Author: rebeccahalfway

I love a self-help book as much as the next wannabe Bridget Jones, but there was something about The Life Changing Magic of Not Giving a F**k by Sarah Knight that appealed. Honestly, the sweary play on Marie Kondo’s book was the factor that drew me in the most.

The tagline “how to stop spending time you don’t have doing things you don’t want to with people you don’t like” sealed the deal.

Mum, you might want to stop reading now, I’m going to say ‘fuck’ a lot…

Being a people pleaser and someone who will worry about anything and everything, the idea of not giving a fuck about what people thought was incredibly appealing. I am, as Knight would say, one of life’s fuck givers.

In a nutshell, Knight works through the idea of creating a ‘fuck budget.’ You make a list of things that are worth giving a fuck about, and things which are not. She breaks this down into categories: things; work; friends, acquaintances and strangers; and family.

Always willing to try new things I wrote my own fuck budget. Here are a few highlights from the budget I came up with:

Things

Worth giving a fuck: Planning decorating projects for the house.

Not worth giving a fuck: Worrying about the cost of replacing all our windows.

Work

Worth it: Doing my very best to prepare my class for the big bad world.

Not worth it: The never-ending stream of little paperwork tasks. Get it done and stop worrying about it, it’ll probably be done in the time I’d waste worrying about it.

Friends, acquaintances and strangers

Worth it: What I think about myself.

Making the effort to see the wonderful friends I do have, more.

Not worth it: What people I know/don’t know think about me.

Worrying about not having a lot of friends.

Family

Worth it: Making the effort for more visits/spending time together.

Not worth it: Worrying about political differences. Agree to disagree, there is nothing wrong with having a differing opinion to somebody else.

There are more things within each category which would have made for an almighty blog post. I’m going to see how this works, I could definitely do with a little less anxiety in my life. I’ll blog later in the year with an update on how I’m doing/if anything has changed.

What about you, have you tried Knight’s approach to life? Do you think a fuck budget will work?

 

Admittedly I’ve been a little behind on the post-wedding organisation as we got married last April but during my Christmas break I finally got around to creating a wedding photo album.

We had the option to create an all-singing-all-dancing one through our photographer but I preferred the chance to design and make our own. I used the website Cheerz after some serious Googling for a wedding album that was a little different.

Cheerz, whilst still a little pricey (the finished album was over £60) was perfect. I was able to choose a bright yellow album to follow our wedding theme and then spent a couple of hours arranging our photos. I also chose to get a keepsake box to protect the album, although the thought of a row of brightly coloured photo books in future definitely appeals to me.

It’s hardback so something I can happily see lasting for a very long time, and something that (hopefully) our children and grandchildren will be able to look through as I have with my parents’ wedding album.It was so lovely to go through all the photos again, reliving the day, accompanied by some happy tears! I’m so pleased with the finished photo book and can’t stop wasting time flicking through it.

The whole process made me think that I really need to create hard copies for my photos more, and that I really need to update my scrapbooks! What online services do you use to print/store photos? I’d love to find any other sites that offer something slightly different to the usual 6×4 prints.

I hope you’ve all had a wonderful weekend.

We’ve spent it being serious grown ups buying Jonny a new car with some added bonus nephew cuddles squeezed in. I’m going to pretend that we were intentionally dressed the same, rather than it being a happy coincidence.

I’ve also had a little update on this little old thing. There were some issues with the server that Jonny was supporting the blog on (which I was completely and utterly bamboozled by.) Long story short, it’s had a little facelift and will now, hopefully, continue to work as good as new!

Please let me know if it’s not working in any way.

I’m very aware that as a teacher I’m lucky to have such fantastic holidays. I’m not about to start defending this by saying how bloody hard teachers work during term time, working crazy long hours (although this is the case) rather, I’m going to list the things I’ll miss once I’m back in the madhouse come Monday morning.

Being the Queen of Procrastination that I am, I find I very easily slip into the habit of lazing around wasting my time. As a result I will miss the following come my 6.30 alarm call on the 9th:

1: Wasting hours dicking around on the internet.

This is one of my worst time wasting habits. I will, however, defend this to a point as this holiday I have finally sorted out ordering our wedding photo book (I’m so excited for it to arrive!) and I’ve ordered a couple of little arty bits for the house from Etsy (which obviously required hours of searching to ensure I’d found just the right pieces!)

2: Lie ins.

Easily one of the best parts of the holiday is the not having to get up crazy early or, as is the case at the moment, getting up whilst it’s still dark. Jonny has been back at work the past couple of days so my body is slowly getting used to a much earlier alarm but I’m definitely not out of bed before 7am just yet. Monday morning is going to be a real shock to the system.

3: Drinking copious cups of coffee.

Now I love coffee. My tiny mouse bladder does not. This means that whilst at school I have to stick to water or caffeine free hot drinks such as peppermint tea to avoid having to nip to the loo on an hourly basis. Hanging out at home means I can drink as much coffee as my body can deal with knowing that no-one will judge me for my frequent toilet visits (although I know it annoys Jonny when we repeatedly have to pause Netflix for my bathroom breaks!)

4: Being able to spend plenty of time with friends and family

An added bonus of this is all the baby cuddles I’ve been able to get with friends’ babies and my gorgeous little squish of a nephew.

5: Not having to work.

I know this seems like an obvious one, but it’s been so lovely to have 2 weeks not worrying about constantly having to plan lessons, mark books, analyse assessments, faff with Maths subject leadership thrills and so on. During term time it’s not uncommon for me to work at school then continue once I come home. It’s been a real treat to have time to just sit and read, play board games and spend time making fancy dinners without the weight of school work hanging around at the back of my mind.

Today was the day I set aside for cracking on with some school work for this coming term, so obviously I’m online writing a blog post instead. I am about to start some proper work soon, although any tips for avoiding the procrastination trap would be very gratefully received!