Thoughtful presents: Silver lining

I've been friends with Humaira aka Di-Lowe since the final year of uni when we both took extra shorthand classes. And since then our friendship has grown and strengthened. Our job hunting journeys parallel each other’s for quite some time, so it was always good to have someone to turn to who was in the exact same situation.

About a month or so ago she text me saying that she had some jewellery stolen and for a friend to have things stolen it is an awful thing.

When friends have something bad happen or are going through a low period I immediately think what I can do to make them happy. And often I find that the smallest gestures are the most meaningful. So I went on one of my favourite sites Not on the High Street and bought Humaira a bangle to restart her collection which was stolen.

Humaira and I love a good quote and it would've been good to have our favourite quote on the bangle, but it was too long. Our favourite quote is: ‘Friendships don’t magically last forty years, you have to invest in them.’ So I settled on key words that mean a bright future.  And I don’t think it looked too bad.

Challenge within a challenge: Routine of success week 2

So it’s the end of week 2 and going into the third and final week, I’m getting more tired. I haven’t told all my friends about the challenge, so I still get texts when I’m trying to get to sleep.

Being tired also reduced my productivity because in the first week I did 44 things, and in the second I did 37.

I abandoned writing down the things I was grateful part, because I didn't feel I was getting anything from it. With planning and making a strategy for the day ahead, I do this on the drive to work, so it’s nothing new. So I feel no need to write this down.

And at the end of the week I did some actual networking before breakfast, rather than just reading LinkedIn articles. I emailed several connections with some career advice. So far I've had one response that is really useful.

Going into the final week I’m going to try and do the one thing I haven’t done off the list….exercise.
I’m sure sleep-running is a thing right?

New Experience and Challenge within a challenge: Things got heated

Last week I mentioned in a blog post that I was doing a sponsored firewalk, and yesterday I did it!
Going in I had no fear about it. I figured that getting over a broken heart, you’re in pain for a lot longer, and the walk was from first impressions would last a minute tops to complete. A minute in your life is nothing really in the grand scheme of things.

Like the large majority of my challenges, I was flying solo on this one. In fact I was the only one from the company I work for. I was surprised about this as the company is big on charity work.
I had 2 hours of training and people asked me what was involved in the training? Well it was all about focus and mind over matter. There were different exercises you could do as part of it, although I just watched people walk over broken glass and breaking an arrow.

When it came to firewalking you had to walk with purpose, as if you have 5 minutes left on the carpark, but you didn’t know whether you have 5 minutes left, or whether you’re 5 minutes over. You start to panic and speed up in walking. We also had to pick a word to repeat every step you took. The one most people used was yes, and add to that looking at the trainer while walking, that is how you firewalk.



So how was the walk? Well it was hot! Which is what you expect, and a bit prickly. But it didn’t hurt! Once I did it I thought, is that it? It was over in seconds. I then had another go as we started early and my friend Laura and her husband Rob hadn’t arrived, and I didn’t want them to have a wasted trip. So with most of the others we had a second go. The second go I did exactly the same as the first walk, kept saying yes, but on the last step instead of looking at the trainer I looked down, and it started to hurt. The trainer even knew once I finished.

My feet were a bit sore today, but only had one little scratch which I was surprised at as I thought my feet would be battered and bruised.

It was a great experience and I’m proud that I did it. The trainer said I had a very determined look in my face. I’m even more proud and surprised that I smashed my sponsoring target, which never normally happens. My target was £150 and so far I’ve raised £330! As it’s payday, if you feel like being charitable, feel free to make a donation on my Justgiving page.

Now what could my next physical challenge be???

Challenge within a Challenge: E=C?

There are 3 types of people in my view; one’s who are good at creative subjects, one’s who are good at logical and methodical ones like maths and science, and people who are equally good at both.

I am good at the creative subjects and my sisters are the ones who are equally good at both. At school I got two D grades at science and an E grade at maths. The E grade has been an issue ever since I got it in 2002 and it even stopped me studying journalism at central Lancashire University (even though the journalism course I did never once featured maths.)

To be honest I've been seeing how long I can get without having to retake maths, and I don’t think I've done too badly over a decade later. I use maths every day at work, so it’s not as if I’ve been avoiding it. I think I said it once and only once about retaking my maths GCSE to get it to a C grade. My Grandad and my Dad both remember me saying it and just like if I said I was going to lose weight, you’d always get questions asking how it’s going.

For years I've had the same question; when are you going to retake your maths? With the never ending job hunting I've endured since graduation, I've always put it off. But the questions are starting to grate, so I'm doing something about it.

You would think it would be easy to retake the GCSE, it actually isn't. At the local college you need a D before you can retake, which I find little odd and family members are a bit bemused by it, but those are the rules! The college offer life skills classes in maths which you can take in order to get up to the D grade in order to retake.

I had an assessment to see which level I could work for and out of 25 questions I got 23 correct, so something must have stuck! The tutor was equally bemused when he was filling out my form because for education I was one level away from the highest qualification level, by having a degree.

With doing the assessment I was now ready to start classes, and tonight I did my first class. We were learning about fractions, percentages and decimals and converting all of them. There were only a couple of bits I found a bit challenging, but the rest I could do before the class.

I started the course nine weeks in, so I’ve got a lot of catching up to do. The tutor has asked me if there are any troublesome parts in the stuff they covered prior to me starting, but on the list there’s nothing standing out in the list.

So the maths journey has begun and who knows I may get the all-important C grade. Maybe then I’ll feel fully smart.

Thoughtful presents: Leaving me speechless

In this blog I write about thoughtful presents I give people. However on this occasion I’d like to write about the most thoughtful gift I received on Friday from my sisters Lucy and Lisa.

It was my birthday back in October and my sisters said there was a bit of a delay on the arrival of my present (I later found out this was partly my doing.) The present arrived last week and I was intrigued by what they had got me.

What my sisters had got blew me away. As you know in the past year I set myself a challenge called ‘The 29 Challenge’ and I blogged about it for the whole year. What I got from Lucy and Lisa was a magazine style book of my blog which they had made! They had spent hours looking through my blog; summarising the blog posts (which probably took forever,) sourced new pictures and designed the layout of the book. My dad also helped with the finishing touches of it as well.

I’m a bit of a chatterbox but when I opened the present and started to look through, I was speechless and touched. I was touched by the gesture of using a lot of their spare time to put together a great keepsake. I was thinking of doing something similar but hadn't got around to it. In fact my friend Hayley aka Rock text me after seeing my Facebook post about the present saying she’d been thinking of making a book of my blog too, and thought about it for months before she talked herself out of it. She was glad that my sisters did make a book and said they did an awesome job.

For more information on how my sisters made the book, Lisa wrote about it for her blog; Always Arty. Check it out!

Challenge within a challenge; Routine of success: One week down, two to go!

Tomorrow I’ll be going into the second week of my routine of success. So with one week down, how did it go?

Surprisingly it went really well, there was only two days that I struggled to get up, the first day and then Thursday morning because I was out late the night before with work. Waking up before 6; either at 5 or 5.30 is fine, it’s just getting out of bed is the struggle as it’s cold out of bed!

Productivity I've achieved a quite a bit. Two days I did 11 out of the 14 tasks set. I've contacted a different family member each day. Apart from Thursday, I've meditated everyday and I'm not sure it makes a real difference as I'm a calm person normally, but it’s a nice way to start the day.

So going into my second week I’d like to focus more on the business and passion projects. I started work on the passion project on Friday, so it will be good to continue working on that.

With networking over coffee, I’m not sure if there are any of my work colleagues up before 6, but I've been reading articles on LinkedIn and put about my firewalk on the site as well. The articles I read were: An Unexpected Way to Achieve a Better Work-Life Balance; Painful, Valuable Lessons From Taking Charge of My Career, and Why the Best Leaders Sometimes Get Mad (and Show It)

So onto week number two!

Challenge within a challenge: Getting sponsored

I had in my mind to write a blog post about sponsoring today. I am doing a sponsored Firewalk next week. And although I had received a generous donation of £100 anonymously and as a result passing my target, I’m still going to write what I set out to.

As you may have gathered I like setting myself challenges, and before doing the 29 challenge and Five Score and Five, the only challenges I did were sponsored ones.

I must have done a sponsored silence at school, but I don’t have any solid memories of doing one. However the first challenge I set myself was when I was in year 8 and I was 13. At the time I was obsessed with soaps. Not the washing kind, I’m talking Eastenders, Coronation Street, Emmerdale, Brookside (when it was on back in the day,) Hollyoaks, Neighbours and Home and Away. I watched them all, never missing an episode. I’m not sure how I had time to do anything else! So I decided to set myself a challenge and do a month without soaps. I got lots of sponsors and ended up raising £140 for Children In Need.

When I was 16 I decided to do one better. I loved watching TV and so before I did Media A-Level I decided to do a month of not watching TV. Again I raised more money, because even more people thought I couldn’t do it. All I talked about was TV. But here’s the thing, when I say I’m going to do something, I actually do it. Again I raised money for Children In Need and I raised £291.

The next time I did something sponsored was when I did a 5km run and I think it was the end of first or second year in uni. By then though doing sponsored events had changed in a big way. There were more and more of them. Getting sponsors was slightly harder.

What followed was a 10km, half marathon, Tough Mudder and 50km walk. Although the challenges were hard, I knew with enough training I could complete them, and I did. What was more of a challenge was getting people to sponsor me.

Getting sponsors in itself is like a marketing campaign, it’s all about being in the right time and the right place. Having Facebook has helped because you can reach a wider amount of people. However put a post about your event at the wrong when not many people are online and it gets lost in your newsfeed. If you mention it too much then people get fed up and ignore your request.

Then there’s the quantity of sponsored events that take place. It’s never ending and people can go on autopilot and ignore anything mentioning the word sponsoring.

It’s a tough one to measure, if you mention your event way in advance, you’ll get a lot of people thinking its okay, I’ll sponsor you later and then forgetting all about it. Mentioning sponsor events right before payday is an absolute no no, as you’ll get the when I get paid reasoning and again it will be forgotten about.

For those asking for people to sponsor it can be frustrating when you have friends who say they haven’t got enough money to sponsor you, but then will book a holiday or buy something pricey. You can’t tell people how to spend their money, but sometimes you wonder if £2 is too much to ask? I don’t ever ask to sponsor a certain amount, just whatever somebody can afford because it’s the age old saying, every little helps.

Then there’s the politics involved in donating to charity; some have set charities they donate and they don’t stray from them, others work for charities, meaning they can only donate to the charity they work for, and others might not believe in charity at all.

Luckily I think I’ve managed to meet the targets that I set for fundraising every time, but I always get increasingly nervous towards the actual event. Not about the challenge I’m about to undertake, but whether I can meet my target. As it’s always touch and go.

So many charities for bigger events do set targets you have to raise, and it’s something I covered in the film I wrote Marathon Money.

I’m afraid I have no hints and tips to get people to sponsor someone doing a challenge; anything involving money is always a tough one to figure. But just know that whatever you can donate to your friend or family member doing a challenge, it really does help.

And in a little plug of my own, as I said at the start I’m doing a firewalk next week for Lister Hospital to make it a more dementia friendly place. This is of particular importance to me as I worked in an old people’s home in a dementia unit part time for five years. So I’ve seen first-hand the effect dementia has on residents and their family. I’ll be walking barefoot over 15 ft of hot coals. Here’s my link if you would like to sponsor me. http://www.justgiving.com/owner-email/pleasesponsor/Jocelyn-Harrold2 Thanks for any contribution!

Random acts of kindness and thoughtful presents: Cooking down under

I’ve been living with my flatmate Charlotte for around 18 months, and it’s great. We have two favourite shows we like to watch together: A League of Their Own and Masterchef Australia. The latter is what I’ll be writing about today.

My friends and family can tell you that I won’t stop talking about the show, so I won’t going on about it here (I could do a whole separate blog on the show,) but I will highly recommend you watch it! There are 3 judges; Matt Preston, Gary Mehigan and George Calombaris. The first two guys are British and George is Australian with Greek and Cypriot heritage.

Watching the show is a big commitment, it's on 5 nights a week for 3 months! I showed Charlotte an episode when she first moved in and she liked it. We've watched 3 series together and when the final is on we cook a fancy meal to celebrate.

Charlotte is in Australia for 3 weeks on holiday, and before she left she booked a table for her and her friend Hayley (who's out there travelling) at George’s restaurant The Press Club in Melbourne. She sent me a screenshot of the booking confirmation and I immediately thought; could I do something? As she's always been there for me through a pretty eventful 18 months.

I sent an email to The Press Club asking if there was anyway she could meet George. The customer service at the restaurant is brilliant and they got back to me within a few hours (given there was a time difference of course.) Unfortunately George was unavailable the day Charlotte was going for lunch, but they said as an alternative I could buy his recipe book and he would sign it for her.

So I made a call early last week in the early hours of the morning to pay for the book over the phone. And this morning I got a message from Charlotte with a picture of the signed book.

A big thank you to The Press Club and of course George Calombaris for signing the book and making The Press Club experience one to remember. And thanks to Hayley for her great pictures.

Now any idea as to what George has written?!?!

Challenge within a challenge: Routine of success; Like the night before an exam

Today is the first day of the routine of success and last night I just couldn't get to sleep. I went to bed early but couldn't nod off. It was like the night before an exam being nervous. My alarm went at 5.30 but then snoozed until my second alarm of 6.15. So today I wasn't living the life of a top executive.
I ended up doing nine things today, five of which were before breakfast. For day one I don’t think it was too bad an attempt.

I found a great YouTube channel by jbittersweet which has meditation techniques for a 30 day challenge. So I'm going to listen to one of those a day for the routine of success. I've only done meditating once before with my friend Zoe. We went to a class and I was so relaxed that I nodded off! So I was worried I’d fall back to sleep, but as I was concentrating on doing the correct breathing and with the YouTube video being 5 minutes long I didn't go back to the land of nod.

I also read an article on LinkedIn called Why the Best Leaders Sometimes Get Mad (and Show It), which I felt counted as networking as it was on LinkedIn which is a networking site. The theme of the article conflicted with the meditation I’d already done as well! I also wrote down my plan for today and what I'm grateful for. These two I’m going to try and do every day as it will be interesting to see what I write after 15 days.

It will be pretty boring to blog about every single day of the routine of success, as it will be very much the same thing every day. But if there are any particular highs or anything interesting I do then I’ll let you know!

Challenge within a challenge: Watchlist

IMDB or if people don’t know what it stands for is the Internet Movie Database is one of my favourite sites. After every film I watch I’m straight on there finding out trivia about it.

I think it was around sometime last year or the year before that they started a watchlist part of the site where if you see any film you want to see you can add it to the list. I love watching trailers and so whenever I see a trailer I like the look of I add it to the list. I also add to the list any recommendations I get from family and friends.

The list is over 100 films so I think it’s time to start watching them!  It’s a very random list and there’s not a dominant genre. I’ll put the list down below and you may be wondering why on earth I had put some films on the list. They have looked funny when I saw the trailer, they may have a favourite actor of mine, and I may have read about the film in an interview.

1. $ellebrity (2012)

2. 33 Postcards (2011)

3. 42 (2013)

4. Ruth & Alex (2014)

5. X+Y (2014)

6. A Long Way Down (2014)

7. A Place at the Table (2012)

8. Adore (2013)

9. Aloha (I) (2015)

10. Already Tomorrow in Hong Kong (2015)

11. American Hustle (2013)

12. Ashby (2015)

13. August: Osage County (2013)

14. Authors Anonymous (2014)

15. Bad Words (2013)

16. Baggage Claim (2013)

17. Batkid Begins (2015)

18. Buried (2010)

19. California Solo (2012)

20. Cinderella (I) (2015)

21. Concussion (2015)

22. Conversations with Other Women (2005)

23. Cyber-Seniors (2014)

24. Dallas Buyers Club (2013)

25. Danny Collins (2015)

26. Dolphin Tale (2011)

27. Draft Day (I) (2014)

28. The Expatriate (2012)

29. Feast of Love (2007)

30. Flash of Genius (2008)

31. For a Good Time, Call... (2012)

32. Fruitvale Station (2013)

33. Girl Most Likely (2012)

34. Girl in Progress (2012)

35. Hello, My Name Is Doris (2015)

36. Hugo (2011)

37. I Hate Valentine's Day (2009)

38. In Your Eyes (2014)

39. Last Vegas (2013)

40. Love Is Strange (2014)

41. Man Up (I) (2015)

42. Mental (2012)

43. Million Dollar Arm (2014)

44. Miss You Already (2015)

45. Much Ado About Nothing (I) (2012)

46. Driving Aphrodite (2009)

47. New Year's Eve (2011)

48. The News Boys (1992)

49. Norma Rae (1979)

50. Our Brand Is Crisis (2015)

51. Paranoia (I) (2013)

52. People Like Us (2012)

53. Personal Effects (2009)

54. Prisoners (2013)

55. Promised Land (2012)

56. Ricki and the Flash (2015)

57. Runner Runner (2013)

58. Salute (I) (2008)

59. Save the Date (I) (2012)

60. Searching for Debra Winger (2002)

61. Searching for Sugar Man (2012)

62. Sex Tape (2014)

63. Side by Side (2012)

64. Sleepwalking (2008)

65. Soapdish (1991)

66. Someone Marry Barry (2014)

67. Soul Surfer (2011)

68. Struck by Lightning (2012)

69. Take This Waltz (2011)

70. Thanks for Sharing (2012)

71. That's What I Am (2011)

72. The Best Man (1999)

73. The Best Man Holiday (2013)

74. The Best of Me (2014)

75. The Castle (1997)

76. The Company You Keep (2012)

77. The First Time (I) (2012)

78. The Good Lie (2014)

79. The Hot Flashes (2013)

80. The Hundred-Foot Journey (2014)

81. The Other Dream Team (2012)

82. The Rewrite (2014)

83. The Right Kind of Wrong (2013)

84. The Romantics (2010)

85. The Secret Life of Pets (2016)

86. The Secret Life of Walter Mitty (2013)

87. The Single Moms Club (2014)

88. The Spectacular Now (2013)

89. The To Do List (2013)

90. The Words (2012)

91. This Is Where I Leave You (2014)

92. This Is the End (2013)

93. Top Five (2014)

94. Total Recall (1990)

95. Truth (I) (2015)

96. Two Night Stand (2014)

97. Two Weeks (2006)

98. Waking Ned (1998)

99. What Maisie Knew (2012)

100. White House Down (2013)

101. Won't Back Down (2012)

102. You're Not You (2014)

So let the watching commence!

Challenge within a challenge: Routine for success

A few weeks ago I read an article on the Telegraph site called; ’14 things successful people do before breakfast.’ It was taken from a report from the World Economic Forum about how to make the most out of your mornings.

With my flatmate Charlotte going on holiday for 3 weeks I thought it would be the ideal time to try these 14 things on a daily basis. The article said that you don’t have to do all 14 things every day, just a selection but knowing me I’ll try and do all of them every day. 

So what are they? Here’s the list below:

1) Wake up early

2) Drink water instead of coffee

3) Exercise

4) Work on a top priority business project

5) Work on a personal passion project

6) Invest in family time, like reading stories to the kids or cooking a big breakfast together

7) Connect with spouses before you are tired from your daily activities

8) Make your bed

9) Network over coffee

10) Meditate to clear your mind

11) Write down things you're grateful for

12) Plan and strategies for the day ahead

13) Check your emails

14) Read the news

·  

The first thing I notice about the list is it contradicts itself it says replace coffee with water and then further down the list it says to network over coffee!

Some of the things I do already like checking emails and making my bed. One of the things that might take adjusting is the exercise. I do exercise but after work and not before. When I was uni I tried going for a run in the morning instead of the evening and could run only a fraction of what I could normally run. I think with that aspect I’ll just have to be strict with myself and be competitive and time myself and measure the distance.

I haven't got a spouse so for that part I will connect with the house, which means I'll do some tidying instead!

Now to do 14 things before breakfast is a tall order. I normally get up around 6.30/6.45 and leave for work around 7.30. In the article it said that 90% of executives wake up before 6am on weekdays, so for the routine of success I’m going to try and get up at 5.30 so I have 2 hours to get the things done before heading to work.

So let the routine of success begin, and it will be interesting to see whether any success comes my way during the next few weeks.

What's Five Score and Five?

Hi there and welcome to Five Score and Five. You're either reading this because you liked reading about The 29 Challenge and wanted to see what I would do next, or randomly searched the number five and this blog came up. So welcome!

To give you a quick summary; in October 2014 I wanted to do as many things as I could before turning 30. I set up The 29 Challenge. There were 11 categories of things to do, with 29 in each and 12 in another. The things I had to do included meeting 29 new people, cooking 29 new things and so on. This totalled over 300 things and on the 10th October 2015 at 19:30, the day before my birthday I completed the challenge.

After I posted my last post of the challenge I felt at a bit of a loss. I had got into a good routine over the year of writing on a regular basis (and towards the end a daily basis), logging what I had completed. It didn't give me a buzz, but it was a good comfort and distraction from the world. In a way it was like going to drama club from the age of 5-19. You hear about actors who act because of the buzz they get, but I never got that when going to drama club and doing it at school, it was just part of my life routine.

But what should I write about? There are so many blogs about and I think my sister said I was late into the blogging game anyway. What could I write about that was different and unique?

My friend Rachel started the ball rolling with what I could blog about. She asked me if I had heard of 'Three score and ten.' I hadn't and she explained it was a term used in Shakespeare. It means the span of life and the days that were considered to be seventy years. So twenty years equals a score and then add the extra 10 to make 70.

Now, for on the ball people you'd notice that five score and five equals 105. Joss are you really going to live to 105? Well the answer is I hope so. My grandma lived to 101 and still had all her marbles intact. I don't smoke or drink and I'm competitive, so I added another 2 years. Then a few years ago I was working at a venue and walked some delegates to the bar. I apologised for walking so fast and they said that I shouldn't apologise as fast walkers live longer. So I added another 2 years to my life expectancy, making it 105.

Am I going to do over 300 things? Who knows?! But there isn't a deadline or a set number of things I set out to achieve. This blog will allow me to continue with my favourite categories from The 29 Challenge and also show my personality a bit more. It may inspire you, give you ideas or, as I said at the top, become part of your routine and give you comfort.

The categories I will be blogging about are:
New experiences
New foods and recipes
Random acts of kindness and thoughtful presents
Screenwriting
Challenges within a challenge (after all some might think Five Score and Five is a big life challenge itself.)

So wherever you are; whether you're on the train in armpit alley or sitting on the luggage rack, waiting for your dinner to cook, on a boring date and distracting yourself with your phone, or having a cosy night in; I hope you enjoy Five Score and Five.