A Life in Words

My 2020 Goals Vs The Reality

~ ChanAtkins ~ 5 Comments

It’s something of a tradition now – towards the end of every year I post my goals for the year ahead on my blog to help me stay on track. As that year draws to a close I look back over those goals and see how many I achieved! 2020 has been a year like no other – memorable for many reasons! We have all had to dig deep to find our resilience, positivity and courage and I think in the most, we’ve done pretty well. So, what were my goals for 2020, set way before I had ever heard of Covid 19? And how many did I achieve? Read on to find out!

1 -The Goal : Achieve a successful, well-stocked, functional vegetable garden! Okay, might sound strange, but this is linked to my current state of mind. Being outside, doing dirty, outdoorsy things in the fresh air, especially things that have a positive impact are very, very good for me right now. The best thing I can do when I feel down is get outside. I’ve had a vegetable patch since we moved here ten years ago. Over the years it had got bigger and better and some years I have been very successful with daily harvests in the summer months and it has been great. The last few years have been a lot less productive for various reasons, but this year it’s my top goal. Weird I know, but more than any writing or work related goal, this is what I want to achieve the most. I’m not sure why other than that I know it does me good to be outside, I know I can do it because I’ve done it before and it might be a wise move what with all the Brexshit uncertainty! It just seems really important for some reason. I will be starting in January. Making plans and buying seeds and starting some off and weeding. I can’t wait. This really is going to be my top priority.

The Reality : Achieved! Well, thanks to Covid and the subsequent lockdowns, I achieved this quite well. Not as well as I should have done, but every year I grow a garden, I learn from my mistakes and improve on them for the year after. The garden was my saviour during lockdown. Throwing myself into every area of it was addictive and extremely mood-enhancing! So yes, I did pretty well with the vegetable plot and I still have some things growing out there now. I have also recently extended it for next year so I can grow even more!

2 – The Goal : Learn to play the guitar! Another goal not related to writing or work! But another one that suddenly feels very important. Perhaps because I’m increasingly aware of life passing me by, of running out of time and chances. Perhaps because I have always wanted to try. Perhaps because I so admire anyone that can play an instrument. Perhaps because my characters in the Holds End trilogy are playing instruments and writing their own music and it would also be research? Perhaps because my daughter has agreed to teach me and it will be a good thing to do together. I don’t know why. I just know it’s important and I am really excited about trying it.

The Reality : Not achieved. I actually made a good start with this goal. After Christmas last year I made time every Thursday to sit down with a YouTube video on my phone and learn to play the guitar. It was not easy at all – it certainly did not come naturally but I did begin to see progress….Then Covid…As soon as we went into Lockdown in March, I stopped trying. Partly due to the time and energy spent home-schooling my children and partly just due to my own mental health. There was enough to cope with! Will I pick it up again in 2021? I really don’t know.

3. The Goal : Release Emily’s Baby in the Spring – Doable. Emily’s Baby is the follow-up to A Song For Bill Robinson, the second book in the Holds End trilogy. It’s having a final round with beta readers at the moment and will have another few rounds of edits/proofreads with me after that but I anticipate a Spring release, perhaps April.

The Reality : Not achieved. Emily’s Baby is still waiting to be released! This had nothing to do with Covid. I had left Emily’s Baby on a cliffhanger and was working on the third book in the series, The Search For Summer. It suddenly occurred to me that it would work much better to release them close together. So Emily’s Baby was put to one side and I forged ahead with The Search for Summer. The good news is both books are ready to go in the New Year! I am currently finalising front covers and blurbs for both!

4. The Goal : Finish The Search For Summer – Doable. I am currently writing the first draft of this in a notebook and I’m three quarters through. It’s going well. I should easily finish the first draft by early 2020 and will then start the next million drafts and aim to release it towards end of 2020 or perhaps the start of 2021.

The Reality : Achieved! I finished the first draft and many, many subsequent ones. As mentioned above it is now as ready as Emily’s Baby and just awaiting a book launch plan, front cover and blurb! Yay!

5. The Goal : Finish Parts Five and Six of The Boy With The Thorn In His Side – These books are currently at draft number four. Next will be a read through on my Kindle, followed by another edit, and then it’s beta reader time. I’d like to think I will release them in 2020 but I think that’s too ambitious so I will just aim to finish them and be happy with them and plan a 2021 release for both books at the same time. It might be wise to finish the Holds End series first and get that promoted and then turn my attention back to this one.

The Reality : Achieved! I even published them! This series finished ahead of the Holds End series. I decided to combine parts 5 and 6 into one book, part 5 and released it in September 2020. I am so happy and proud that this long-running series is finally finished!

6. The Goal : Finish the first draft of the YA series I was working on…  This refers to the post-apocalyptic YA series I started some time ago. The first draft was going very well for the first in a four book series but it got side-lined by The Boy series and the Holds End series…I hope to at least finish the first draft of book one in 2020.

The Reality : almost achieved! This got pushed aside as I scrambled to finish The Boy With The Thorn In His Side series and the Holds End series. As they were all so close to completion, it made sense to keep working and focusing on them. I am now back working on the YA series mentioned above and I am very close to finishing the first draft of Book 1! It could even happen before the end of 2020 so I am going to mark this as achieved!

7. The Goal : Do a second draft of YA novel We Hate The cool Kids – This was a book that jumped the queue in 2019. I wrote the first draft in a notebook pretty quickly but the ending troubled me. I don’t have any immediate plans to release this but I do think aiming for a second draft and a tied up ending would be good for 2020 depending on how things go.

The Reality : Nope! Sadly, this one has remained in it’s notebook and there has been no further progress. It’s nice knowing it is there though! A finished first draft waiting it’s turn.

8. The Goal : Continue working hard with Chasing Driftwood Writing Group – No specific goals this year for my little company. I have three new clubs starting after Christmas and this will keep me busy enough. Long term, I would like to get more writers on board to help deliver my ambition of encouraging children and adults to write and keep writing. I hope to get a community project off the ground finally but life is so busy and the after-school clubs take a lot of time and prep, so I am not going to put too much pressure on myself here. Just keeping it all going is enough of a goal

The Reality : It’s complicated! The start of 2020 was exciting for my little company as I doubled my writing clubs from three to six. And then…Covid. By March I had to stop all of the clubs and watched all my work disappear over night. I was absolutely gutted. And for a while I didn’t know how to react. There was home-schooling to deal with, the strict lockdown, four children’s mental health to consider as well as my own and I just didn’t have the time or the energy to deal with it. I watched enviously as so many other self-employed people rushed to get their businesses online and I just couldn’t do it. I considered quitting many times. But towards the end of the summer I got my act together, gave in and purchased Zoom and haven’t looked back. I now have five clubs, four on Zoom and one in person and once Covid finally slings its hook, I hope to have my physical clubs back AND keep the Zoom ones going. I am very near to finishing an online course for children and have planned many more online workshops and courses, all based on things I have run in person before. I also now have a business partner!! So there are now two of us throwing ideas around and generally keeping each other excited about the company.

9. The Goal : Keep adding stories and poems to a collection – I’m not putting a time scale on this next collection of short stories and poems, but I will try to keep adding to it and working on it when I feel the need!

The Reality : Achieved! I have added loads of stories and poems to this on-going collection. It’s starting to get quite big! I need to go over them all as some are newer and rougher than others, but I am pretty happy with it and hope to release it in 2021 after the next two Holds End books come out. I am genuinely excited as it’s quite a dark, strange and in some areas, personal collection!

10. The Goal : Slow down, enjoy life, breathe, cry, listen to more music, be outside as much as possible, be honest about my feelings and keep writing them down – a little jumble of goals and aims to end on, but perhaps these are what will make the others achievable. I’m only at the start of this perimenopause fun, and it’s knocked me for six. It’s brought back emotions, thoughts and anxieties I thought I had long walked away from. Sometimes it is genuinely exhausting getting through a normal day. Moods shift and change with no warning. Some days I feel totally normal. Other days I sit in the car and cry. It’s okay. I’m okay. I’ve just got to remember to talk about it, write about it and just allow it. It is what it is.

The Reality : Achieved. Well, I suppose I can thank Covid for this one thing. The pandemic forced us all to slow down, didn’t it? I’ll be honest – I kind of enjoyed the first lockdown. I didn’t have to go to work, I probably saved money because I wasn’t driving around all over the place every day, dropping everyone off and picking them up and going to my clubs. I was just at home. The weather was beautiful and our home and garden were appreciated like never before. Home-schooling was tough at times but it also brought me a lot of joy. My youngest was amazing, so resilient and cheerful – he was a little ray of sunshine throughout the whole thing, lifting all of our spirits. I made time for myself because I was worried about how I would react. I created a ‘sit-spot’ at the end of the garden just for me, a place to go and sit and read and drink coffee on my own. I started taking long baths at odd times of the day just to be on my own for a bit and it worked. I often let the tears come in the evening when I sat down to write, but that was okay. I needed to. I wrote loads of poems and stories and was honest with all of my family about how I was feeling. I did okay!

So, those were the goals I set myself at the end of 2019. Covid got in the way with some of them and actually helped me achieve others. I don’t yet know what I will put on my goals list for 2021… Of course, there will be some book releases but other than that, I’m not sure. This year really has changed everything and it’s quite hard now to look too far ahead or to try to plan anything. You just don’t know what is around the corner.

Did you set yourself any goals for 2020? How did you do? Did the pandemic help or hinder them? Let me know!

Guest Post #2 Pandemic Pets – How Our Furry Friends Saved Our Sanity

~ ChanAtkins ~ Leave a comment

Hello and welcome to another guest post in my Pandemic Pets feature. Each week I will be welcoming a guest on to The Glorious Outsiders to talk about their pet and how the experience of owning one helped them through the Covid 19 pandemic. For our second post, please welcome Simon Finnis to the blog. Simon is a regular writer at my adult writing group and a fantastic poet and short story writer. Here he talks about how walking his Labrador Harvey made lockdown more bearable.

Pandemic Pet

If we had not fully appreciated the value of a dog as a companion, a source of therapy and love, a force of sanity and comfort in a seemingly crazy world, we certainly do now. Months of vacillating uncertainty as the pandemic raged across communities and nations. The agony of personal doubt and tiptoeing around the edges of pits of despair as the supposed certainties of a previous pre-Covid life are thrown into turmoil. Our Labrador-retriever’s contribution to the year 2020 has been enormous!

My wife and I have had plenty of time and opportunity to better acquaint ourselves with our beloved four-legged friend. His energetic and loving welcome at the start of each morning injected a greater sense of purpose and meaning into our days as a new routine began to take shape. How were our days going to work out? All at once, walking the dog would take on a new enhanced status. Something to cherish.

At a time when it was easy to feel so negative about the world, here was a reason to feel privileged. We had an even stronger motivation to go out and explore our beautiful and varied surroundings during lockdown. Suddenly we found new places to walk close to home. It became possible to relate to the world more from an animal’s perspective, to take time and have a more sensual and engaged relationship with both nature and our built environment. There was certainly less need to rush about crazily as had so often been the case in the past, constantly being driven by the clock; less stressing about work, traffic, shopping or meeting up with friends in time.

There is something infectious about the undimmed enthusiasm of a furry, four-legged companion. Whether at home or outdoors, their curiosity and playful nature has become the perfect antidote to a seemingly grim reality of coronavirus being drip-fed through the media over the last few months. One upside to all the turmoil was a now daily opportunity to escape from all the noise and overwhelming busyness that had hitherto been filling our lives. It was time to see the world from a new perspective, to turn down the volume, adapt to a new rhythm and value each day. I believe that there is much that pets can teach us as humans. If anything, the pandemic has offered the space to develop a greater bond with our dog, fully sensing all the light and beauty it brings into our lives.

Thank you so much to Simon for joining us today! It was lovely to hear how the family dog made lockdown so much more bearable. If you would like to tell us about your pet and how they’ve helped you through the pandemic, then please get in touch! Stories and poems are also welcome!

Guest Post #1 – Pandemic Pets; How Our Furry Friends Saved Our Sanity

~ ChanAtkins ~ Leave a comment

As I mentioned in my post last week, I’m starting a new guest feature here on The Glorious Outsiders, looking at how our pets might have helped us through the pandemic. Last week I wrote about getting a ‘lockdown puppy’, something that we did as a family, by accident, I might add. (We were already on a waiting list for a puppy before the first lockdown happened.) Our new bundle of joy plus our other dog and various pets are always well loved and appreciated, but during both lockdowns, their role in our home became even more obvious and vital. Please welcome author Lily Hayden to the blog – today she will be telling us about the lost rabbit they found during lockdown and goes on to express concern for the many unwanted and abandoned animals out there.

PETS DURING THE PANDEMIC

We humans have been sharing our homes with animals since ancient times. Back in the day, historians speculate that ours was a mutually beneficial relationship, domesticating dogs for hunting and protection, and cats to rid our safe spaces of rodents. Fast forward to present day and our relationships have evolved. We seem to have an obsession with sharing our indoor space with another species for comfort and companionship.

The mental health benefits are widely publicised; pet owners surveyed report lower stress levels, higher happiness and increased activity resulting in better physical health. The downsides are also well known- increased responsibility, financial costs, lack of freedom. Unlike children who will (probably) grow up and move out, these animals will be dependent on you to varying degrees for their entire life with no days off.

During lockdown, we did inadvertently add another fluffy family member to an already full house when my husband found a rabbit in the street. I managed to eventually track down the owner, but they did not want him back. With four other animals and five humans in the house, I figured that my stress levels could stretch to one more.

I must add at this point that I really wanted to write a heart-warming tale of how much I love the animals that live in my house, how unique they all are with different personalities and funny habits. Because hand on my heart, they are a constant source of joy. Even though they are messy, sometimes smell, are needy, and constantly under my feet, they are beautiful, comforting, peaceful, and my home and my heart would be emptier without them. In just under a month, I have developed a lovely bond with the rabbit which is just as well as he sleeps under my bed and jumps on the bed to tell me his food bowl is empty.

Thiago the rabbit is sadly just one of many animals that find themselves being rehomed, and amidst the confusion and heartbreak they must feel, they are fortunate in that that their owners ensured that they went to a safe place. Thousands of not-so-lucky animals are dumped or abandoned every year.

Lockdown has seen a rise in the number of homes acquiring a pet. The retail price for puppies has shot up with unprecedented demand during the pandemic, and I know there are many families that have provided loving, forever homes for their new addition. But equally, I can see that online selling pages are full of animals that aren’t sweet, little babies anymore, and I do worry what will happen to some of these in the future.

A good friend of mine who doesn’t have any pets began fostering cats during lockdown, and the condition of the first cat that came to her was nothing short of heart-breaking and he sadly had to be put to sleep due to his health. She bravely decided to take on another; the tiniest little boy that was no more than skin and bones when he was found dumped in a box with two siblings that were sadly too small to survive.

While the majority would find this, and rightly so, horrendous, it is worrying that trading animals as a commodity and breeding animals for financial gain is something that doesn’t make us all uncomfortable. To us, they might just be a cute companion, but to them we are their whole world, and even more so during lockdown where suddenly sixty percent of the working population in the UK are working from home.

In 2019, the RSPCA took in 10,564 dogs and 29,432 cats. There are hundreds of other animal rescues and charities, dedicated to ensuring that animals remain safe and cared for, taking in thousands more, but they are all struggling with a lack of resources, adoptions and vital fundraising on hold, due to the pandemic. While we are all looking forward to a return to normality, they are justifiably concerned about an influx of unwanted animals in the not-so-distant future.

So, if an animal has brought you love and comfort during this time, when you’re in a position to do so, please support the thousands of animals out there that haven’t been lucky enough to find a home like yours through donating, sponsoring or offering any time that you can spare.

Thank you so much to Lily for joining us on the blog today. If you would like to find out more about her books, here is the link https://www.amazon.co.uk/Lily-Hayden/e/B07CR8KF7D

And if you would like to talk about your pets and how they have helped you get through the pandemic, please get in touch as I would love to hear from you! Blog posts, stories and poems all welcome.

Pandemic Pets; How Our Furry Friends Saved Our Sanity

~ ChanAtkins ~ 10 Comments

Like everyone else in the country, I sat in a kind of shocked stupor when it was first announced that we would be going into lockdown. I think the biggest shock for most of us was the school closures and onset of home learning. As I write this, England is in another lockdown, though a far less strict one this time around. Mostly, life appears to be going on as normal. Of course by ‘normal’ I mean the ‘new normal’ of social distancing, bubbles, hand sanitising and face mask wearing. Isn’t it weird how quickly we all get used to things like this?

We all live such day-to-day lives now, don’t we? We really can’t plan too far ahead. Especially when it comes to things like weddings, birthdays and Christmas. We all just shrug helplessly and say; ‘we’ll see what happens.’ And that’s a weird and unsettling way to live your life, not being able to plan much, not knowing anything for sure. Young children are good at living like that; they tend to live in the moment, not looking too far ahead. Animals are the same; they have little concept of time or future and so don’t worry about it like we do.

During the first national lockdown, there was a growing and slightly worrying trend of people purchasing ‘lockdown puppies’. For anyone who already had a dog, or had been planning to get one, this was probably a sensible idea, as long as social distancing rules were adhered to etc. But for anyone who bought a puppy on a whim because they were bored, not so good, and I fully expect to see a lot of these lockdown puppies end up in rescue before long.

Having said that, I truly believe that owning pets is massively beneficial to your mental and physical health, and perhaps that was what drove some of this. As well as puppies and kittens, there was also a huge increase in people chicken-keeping for the first time too.

I’ve been an animal lover my entire life. I grew up surrounded by a much loved menagerie of dogs, cats, guinea pigs, gerbils and rabbits and I’m just the same in my adult life. We have dogs, rabbits, guinea pigs and ducks and chickens and until recently pet rats and hamsters too.

Often, I prefer animals to people, or at least I prefer their company and find them generally a lot less stressful to be around. During the first strict lockdown, in the messy middle of home-schooling and juggling work, I found myself turning to my animals even more. I spent as much time as I could outside, and we were so lucky that the majority of the lockdown weather was absolutely glorious. I felt so blessed to be sat in the sun in my large garden, with the cockerel crowing and the ducks quacking.

We were one of the families who got a lockdown puppy, though ours was planned before lockdown happened. In February, a month after I lost my beloved lurcher Skipper, I came across an ad from a lady whose beautiful lurcher was due to have puppies in March. We made contact, spoke on the phone and after she had carefully vetted me, I was put on the list. The day before the puppies were born, we went into lockdown and it became very uncertain as to whether we would get one or not.

As luck would have it, the travel restrictions were lifted just as the pups turned 8 weeks old and we were able to pick our beautiful boy Jesse up mid-May. He certainly entered our lives at the perfect time. We were starting to lag…starting to get on each other’s nerves, starting to get itchy feet. It was getting hard. But having Jesse and integrating him into our family was the perfect distraction and gave us all something positive to focus on. I will always be grateful to him for that. He is now 7 months old and a truly beautiful boy with the sweetest soul. I’ve never had such a loving loyal dog before, he is just adorable in every way, and so smart too!

Jesse at 8 weeks

But even before he arrived, I was so grateful to have my pets in my life. At the start of home schooling me and the kids fell into a routine, where we would start the day with PE, do a few lessons and then take our older lurcher Tinks for a long walk before lunch. We really looked forward to these walks, and it was lovely to have the kids with me and Tinks, when usually they would be at school. We integrated some of our learning into the walks, sometimes had picnics, played in streams, ran down hills and played hide and seek. I’m not sure we would have done all those things daily if we had not had a dog to walk.

Beautiful Tinks

My dogs are my best friends. They are my family. I love them so much I cannot bear being away from them. It’s hard to explain to someone who doesn’t have a dog or who doesn’t like dogs…quite what they give you in return for a warm bed, some yummy food and long walks. What we give them is small in comparison. My dogs welcome me home with wagging tails, warm kisses and the absolutely adorable ‘lurcher lean’! They watch me, listen to me, follow me, and love me for me. They don’t expect or demand anything of me, other than the above mentioned food bed and walk! They make me laugh every day with their antics and loopy smiles. They challenge me – to keep going, to get out, to talk to people, to socialise, to train them, to get better, to be better. I would be far, far less without my dogs and I hate to imagine what lockdown would have been like without them.

As for now, as we navigate through another lockdown and balance precariously between old normal and new normal, between hope and fear, between fragile mental health and steely resilience, I turn to them more and more because they are steady, they are sure, they are always there, just being them. Just being dogs. Living in the moment, not worrying about what tomorrow might bring. I hope that anyone who got a lockdown puppy, kitten or flock of chickens is feeling the same right now, because to have pets in your life during tumultuous times is truly a wonderful gift.

Home schooling with chickens in tow

How about you? Did you get a pet during lockdown? How is it working out? If you already had pets, tell me about them and how they have helped you during the pandemic. I’m starting this as a new guest feature so get in touch if you and your furry friends have a story to share. It can be a non-fiction piece or a story or a poem!