Before we go any further I’d like to apologise for my previous post. By the time you’d recovered from that first sentence I had vanished, leaving behind only a creepy 30 second animation by way of an explanation.  Sorry.

After way too long spent working in sales and being unemployed I am now getting paid to write every weekday and not on a commission basis but for a genuine honest wage.  In the interests of professionalism I don’t want to get into details here on the blog but rest assured that I have updated the about box and author page to reflect my current situation.

In theory this blog has always been about the challenges but it’s tended to stray and has been characterised by some as a record of my quest for employment.  Now I have found work it might be worth recapping on the challenges, it also might be worth you making a cup of tea, this could take a while.

1. Write More

My progress through the subsections of this challenge was comprehensively covered in this post and with my new job the only things left to cross off are freelancing and writing a 50,000 word novel in November.  On the freelancing front, an article I wrote about commissioning promotional videos may be getting published in a trade magazine soon, although I’m not sure this is exciting enough to count.

Something I’ve been meaning to do and have mentioned a handful of times on this blog is to put together a portfolio of my work and even though I said I wouldn’t add any additional subsections to this challenge…

1g. Put together a portfolio of my work.

2. Get out of Debt

I was a bit of a techtard yesterday and managed to delete a number of things, including the most recent version of the spreadsheet I use to calculate my debt.  Nonetheless, I will input the data once more and bring you Finance June this Friday, if you’re really lucky I might even redraw the graph for you.

4. Wake up at a Reasonable Hour

When work starts at 9am having a challenge to get up before 9:30am seems a bit redundant.  Consider the challenge modified.  I will document my early bird ways for a month and then consider this challenge completed, any creative ideas on how to do this would be appreciated, otherwise I might be forced to take 31 photos of an alarm clock in a style similar to what I did with the apples back in April.

6. Learn to Drive

When I’ve repaid my parents and finished my student loan over calculation repayments (that thing needs some kind of acronym) I will be investing in some lessons.  My sister had her first lesson today and says she can already “turn it on, make it go and make it stop.”

7. Complete my Degree

As previously mentioned I’ve come to realise that a journalism degree would be pointless for me.  Instead I am going to look into getting my NCTJ certificates (I already have one of the law certificates) and then completing an Open University degree, probably in English Literature, at a later date.

8. Keep Eating Steak and Crumpets

Next week I get paid, which means I can eat steak without feeling bad.  Instead of just eating steaks in different places, taking a poorly lit photo on my sorry excuse for a camera phone and then labelling them “tasty” or “like rubber” I’m going to try and make this a bit more interesting for you.  I’m going to try and eat steaks with lots of different people and incorporate a bit about them and what we talked about into the review.  This could go horribly wrong.

Haven’t had any crumpets recently but in other Breads of the World news (I named it after the section in Sainsbury’s) I did have some English muffins the other day.  These probably deserve a post of their own because whenever I use the word muffin people think of the big-as-your-head American muffins that are meant to taste of chocolate but more often than not taste of clay.

Well, that seems like enough for now.  One of the other things I managed to delete yesterday was the file containing all the most recent versions of my blog icons.  Going to go through three DVDs, two Operating Systems and one inbox and try and see what I can turn up.  Laters.