THE WEEKLY BLOG EPISODE 01 | HELLO AND WELCOME

Well hello there, and welcome to the first in what I hope will be a series of weekly blogs that are much more of a free flow form than the other review, bucket list and activity-led posts you might find on Splodz Blogz. Consider this a vlog in written form, a journal, an insight into the world of a busy outdoors-loving travel-dreaming full-time-working 39-year-old.

I’ve dabbled in the world of weekly vlogging before, and while I genuinely enjoyed filming, editing and sharing my week over on YouTube, it became much too time consuming for me in the end and I had to step back. You still get the occasional video from me over on Splodz Blogz TV, but there are no regular postings these days. The thing I miss most about those videos from my point of view is the opportunity it gave me to share the randomness of my life, the chaos, the less curated and deliberate moments – while all my posts are real in terms of honesty and experience, those were the really real bits.

With that, here’s the new series, I’m just going to give this idea a go to see what happens. Not a vlog, but a blog, something you can read when you’re relaxing on a Sunday evening or on your Monday morning commute without having to worry about using all your data or needing headphones. Some weeks you’ll get an account of a whole load of random life events which may or may not be included in the order in which they happen, while others you’ll get more of a soliloquy on one particular thought or experience. Each week I hope you’ll enjoy the words that I share; as always feel free to join in the conversation in the comments or over on twitter. It if turns out you hate these then I’ll rethink, but here goes anyway.

Some Introductions

If you’re new around here, then hello and welcome to Splodz Blogz! I’m Zoe, aka Splodz, and I love to go on outdoors adventures and then write about them. I’m a bit of a jack of all trades, master of none, which basically means I love to spend my time doing all the things. My complete inability to choose means I’ve ended up with the biggest bucket list known to man that grows faster than I have the time and money to tick things off – but I’ve made trying new things and having fun learning my way through life my mission. If you want to know a little bit more about me, I wrote this A to Z post which is a pretty good place to start.

The Adulting Side of Life

It has been a pretty bog-standard week in my life, it makes me wonder why I decided to start this weekly blog series today. I think the definition of adulting is something about always having a to do list, because that’s certainly been my experience recently. It is just never ending! We’ve had the boiler serviced, stocked up the freezer thanks to our local butcher, decided the local garden centre is more an expensive tat shop than somewhere to buy plants, had an evening without power thanks to an outage in our local area, and I visited my GP to have my first implant fitted (let me know if you want to know more about that, it might be TMI for some, but I guess others may find my experience useful). I also mended my broken blog email thanks to a tipoff from a kind PR friend who messaged me on facebook, and got two blogs scheduled ready for the coming week – you’ve got a post on the AquaVenture at Cotswold Country Park and Beach on Tuesday, and my next Currently Loving post on Thursday.

I try and cook proper food most days, in the interests of eating proper and colourful food. On the dinner table this week we had chorizo hash a couple of nights, a new-to-me chicken and rice slow cooker meal that was basically burrito filling in a bowl (I love my slow cooker!), and some chilli thanks to a previous slow cooker batch cook. Oh, and chips last night, Saturday night is takeaway night in our house, and thanks to a conversation with some friends from Comms Unplugged I had a strange hankering for chips and curry sauce.

I should probably mention work, seeing as that is what takes up most of my time in the week. I’m now firmly in the home stretch of a bit of a monster of a project at work, which is taking up all my time and thinking when I’m in the office – and a lot when I’m at home, too. I call it a monster without hyperbole, it is probably the largest scale Communications project I’ve run so far, and it really is taking everything to get it done. It’s great to truly get your teeth into something properly, but is leaving me no time or headspace for what is really my day job. The deadline is the end of the month, and I am very much looking forward to stepping out of the monster’s mouth come February.

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Testing My Intelligence

Have you taken the Great British Intelligence Test yet? BBC Horizon and Dr Adam Hampshire at Imperial College, London, are exploring how our changing behaviour and lifestyle could be affecting our brain function, and have asked the public to complete this intelligence test to help with the study. I gave it a go, and actually got quite frustrated with it if I am honest! I did okay at the tests about patterns and colours, but less so at the verbal reasoning (which, considering I work in Communications is a bit worrying) and memory-based tests. It only took about 20 minutes from start to finish, and was a bit of interesting fun to see what might be going on inside my brain. The results will be presented on BBC Horizon later this year.

Let Me Entertain You

We’re currently making our way through the whole of the Star Wars series of films, and I’m enjoying them way more this time around for some reason. We started in December with the intention of getting to see the new one at the cinema, but I suspect it’s taking us too long and Cineworld won’t be showing it by the time we are ready to watch Episode 9. Last night we watched the end of the original trilogy – Episode 6, Return of the Jedi. The music is just incredible, isn’t it?! I’m ashamed to say we haven’t seen any of the newest trilogy yet, but we have The Force Awakens on DVD ready for next weekend.

My other entertainment has been the second series of Top Brass on Radio 2; presented by James Morrison, it’s all about modern brass music. This isn’t your Salvation Army or Grimethorpe Colliery Band… it’s something a bit more worldly than that. The rendition of Game of Thrones with 23 low brass players – including 6 tenor trombones, 11 bass trombones and six contrabass trombones – I wish I could have heard that live! The second episode is Sunday night at 9pm if you are a brass fan like me.

And while I can’t make my own vlogs, I still enjoy watching them, and this week I particularly enjoyed this one by Kombi Life (are you watching their road trip adventures?), and this one by Eamon and Bec. Yes, I watch a lots of vanlife and other travel vlogs – I guess I enjoy transporting myself into a world of endless travel and adventure, dreaming of my one-day.  

This Week’s Question

I have this idea that each week I’ll ask you a question in an attempt to get some conversation going in the comments. Up for that? I thought I’d start with this seeing as chores and admin took up most of my time over the last seven days…

What has been your biggest “adulting” accomplishment this week?!

I can’t decide whether “the weekly blog” is a good enough title or if it needs something a bit more clever, but I’ll go with it for now. If you enjoyed this, if you think a weekly blog is a good idea, and especially if you got to the end, I’d love to hear from you in the comments below. And in the words of the vloggers – please like and subscribe! I’ll see you again next Sunday at 6pm for episode two…