monkey

I was reading a response to a question about high bounce rates (I have) and there's some really good suggestions on here to address that. I got all agitated and in hurry-up mode to put everything I'd learned into action, and then I stopped myself. Calm down, you have lots of time to make these tweaks.Although we know (and we're told over and over) this is not a get rich quick business, I believe this thinking is something many of us will have to educate ourselves out of (awful grammar but you g

2 useful things I've learned so far this year

I've learned heaps and most of it has been useful but there are two stand outs. When you're decluttering your wardrobe ask yourself, how each item makes you feel and out it goes if the feeling is negative. We moved house last year and I ended up shifting junk = important stuff from the old house to the new one. This little tip has made my life so much easier. The other thing is Marilynm1's post today on the 80/20 rule. I can see this shaping everything I do from now - for ever. It's so obvious

Feeling a wee bit overwhelmed

I already had two websites when I signed up to WA -my writing site and my virtual assistant site. I then added two on WA which are up and running and were indexed quickly etc.etc. I then added a third and this is where the wheels fell off. I really want to do the third one as it's completely different to the others and is something I've been considering for a long time. But, I work 30 hours a week for a company and then do more hours for the VA work plus add in two big, energetic puppies and a

Don't forget to write - if you're a writer

I'm sure there's hundreds of fiction writers on here who, like me, have shelved their fiction to concentrate on their business writing. Bit of advice, don't shelve it completely. We need it to be the people we are and being creative is what we do. I miss it this morning and today I will write (or at least start) a short story. It's like taking a vitamin boost for the soul :-)