Dreams of Tomorrow

- Success begins with the decision to try - 

My Beloved Doctor Martens

Dreams are a funny thing. We have often get them when we're asleep at night, during a period of sleep called REM, which is short for Rapid Eye Movement. We need to dream to have good mental health and often we don't remember the dreams that we have.  Then there's the other type of dreams we have. The type of dream, a goal, that we have when we envision something we want to work towards and achieve.

To be honest, some of the goals that I have for myself I've written in passing about in previous posts. So I thought I'd take the time to go through some of my current goals, and write about them in a bit more depth for you, as a form of accountability for myself. The idea is that over the coming year I'll try to update you, regularly, on how the process is going with hitting these targets I'm setting for myself in this post. I'm really looking forwards to sharing this journey with you!

A rarely used gate leading to an empty field

Running & Fitness!

I want to be able to be fit enough to run and complete a ultra marathon (usually a distance of 100 kilometres, though some ultra marathons are shorter than this). I've been wanting to run in a ultra marathon for quite a while now but have never thought I would never do this, but in January I was thinking about my running goals and decided to make a start this year, and am planning to take part in the Run Gatwick event this coming May... and the chosen distance: the half marathon (13 miles 192 ½ yards; 21.0975 km). You might think I'm crazy to try to do this in less than four months so any advise on training, etc, will be more than welcome!

To live in a house so close to an empty and large space

Weight Loss

I want to meet my target weight, with Slimming World, and maintain that weight. I started loosing weight with Slimming World in January of 2018 and I had hoped that I would have hit my target weight by my wedding. Those of you who have been following me on Instagram and Facebook are aware that I've lost 3 stone 1.5 lb (43.5 lb; 19.73 kg) since I started on this journey. I'm planning to another twelve week count down this coming weekend. A Slimming World Count Down is when you pay for either five weeks (and get the sixth for free) or ten weeks (you'll then get the eleventh and twelfth for free). It means that I don't I can't miss a week as I might do if I was paying weekly. I've been tempted to miss weigh ins because I've been convinced that I'd done badly (like yesterday). I only went because I was working yesterday afternoon and thought I'd just get the weigh in over and done with. I was so convinced I had gained, again, but instead I ended up losing 1 lb (0.45 kg), which I was thrilled about. I'm hoping to hit target at some point over the next twelve weeks. I'll be posting, or trying to post, my weight loss/maintain/gain on my Instagram account on a weekly basis (my Instagram handle is @ink_stained_thumb).

Winter In Horley... No Snow!

Writing

I love writing and I would love to write a book of some time, either an autobiography or a novel, and get it published. I've been writing in a journal since I was 11 and I would love to turn parts of that into a book of some type. I know that I've lived a rather unusual life and I am grateful for that. Its why I really would love to share it with you all! I'm hoping to get some of my journals from South Africa and Uganda over the next few months, hopefully, and I'll be using extracts from there to as a foundation for an autobiographical book about snapshots of my growing up years. I'm looking forwards to working on this project as it's going to be a lot of fun to do, but its also going to be challenging as it means that I'll need to go over entries that I wrote in times of difficulty and trial. I've written during a lot of good times and bad, so I think it might be painful to revisit the memories and emotions behind the entries. 

Still Green

Finances

This one is kind of personal, as we don't often write or talk about money or finances. So this is a big one, which is why I've left it to last. In way, I want to become more open with my readers about various things, like my weight and my savings. I want to have a substantial amount of money in my savings account by the end of 2019. I don't have a fixed amount in mind, but the nice thing is that the bank Andy and I are with have a saving account with a high interest rate (5% APR). At the moment my savings account is empty but my first pay check from Travelodge is coming in on Friday so I'm planning to put some of that money into my savings as I've been running away from my savings account for quite some time (I used to be very good at saving my money once upon a time). I think that once I've figured out how much I'm going to save then I'll look at the amount I'm going to try and reach with my savings. I'll post every once in a while about how this is going. I do get tips at work, so my tips will be an extra towards my final savings goal.

I hope this post has been informative and will help you understand me a bit better. I'll write about all of this again soon!