Find the SecondStar and soar, and then straight on till the morning…

KajiKita

Take heart from the response you have had from the stock you’ve had at shows you haven’t even been able to attend and talk people through why you do and how you do it 😊

Do you have any friends who do something similar to what you want to do, that you could ask to review what you are doing as you set it up and give you some pointers and feedback? 

KK

weenancyinAmerica

I have read your entire thread - and I think it is wonderful. I enjoyed reading your comments on budgeting and especially your comments on the Viking reenactments. Hope dog and cat are doing fine. I am having similar problems with my cats, my car, and the house! Oh, I also painted my office Honeydew Melon and then a friend used it to paint my living room! The office is now a bedroom for one of my roommates so I never got to use it as an office. I've given up on decorating though as I now have 4 roommates which was never my intention in the beginning. But my original goal was the English country cottage look. Oh well.

SecondStar

Hi all! I’d meant to update during the week, but life has been lifeing, and I’ve been sooo tired in the evenings.

The weekend before last, my partner and I were at a home and garden show. Not only was it great fun, but we also got chatting to a lot of the stall holders who were there with crafts and art - most of whom we either are acquainted with, or had spoken to before at events around Christmas last year.

Everyone was lovely and inquisitive of our own ventures, and encouraging us to keep branching out and attending similar events. We both came away inspired, but with a lot of envy and massive FOMO!

My partner’s heart is in blacksmithing, and mine is in textiles and education, and neither of us feel compelled when we explain that we’re civil servants! Yes it pays the bills and I’m thankful for it, but it’s not my passion or my pride. I came home with contacts, inspiration, and a bit of fire under my bum, and finally launched my social media pages for my nalbinding and sewing. My reenactment community have been super supportive, and I’d forgotten how much work it takes to manage pages across different platforms!

Next step is to start listing items onto Etsy, and set up my own website. I need to do some fresh photography, but the most important bit is just to DO IT. Starting is the hardest and the scariest bit; and now it’s started it needs to stay consistent.

Getting your name out there, getting your offerings out there, and keeping it at the forefront of people’s minds is important. You can’t just sit back with your mouth shut and expect people to know what you’re capable of.



The weekend just gone was another festival weekend - blazing sunshine to welcome the solstice, and over 90 reenactors, so it was quite the party! It wasn’t weather to be selling wool items, so after a Saturday of no sales I decided to forgo the stall on Sunday, and just enjoy the day instead.

My partner was busy building a deck for a friend of mine, but *his* friends were at the event, and so it was nice to hang out and catch up.



I’m currently on NSD 23 of June! My spend day was at the home and garden show, where I bought a skein of zwartble yarn from a woman who hand spins wool from small local hobby flocks. It’s turned into a beautiful nalbound hat for myself, and was an excellent purchase! I think I’ll speak to her about possible wholesale prices - it would be nice to offer exclusive pieces produced in locally reared and hand spun yarn.



I think I’m doing so well with NSDs because the boiler replacement has me scared silly.

I finally got around the calling the company to confirm the replacement - the work is booked in for next Wednesday. I’ve decided to pay it in cash, and I’ll be doing a tracker here to hold myself accountable for refilling my emergency fund.

The overtime I’d been doing for 2 weeks has been almost halved, after tax and deductions, so fell £44 short of covering my car repair. A little disappointed, but better to be £44 short than £350+ short!

I’ve also hit the breaks on home improvement this month. Not quite intentionally, but between the car and the boiler I think my subconscious has been firmly steering me away from ideas which would lead to spending money!



I want to get the boiler in, and then I can think about slowly chugging away to rebuild my emergency fund.



My first goal for my emergency fund is 3 months of essential expenses - that’s £4,347.

I’ve already taken out the money to pay for the 50% boiler scheme, so I currently have £2,378.11 in my emergency fund.

I am planning to save £1,968.89 to meet my target, and am planning to save at least £150 each month towards this - this should taken about 13 months to hit my goal. I’ll update every time money comes in or out of my emergency fund, to keep an accountable running total.

PennysIntoPounds

That all sounds great, I'm so pleased for you. And yes, definitely miles better to be £44 short than £350+ short!

KajiKita

I had to google ‘zwartble’! 😊 Looks like it would be lovely wool 😊

Well done of getting going on the social media pages and the discipline of NSDs - you are doing really well 👏🤩

KK

SecondStar

I finally got around to listing those extra Barbour coats on Vinted yesterday afternoon, and sold one a couple of hours later! I’ve to post it tomorrow before Vinted release the money, but that’s £50 to go back into my savings - +£5 from the original purchase price, too!

I also got a refund from the seaweed dog food supplement I bought a couple of months ago, the one which gave my poor boy a runny tummy for days - so that’s an extra £19 back as well, once it clears into my bank.

I get paid tomorrow, and so I was doing up my budget sheet for July. I’ve earned £279.51 from the overtime I did, and I’ll be putting £309.97 into my emergency fund.

I’ve currently got sinking funds set up for my bff’s visit in September (aiming for £200, with the idea that I won’t need that much and can save any leftover), Christmas (£300), my partner’s birthday (£180), and a trip to my hometown next summer (£700, but that was originally based on me covering all the cost, whereas my partner say’s he’ll pay for us. I’d still like to contribute spending money though!). Paying into my sinking funds adds up to £160 each month.

I think I may need to drop my monthly emergency fund contribution to £80-£100 for now, to be more affordable whilst still planning for the above future expenses, so I’m not dipping more into my savings.

Outside of actual emergencies, I’m planning to only put In to my emergency fund - even if that is just smaller amounts that I’d like.



It was an easy day at work today, and I spent the afternoon unpicking old nalbinding projects from my early days, and then learning how to hand-wind the loose yarn into useable balls. My little yarn collection is looking far neater now!

I’m on annual leave tomorrow - it’s my partner’s mum’s 60th, and there’s a big surprise party being thrown for her! It’s at a golf club and the dress code is ‘smart-casual’, which is always hell for women and femmes. I’ve got a couple of casual dresses which might work, but I’d like something a liiiitle bit fancier, without going full wedding guest outfit. I’ll take a pop round the charity shops tomorrow morning and see if anything suits, and if not then I’ll wear what I have.



There’s so much I want to DO, and I just don’t know how to time(?) it, or how to prioritise(?) it, or how to budget(?) for it (not quite sure where the problem lies, hence the ???’s).

I want to whitewash my pebbledash; I want to put up shelves in the living room; I want to hang curtains; I want to *make* curtains; I want to decorate the bedroom; I want to make over the kitchen; I want to learn how to spin and how to tablet weave and how to make lucet cord and how to make panel hats and how to brew cordial; I want to photograph for Etsy; I want to restring my beads; I want to get new tortoise brooches; I want to go camping; I want to dig the garden; I want to plant flowers and shrubs and bulbs and trees; I want to take more picnics; I want to see my friends; I want to be good at things without struggling through the learning part; I want to ride rollercoasters; I want to have 10k in the bank and another 10k invested; I want to relearn the recorder; I want to take riding lessons again.

I find I’m either looking at the Big Picture and being so overwhelmed and unsure of how to break the Big Picture down into little steps, that I end up paralysed and not being able to do anything at all. Or alternatively, I’m so minutely focused on the Small Picture, and I look at my life day by day, hour by hour sometimes; so caught up with each individual moment that I never look ahead to the future at all - no further than the end of the week, at any rate, until I suddenly realise that months have passed.

Remind me again why it took 30 years for me to twig I was AuDHD? 🤣



Seriously though, how do people Life? It all seems so overwhelming, there is so much to Do and I don’t know how any of it is meant to fit together.

My go-to has always been making lists, some more cohesive than others. Lists help me get things out of my head; and then it’s easier to see what needs to go where, when.

Tonight I need to take a shower and wash my hair, and then I’ll make some lists and see where that gets me.

PollyWollyDoodle

Just delurking to say try Goal Setting.  I do this every three months or so with a friend, we have dinner and a chat and then we share ours and talk about them, but you can just do it on your own.  Someone gave me a CD by Tony Robbins with this on many years ago, and it’s proved really helpful.  

It goes something like this.  Set a timer for three minutes and then write down everything you want in the category of ‘self development’ - that might include career things, holidays, learning new subjects, making friends, pretty much anything that isn’t ’things’ or ‘money’.  The point is to brainstorm, don’t restrict yourself by thinking about what you can or can’t do. 

Do the same with ‘things’ - physical possessions including work on the house, garden, new car, bigger house, craft equipment etc. And then ‘money’ - savings, pension, how much you’d like to be earning, investments you’d like to buy - again, don’t restrict yourself to what’s possible, think big!  

Next you go through each category and decide what you want to achieve in one year, three years, five years or 10, and write that next to them.  Then you pick three of your ‘one year’ ones in each category that you’d  most like to achieve. 

Write them on a separate page (you have got a special notebook for this, haven’t you! 😀) and say why you want to achieve them.  And then the crucial bit - write down the first step. 

So say for example, one of your things is to restring your beads - first step might be ‘measure string and source somewhere to buy it’. If it’s to go camping your first step might be ‘book campsite’ (or possibly ‘buy tent’!)   Try and make them quite definite things that you can actually achieve in the next few weeks. It might be a phone call or an enquiry but it starts the ball rolling. 

That way, you’ve got nine things that you can actually start on, and the other things are written down and prioritised.  If you achieve all your goals, next time you review them then you can add in some of the other ones.   I rarely manage all of mine in a year, but it has definitely helped me move on.  I’ve been doing this for years, and sometimes I look back at previous sessions and find that my priorities have changed a lot.   I hope that all makes sense, I expect if you Google this sort of thing there is stuff out there. 

I don’t comment often, but I’ve read your diary for sometime and I really admire the way you have changed your life around.  Your hobby sounds absolutely fascinating!  

KajiKita

I like the goal setting approach @PollyWollyDoodle - thank you 🤩 

@SecondStar, you are doing really well. In spite of feeling like you don’t know where to start you actually sound really focused and organised with all those refunds and monies going into the EF etc. I think maybe you have achieved a stability you haven’t had before and now you have the headspace to look around and go ‘what’s next’. 😊

KK

SecondStar

Good bits:

The sun shone today, I got a much needed lie in this morning, and I really enjoyed my day off work! I budgeted my pay cheque this morning, assigned my miscellaneous spending for the month, and then went around the charity shops.

I settled on this cute dress from Oasis - a over the knee, sleeveless, v-neck, a beige-pink but covered in a bright, busy front of florals and birds, which looks great with my colourful tattoos. The sort of thing you could dress up with heels and glam makeup, but which I’ll dress down for the occasion with gold flat sandals and a kaftan.

I also picked up 3 hand turned wooden bowls, which will be prefect for reenactment - either as display items, or as flatware for eating, as everything in camp has to be period correct! I also got a pretty brass bowl to use as a plant saucer, which matches the warm metal tones in the living room; and half a dozen little glass beads to add to my reenactment bead strings. No stop into town is complete without a trip to the independent yarn shop, and I also got 2 balls of nice wool yarn to make a 2nd pair of socks for myself - and it was discounted today!

The dress was £7, and the other bits came to £8.


Bad bit:

The party actually isn’t today at all! Between starting work, booking students, and juggling days off, my partner got his dates mixed up - the party is actually the last Friday of July! At least I have everything ready for it, nice and early!



My partner has more students in tomorrow, so I think I might go down to the monthly car boot sale, and then there’s a festival on in another local town too. He’ll pop over in the evening to help me take things out of the attic in preparation for the insulation and boiler install on Wednesday, and then we’ll do car boots on Sunday too, if the weather is good.

I posted the first coat and I’m waiting for the £50 to be released from Vinted, and I accepted a £45 offer on the second coat too - waiting for payment, and then I’ll ship. The £45 coat was a +£10 profit too, which I’m pleased about! That’ll be £90 into the emergency fund, once those clear.

I saved £310.71 into the EF from today’s pay, and I’ve set my Monzo account to ‘round up’ my purchases into the EF, too.

I’m currently up to £2,690.53 / £4,347. 61% there, £1,656.47 to go!



@pollywollydoodle thank you so much for the kind words, and thank you even more for that wonderful break down of goal setting! I’m going to crack open a nice new notebook(!) this evening, and give it a proper think. You’re just right that the ‘why’ is the important bit, and then the ‘how’ - I read somewhere that ‘goals without actions are just dreams’, and if we don’t know WHY we set the goal, and HOW we will achieve it, then we’re not going to get anywhere very fast!

@kajikita lovely to see you here, as always! Your comment about stability and headspace made me tear up a little, because you’re just right. I’ve only been able to take my own adulthood seriously in the last 6 months, no wonder it’s so overwhelming! We improve with practice, and I’m going to keep giving myself grace whilst I practice.

KajiKita

Awwww … glad to be of service 😊

Well done on the charity shop finds! 👏😊

KK