BAG post November 2019
Nov. 28th, 2019 12:54 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
meridian_roseHope everyone is doing well! There's a flurry of activity at the end of November and start of December. For some you're celebrating Thanksgiving and I hope it was a lovely one. For some you've been working hard on NaNoWriMo. Others of us are working on Yuletide fics. Christmas shopping and other holiday activities start taking place or are put in diaries and calendars.
I've done most of my Christmas shopping, when I went to visit my sister. My online orders have arrived. Last few items will be anything food/drink related and any little extras I see when going out to any Christmas markets.
Younger nephew is getting a soft toy Tractor Ted (a TV series showing work on an actual farm, narrated by an animated tractor voiced by James D'Arcy) for Christmas so he'll stop trying to take his plastic vehicles to bed!
Nephew's birthday is in December so we'll have to travel half-way to give him his gifts. He'll be seven. It's gone so quickly since he was such a tiny baby.
I signed up for NaNo but I'm calling rebel NaNo again and counting all the things I've written as my total; it's not 50k but it's more than most months this year and I did a lot of catching up on the GYWO wordcount these last couple of months.
I've posted one treat fic for Yuletide, my assignment is with my beta reader.
I've been using the portable version of Balabolka which reads the text to you as final edit and I've got past the horror of hearing my words read to me (most of the time!) and it does highlight the little details I'd missed in my multiple edits; the if/it or a missing 'a' or 'an' or an image/imagine mixup.
TalkTalk, a broadband provider, decided to shut down the legacy tiscali email accounts they adopted when they took over Tiscali, unless you are a broadband customer with them or pay £50 per email address. My legacy accounts are not worth £100 a year! So I spent the best part of a day going through my emails and saved passwords and updating email addresses, unsubscribing from things, and in a couple of cases shutting down accounts.
Luckily I'd already started using my alternate emails for newer things but there were some really important older accounts linked to those tiscali emails. Ones I didn't need the emails as I interacted with the site online, but which need a valid email for any issues; my Amazon account, Paypal, Ebay, etc.
People were complaining on Twitter that they've had these accounts for 12 years or more, and some have elderly parents with these addresses linked to bank details and utility bills and it's an upheaval to find and switch all these over quickly. The customer service team keep replying that the charges are "valid and acceptable"; their definition of acceptable is not most peoples. Furthermore you can't make a complaint as they suggest, unless you have a billing account with them, i.e. the reason people are upset in the first place.
To be honest I'm annoyed but I hadn't been able to access webmail on any browser since their upgrade a few months back. It was frustrating to have to sometimes get a new password link to my email to reset it, log in, change the email, verify the email. But I closed down and unsubscribed from a lot of things and tried to make my other email accounts better in terms of sorting mail as it arrives, so now it's done, I'm not sad. I do feel for everyone who's having to face paying for an email until they can be sure all the relevant accounts have been properly updated.
As a bonus I looked at their facebook page and it was full of complaints about customer service, internet being down, internet speeds slow, etc. Where they just said they'd sort it and/or bragged about their great Trustpilot ratings. Did I go and leave a one star rating on Trustpilot? Yes, I did. So if you're in the UK, avoid TalkTalk!
That was a long rant!
Something a bit nicer; I'm thinking about the Snowflake Challenge and what to choose for my resolution next year, assuming that's a question. If it's not, I'll make one anyway!
This year it was to be kinder to myself and it's made a huge difference. I do less negative talk. I do more positive self talk - look at the things you did, you did everything needed today, you wrote so many words this week. If I'm sad, okay, let's be sad; do I need a cry or am I just overwhelmed and need to try and do something to tackle that, or is it hormonal; can I do something like watch a funny video or do I need to let myself get nostalgic? That's been far better than the "Good Vibes Only" so many positivity posts demand.
It's meant saying it's ok if you've not written today; it's saying maybe just write one sentence (which often turns into much more); it's saying make a quick note of that idea so you don't forget it. It's the little things, the "just do one" thing that gets moving.
I think it is something that takes a bit of work, especially to begin with. I'm not saying I can do this all the time. There are times I'm angry and frustrated and lack hope and definitely times I still get in a panic. But I get past the negative talk quicker. And I can recognise the panic of "OMG I haven't done this thing and it's only two weeks away!!" and take a breath and remember two weeks is plenty of time to sort the thing out.
I've also been trying to make social media more enjoyable again. If I find something nasty I'll reblog something positive instead. I block and turn off most notifications on most sites so I don't have a lot of interaction outside of those I trust. I've met some nice people via AO3 comments. I've posted anon fic to AO3 because I'm getting better at putting stuff out there but sometimes I'm still too shy to post things that speak too much to my personal turn-ons, or it's something I think will be ~controversial and I don't need the hate.
My next personal post will be earlier. I've got to plan how best to handle the writing blogs over the holiday period; some scheduled posts where I can seems the obvious solution. I might re-post some earlier work since I think there'll be less potential audience during December, and newer followers probably haven't seen everything.
Have a great time everyone, I will try and catchup on reading my DW a bit soon!
I've done most of my Christmas shopping, when I went to visit my sister. My online orders have arrived. Last few items will be anything food/drink related and any little extras I see when going out to any Christmas markets.
Younger nephew is getting a soft toy Tractor Ted (a TV series showing work on an actual farm, narrated by an animated tractor voiced by James D'Arcy) for Christmas so he'll stop trying to take his plastic vehicles to bed!
Nephew's birthday is in December so we'll have to travel half-way to give him his gifts. He'll be seven. It's gone so quickly since he was such a tiny baby.
I signed up for NaNo but I'm calling rebel NaNo again and counting all the things I've written as my total; it's not 50k but it's more than most months this year and I did a lot of catching up on the GYWO wordcount these last couple of months.
I've posted one treat fic for Yuletide, my assignment is with my beta reader.
I've been using the portable version of Balabolka which reads the text to you as final edit and I've got past the horror of hearing my words read to me (most of the time!) and it does highlight the little details I'd missed in my multiple edits; the if/it or a missing 'a' or 'an' or an image/imagine mixup.
TalkTalk, a broadband provider, decided to shut down the legacy tiscali email accounts they adopted when they took over Tiscali, unless you are a broadband customer with them or pay £50 per email address. My legacy accounts are not worth £100 a year! So I spent the best part of a day going through my emails and saved passwords and updating email addresses, unsubscribing from things, and in a couple of cases shutting down accounts.
Luckily I'd already started using my alternate emails for newer things but there were some really important older accounts linked to those tiscali emails. Ones I didn't need the emails as I interacted with the site online, but which need a valid email for any issues; my Amazon account, Paypal, Ebay, etc.
People were complaining on Twitter that they've had these accounts for 12 years or more, and some have elderly parents with these addresses linked to bank details and utility bills and it's an upheaval to find and switch all these over quickly. The customer service team keep replying that the charges are "valid and acceptable"; their definition of acceptable is not most peoples. Furthermore you can't make a complaint as they suggest, unless you have a billing account with them, i.e. the reason people are upset in the first place.
To be honest I'm annoyed but I hadn't been able to access webmail on any browser since their upgrade a few months back. It was frustrating to have to sometimes get a new password link to my email to reset it, log in, change the email, verify the email. But I closed down and unsubscribed from a lot of things and tried to make my other email accounts better in terms of sorting mail as it arrives, so now it's done, I'm not sad. I do feel for everyone who's having to face paying for an email until they can be sure all the relevant accounts have been properly updated.
As a bonus I looked at their facebook page and it was full of complaints about customer service, internet being down, internet speeds slow, etc. Where they just said they'd sort it and/or bragged about their great Trustpilot ratings. Did I go and leave a one star rating on Trustpilot? Yes, I did. So if you're in the UK, avoid TalkTalk!
That was a long rant!
Something a bit nicer; I'm thinking about the Snowflake Challenge and what to choose for my resolution next year, assuming that's a question. If it's not, I'll make one anyway!
This year it was to be kinder to myself and it's made a huge difference. I do less negative talk. I do more positive self talk - look at the things you did, you did everything needed today, you wrote so many words this week. If I'm sad, okay, let's be sad; do I need a cry or am I just overwhelmed and need to try and do something to tackle that, or is it hormonal; can I do something like watch a funny video or do I need to let myself get nostalgic? That's been far better than the "Good Vibes Only" so many positivity posts demand.
It's meant saying it's ok if you've not written today; it's saying maybe just write one sentence (which often turns into much more); it's saying make a quick note of that idea so you don't forget it. It's the little things, the "just do one" thing that gets moving.
I think it is something that takes a bit of work, especially to begin with. I'm not saying I can do this all the time. There are times I'm angry and frustrated and lack hope and definitely times I still get in a panic. But I get past the negative talk quicker. And I can recognise the panic of "OMG I haven't done this thing and it's only two weeks away!!" and take a breath and remember two weeks is plenty of time to sort the thing out.
I've also been trying to make social media more enjoyable again. If I find something nasty I'll reblog something positive instead. I block and turn off most notifications on most sites so I don't have a lot of interaction outside of those I trust. I've met some nice people via AO3 comments. I've posted anon fic to AO3 because I'm getting better at putting stuff out there but sometimes I'm still too shy to post things that speak too much to my personal turn-ons, or it's something I think will be ~controversial and I don't need the hate.
My next personal post will be earlier. I've got to plan how best to handle the writing blogs over the holiday period; some scheduled posts where I can seems the obvious solution. I might re-post some earlier work since I think there'll be less potential audience during December, and newer followers probably haven't seen everything.
Have a great time everyone, I will try and catchup on reading my DW a bit soon!
