Thought of the Day- Motivation

Once again, I've gone through one of those phases where I go from blogging nearly 10 times a month, to not posting anything in 6 months. I'm really, really bad at keeping things consistent on here.

Usually what happens is that something comes up that distracts me from blogging for a few weeks, e.g. exams, holiday, coursework deadlines, etc. After these few weeks of distractions, I become so used to not having blogging as part of my schedule, that I lose the drive and motivation to get it back in my routine. 

I thought this through for a while today and started to think about motivation in general and how to keep an interest in something you enjoy. Having motivation for work or studies is totally different to maintaining motivation for a hobby such as a blog. With university work, and work in general, people are usually pretty motivated to get stuff done, because they know they have to get it done to get good marks/have a successful career. With something like a blog, there's nothing that forces me to keep up to date- it's completely down to me whether I keep up with it or not. 

Its a strange one, because I enjoy blogging a lot, but the idea of getting started on a post is sometimes a daunting one. Anyone that writes a blog will know that a post can take the best part of two hours, sometimes more. And with work, social activities, cooking and other stuff thrown into the mix, the amount of time available to fit in hobbies such as blogging is often limited. But I know for a fact that I've still been able to fit blogging into my schedule if I've really wanted to- I proved that earlier this year. 

One of the best things about blogging in my opinion is the sense of satisfaction when publishing a post, or taking the time to read other people's wildlife experiences from around the country. This applies to most things in life I think. The satisfaction after reading a book, watching a great film, going for a walk, etc. is all pretty similar in my opinion. It's just all about whether you have the determination to make the effort to do stuff like this often enough. 

I wonder if anyone reading this has any ideas on how to motivate yourself, or how to manage your time? I'd be interested to hear what works for different people- I've still yet to work out what works best.

Anyway, enough of the Philosophy for now, I'm going to start planning a blog post for either tomorrow or Friday, depending on what the topic is. It's not likely to be anything too lengthy, just something to post to get things up and running again.

I'll leave you with this quote which I found earlier today which seems to sum things up suitably: 

"When all is said and done, more is said than done"- Lou Holtz

Norfolk Summer Holiday 2013

Just another quick post to share some of the pictures I took whilst on holiday in Norfolk. This post has actually been written in April 2014, but has been published for August 2013, when the holiday actually was. 

The flower below, discovered on a roadside verge on a walk is Centranthus ruber (Red valerian). I think I have the ID right here, although this particular plant must have been a young one because most of the descriptions and pictures I can find online seem to suggest that these flowers grow larger, with more flower heads than the one we found. Must thank the always useful Collins Flower Guide for help on this one.

Common blue butterfly at Cley Marshes on the north Norfolk coast (sadly the location where that US air force helicopter crashed earlier this year, killing 4 people). 

And finally, a few pictures taken from the kitchen window of the cottage we were staying in. A small brown looking bird was foraging through the climbing plants on the trellis of the back garden. Wasn't convinced on the ID at first but eventually came to the conclusion that it was a juvenile whitethroat. Just strange to see one so close to the house we were staying. Probably the best view of a whitethroat I will ever get. Photos are just record shots really but you can clearly tell what the species is. 

Actually quite disappointed I don't have more photos from this holiday. Norfolk's such a fantastic part of the world, and somewhere I've always enjoyed going on holiday to. Thanks for reading. 

Skomer Island

The photos in this post were all taken on a day at Skomer Island, as part of a four day field trip to the South Pembrokeshire coast for my degree course. We were lucky enough to get a guided boat tour around the island to get a great view of the puffins, guillemots and grey seals. Here's a collection of the images I managed. Some of them were taken on the mainland before we headed out on the boat tour. 

I tried to use captions for the images on this blog post but never again will I attempt that; the formatting issues it creates are a nightmare, and virtually everything needs fixing in the HTML to fix it, so I'm just gonna describe photos in my usual unprofessional way instead; below is one of a huge area of foxgloves found on the mainland.

Lots of rock pipits were around, but they were usually at quite a distance, so the record shot below is the best I managed. 

Some grey seals chilling on the rocks. Picture taken from the tour boat.

Large colonies of guillemots on the cliff faces... 

And finally, perhaps the biggest tourist attraction to the island, puffins: 

Glad I finally managed to get this post up, had these photos hanging around for ages. Thanks for reading folks.