Typecast

I can't believe we're at the end of another month already! Anyway, because I have nothing better to do with my evenings, I've been capturing some of my journey around the interwebs and collated it all here to give you something to do.  Here are some of my favourite links and things I learnt in March. ¨¨°º©©º°¨¨ Hey @YouTube , now you've demonetized my channel please can I have my $87 ad revenue or are you keeping that? pic.twitter.com/V8bpDiwgwi — N I C K I E (@nickieohara) January 17, 2018 YouTube recently took  the decision to demonetise channels  that had less than 1000 subscribers and less than 4000 hours of watch time. Now it's no biggie to me because even though I have  a few videos on YouTube  that do very well for views, I don't have the time to invest in 'growing my channel' but I did have some funds in my adsense pot that I felt I was entitled to claim.  There was, however, no information about how to do this - all links ...

Today I ran my first half marathon - the Darwen Heritage Half organised by Darwen Dashers .  I was gently poked fun at for choosing this 'undulating' roller-coaster style course as my first half but there was a story behind it (isn't there always?).  Let me explain... photo credit : Marianne Rintoul I shared this picture a couple of weeks ago. It was taken at the GroupRun Blackburn Celebration Run (Winter Plan). The caption explained that this is how I feel about running at the moment - totally loving it, feeling accomplished, sticking to a training plan that was helping me run further and stronger, and running back with my old crew again.  Everything felt just right.  I shared the photo the day before a 10 mile race that I'd been training for and explained that my running buddy turned Sergeant Major, Claire, had been pushing me to my limits but was also giving me confidence in my abilities.  But we never got to the race. Overnight about ...

When my daughter was diagnosed with cancer , apart from the emotional strain, the hardest part of the process was not being able to keep in touch with our families as much as we would have liked.  It was the early 1990s so there was a constant queue for the public phone in the main hospital corridor, mobile phones were expensive, and it was years before social media and WhatsApp. We had to provide as much information as we could during short visits home and opportunities to just "pop in" from extended family were few and far between as the hospital was 40 miles away from home. Because of this,  I wrote a lot about cancer on this blog to try and break taboos and provide information. I'm always interested in new initiatives that help families who are supporting a cancer patient so I was excited to read about a social enterprise website called No More Grapes . The way I'd describe No More Grapes is like an online 'hub' for the family where you can reach o...

Within a few minutes of being on Twitter last Tuesday I saw a couple of my old school blogger mates share an old school style meme post. Back in the day (2010 if you really want to know), these blog posts were all the rage and are currently seeing a welcome resurgence.  So, thanks to Kate and Molly for the inspiration - it's nice to stretch the fingers and the mind a little bit with something like this.   ¨¨°º©©º°¨¨ When was the last time you cried? I'm generally not a crying type of person but a few weeks ago I went on a run that took me above and beyond my comfort zone. I hadn't ever run more than 7 miles before so when my running watch buzzed at 8 miles and signalled the end of the run, I sobbed.  It wasn't a pretty sight but they were mainly tears of relief.  If you were another person, would you be a friend of yourself? I hope so. I'm the type of friend that's loyal, trustworthy and funny. I've noticed that my friendship group has...

It's been a while since I added to my "Things I Learnt In..." series. Life feels a bit like a merry-go-round sometimes and you can be screaming "STOP... I WANT TO GET OFF".  Things, however, have slowed down a little bit and I'm maybe not quite as dizzy, I'm out running four times a week and I've been collecting little snippets again from around t'internet that have interested or amused me and hope that they entertain you too! ¨¨°º©©º°¨¨ The First 10 Minutes Are The Worst is my new podcast.  For new runners, Couch To 5K has really taken off and there's loads of advice about using this distance for healthy exercise and then for progressing to half or full marathons but I get asked lots of questions when I'm leading one of the groups in our community running programme - GroupRun Blackburn .  I wanted there to be a place where people talked openly, honestly and humorously about running and answered some of the 'frequently as...