Blogging Anniversary - 10 years

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A while ago I checked when I did my first blog post, in order to celebrate with an anniversary post. Well, that day came and went without any reaction from me. Better late than never, so here a reminder of my very first blog post from 24 October 2012.  The book was New Finnish Grammar  by Diego Marani. Marani is an Italian novelist, translator and newspaper columnist. While working as a translator for the European Union he invented a language ‘Europanto’ which is a mixture of languages and based on the common practice of word-borrowing usage of many EU languages. It was a suitable book to start with, being a book about letters, languages and memories. With a beautiful prose, the novel went directly to my heart.  "One night at Trieste in September 1943 a seriously wounded soldier is found on the quay. The doctor, of a newly arrived German hospital ship, Pietri Friari gives the unconscious soldier medical assistance. His new patient has no documents or anything that can ide...
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What the Most Successful People Do Before Breakfast by Laura Vanderkam

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When finding this title on the Kobo site I got intrigued. This is for someone like me who can hardly do anything before breakfast... even when breakfast comes at 10 a.m.! However, just having gone into early retirement and finding that on the contrary to what I believed, my days have become shorter and I am achieving less then when I was working, I thought this was a good hint.

And so it is. It turns out that a lot of the most successful people in the world (at least on the American continent) go up at 5-6 a.m., go for a jogging run, reading the papers, spending time with their family and in this way manage to spend some valuable time by themselves and with their family before heading for a stressful work.


It sounds really good and I got a little bit inspired.  I do realise that the reason I don't get anything done is because I start the day too late and I spend around 1,5 hours breakfasting, reading the papers and e-mails etc. By the time I have dressed it is already mid-day and half the day is gone. I must admit though that I will not be able to go running at 6 a.m. My body is screaming on such exercises at this time of the day.  I do go up at 7 a.m. to prepare breakfast for my husband and son, but what happens then? Yes, your are right, I go back to bed an sleep another hour!

Well, this book has inspired me to not go back to bed but do some useful time in the morning. Since I was never a jogger this is really hard for me. However, I have started on a 10 week scheme to come into shape where you jog 1 minute and run 1 minute and increasing to 2 and 3 and the last week 10 minutes jogging! Hmm, we will have to see. Just today I am doing the 3rd round of the 1st week!


Laura Vanderkam is a time management consultant and has written several books or articles (this 'book' is only around 35 pages long) and maybe I should try her '168 Hours: You Have More Time Than You Think'. Time management is a very important issue these days when time is a rare commodity!

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