A Post by PS Postcards and The Final Countdown

HAPPY, HAPPY NEW YEAR!

How did you spend yours? Mine was on my doorstep after having my bag stolen. Classic. (Bag was recovered in a nearby plant with all but a bank card inside. The card had been cancelled anyhoo. Unlucky you thieving…..)

Erm, how is it the 15th of January already? Two weeks into the year and I haven’t even had time to think about resolutions. I usually avoid them for fear of complete and utter failure. This often leaves me, on the 31st of December, wondering whether next year should be different. Again. 

With my next deadline for 60 Postcards approaching (oh the never-ending deadlines), I have decided that my 2014 is going to start from the day after that. Let’s mix the year up already. I am going to write a list of things I have been promising myself to do for years and I will probably keep said list hidden away, for my eyes only – just in case I slip up once more. A very likely story. 

But there is something else I could do with my list of resolutions….In my last post, I introduced you to a mystery guy providing free help (his name says it all really,  ‘The Free Help Guy‘). He has a new campaign you should check out called, The Resolution Revolution, where he assists people throughout the year to achieve their goals, offering a brilliant incentive – the back up of doing some good for the world, in return for failing a resolution. Genius. Sign me up.

So, rather than focussing on the year ahead, I have been buried in the final stages of the book. I feel like I have been saying ‘final stages’ for a long time? Yet it also feels like only last week I was in the Simon and Schuster office signing a book deal. What day is it? No idea. I’m having a wine. It’s 10am? Oh.

I can now see it all in paper form: the fonts, the layout, the size it will be. I will have just a few more days with the manuscript before it goes off to print and returns a brand-new-smelling, colourful jacket-covered, Demy hardback of a real life book. Cue tears. 

As you will be aware by now, I have felt just a little under pressure with the quick turnaround of the book, and it has made me laugh how Waterstones kindly offer a countdown (43 DAYS!), which will undoubtedly become more exciting than terrifying once my personal New Year starts!

Laughter provided by Waterstones does not stop there, though. I follow Oxford Street’s Waterstones on Twitter and they have become firm favourites, providing me with many chuckling-to-myself-in-the-street moments. Here are a few of their latest gems:

Talking of Twitter, it was through that very social media tool that I ended up chatting to Suzie at PS Postcards, which is an app where you can send a postcard directly from your iPhone to anywhere you wish. Seriously addictive! 

With our mutual passion for postcards, Suzie and the gang kindly offered to share my story on their own blog after I had answered a few questions about my creative project. It was a lovely post (see it here) and I couldn’t think of a more fitting way to thank them, than by sending them a postcard (from their own app, of course!). I went for their logo alongside a snap shot of the 60 Postcards cover:

I hope that the PS Postcards crew may be part of a Project Inspire sometime in the future. Which reminds me, please keep sending yours in. My next post will be full of some already received but I would love to keep the ball rolling on that one!

Another mention of 60 Postcards is one that I only noticed today. I sent my personal story to a Eurostar campaign #WhenInParis a while back and you can see it here! (I’ve got to say, I found it pretty tricky to summarise the whole thing in only so many words!)

Right, so that is my latest ramblings done for now. I will speak to you soon folks (honest),

Rach xxx

Ps Happy Birthday to my sister, Hannah, who is 18 (+7 years) today! xxx