CHRISTMAS GIFT IDEAS!

It’s that time of the year again! Here are a few Christmas gift ideas from me to you. Anyone who knows me will tell you that anytime I am asked what I would like, I usually respond in the following ways;

I like to smell good

I like to read

I have a sweet tooth

So the gifter can pick from any of these options or all if they like when choosing what to get me. Going by my response the first type of gift I would suggest is perfume, I don’t know anyone who doesn’t like to smell good, myself included. Unless you know the specific scent(s) of the person you are buying a gift for, it would probably be a good idea to get miniature perfume sets or smaller size bottles so that they can have a variety, incase they don’t like a particular scent there will be other scents to try from the gift set. Fun fact I can count on one hand the number of times I have purchased my own perfumes; my perfumes have almost always been gifts or when I worked retail many years ago, I got free from work.

Next gift idea would be a book whether an E-book or physical book, a book is always a good gift idea for voracious readers. People who gift me books usually know me very very well, they know what kind of genres I like, what type of writers/topics that I gravitate towards and they always end up buying me the best books.

Chocolates! You can never go wrong with chocolates or other sweet treats as part of a gift or a gift all on its own!

My childhood Christmases are filled with memories of going carolling in the hospital. We lived in a medical complex the hospital was literally five minutes away. Every Christmas everyone in the neighbourhood who wanted to (we were all families of medical staff of the hospital) joined the nurses and doctors, (well from my memory it was mostly nurses, especially student nurses) in a candlelight carol singing session in the different wards. It was so much fun definitely one of my favourite Christmas memories from my childhood!

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ITS MY BIRTHDAY!!!

I actually share my birthday with four people that I know personally and two that I know of by association. One of those people I know personally, has the same first name as me and went to the same high school as me and I only just met her two years ago!  It was such an interesting coincidence. The other even more interesting coincidence is that I share the exact same birth date, month and year with a former housemate. We found out in the most interesting way. While at university, back then we had to physically submit council tax exemption letters from our school to the local council, so as not to be liable to paying council tax for our student housing. This particular housemate was tasked with presenting the letters to the council since she had some free time, so after collecting them she goes through them to make sure all the details are correct, gets to mine and exclaims “you stole my birthday!!!” hahaha it was the funniest scene ever, you had to be there to see it. Good times! Two baby girls born on the same day on different continents, met years later as undergraduates living in the same house in a third continent. Anyway the second half of this year has been amazing to me; God has been so good I am so grateful for all the blessings and looking forward to many more. Here’s to an amazing birthday! I haven’t really celebrated my birthday properly in a few years so this is one is going be awesome! I have a very big wish for this birthday and I know it will come true!

(image courtesy of pixabay.com)

Here's a cupcake for you and you and you...

 

 

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PROS AND CONS OF WORKING FROM HOME

 

PROS

No commute – this in my opinion is the best part for me.

I can literally wake up 10 - 15 minutes if I choose to, before I am due to start work and still make it to work on time.

Working independently. Not that I mind working in a team, but sometimes I tend to be more productive working independently.

Great for home work life balance if you are disciplined enough to separate the two.  (I know people who pick up their work laptops at 9pm because they are “bored”). This is especially great for working parents. Think of a situation where a parent has a child who is not sick enough to go hospital, but still needs to be monitored closely, it’s more reassuring to know that you are only a few feet away from your sick child and you can pop in at any time to check in on them. Something else that really hit home for me; I woke up with a terrible headache one morning, it was so bad I had to lie back down for an hour before I could muster the strength to get out of bed. So if this was a regular go into the office situation, I would definitely have called in sick for the day, but guess what by around 10am I was feeling so much better, my headache had subsided and I was well enough to start work by 11am. So because I was home I only took a few hours (it was actually just 2 hours) off, as opposed to a whole day off that I honesty did not need if it was a regular go into the office day.

You don’t have to dress up for work heck you can choose not to shower all day, no one will be any the wiser!

Image courtesy of pixabay.com 

CONS

No social interaction among colleagues (think water cooler conversations, lunchtime banter etc).

You can’t exactly lean over your desk to ask a question or get a clarification on something, you actually have to pick up the phone and call or send an email. (This one gets to me).

Poor internet connection can mess up an otherwise great work day.

Distractions, depending on one’s circumstances of course. People living with families can relate to this a lot. But those living alone experience this too, that loud neighbour, those noisy kids playing outside, the delivery doorbell ring etc.

Poor work life balance. Yes it’s both a pro and con. Sometimes it can be difficult to separate the two especially if you are working in the same environment. If you do not have a dedicated room/space/area, separate from your other living quarters for a home office set up (which is most people), it can be a huge problem trying to separate the two.  In my opinion if one has a dedicated home office corner, room, balcony, attic, shed or something detached that is outside of your living space boundary, then it is easier to shut that door/draw that curtain at the end of the work day and call it a day until the next morning. But if you are working from your dining table for example, there can be that urge to send that email at 8pm that ideally can wait till morning, or finish that not so urgent task well into the night, so you don’t have too much on your plate the next morning.  Sometimes you end up feeling like you are always at “work”.

 

My Ebook

 

 

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THRIVING IN A PANDEMIC!

At the beginning of the pandemic sometime in late March for me, when all the news that came out worldwide was tragedy after tragedy, I told myself I was not going to let the negative news affect me, but instead I would thrive in this pandemic. I even sent a message to one of my friends to this effect screenshots below. My timeline was full of tragedy, loss and despair at the start of the pandemic, people were being furloughed, taking massive pay cuts, businesses were closing down, people lost jobs and loved ones. I found myself absorbing too much of this negative news and it was starting to affect me, so I took a short social media break. When I came back the negative news was still there on my timeline, but in the midst of all the tragedy going on in the world, I would come across the odd person who had signed a new contract, got a new job etc. It was such a crazy time for some and a blessing in disguise for others. Of course we all know that industries like aviation took a beating and tech and healthcare sectors thrived. So I choose to focus on the positive, I told myself that I would thrive amidst the chaos. And thrive I did. In June I self published my very first book, which you can find at the end of this post. I had been sitting on the idea to write a book for years, but never did anything about it because I didn’t quite know what I wanted to write about back then.  Every time someone would ask me a personal question that I didn’t feel like answering, I would always say one day I will write a book about it, and never thought much of it after that. And then one night when I couldn’t sleep I woke up a few minutes to three o’clock in the morning and started writing and didn’t stop until five o’clock in the morning. I wrote 2000 words in two hours and that was the beginning of my career as a published author. I started my YouTube channel around the same time.  A couple of weeks later I signed a short term contract with a multinational non profit organisation and also got some work from home online opportunities, that I did on the side. Deep down I believe all these opportunities and blessings that came my way did so, because I not only spoke them into existence but believed without a doubt that I would thrive regardless of the negative circumstances in the world at the time. The power of the tongue and manifestation was definitely at work here. My motto was “thriving in a pandemic” (still is) and believing that I would and I did. 

Edited to add: I actually drafted this post after my interview and before I got the offer and signed my contract! Ask, believe, receive! I just knew deep down in my heart that this contract was mine so I went ahead and wrote this post before signing the actual contract!

My Ebook below

 

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I WROTE A BOOK!!!

Hi everyone!

So I wrote an EBook! Yay! I am super proud of myself. I have been toying with this idea for a few years now and I finally did it this year. My book is a collection of short stories about love; rekindled love, compicated love and lasting love. It's available on Amazon. Please click on the link in bold, grap a copy and let me know what you think. Thanks Everyone!

My Book Cover!

 

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