Yesterday, I attended a hugely informative training day with the team at Child Seat Safety Limited.  I was attending for two reasons.  Firstly, they are a client of Moose Media Management (who I recently partnered with as their resident wordsmith), and as clients committed to boosting their social media engagement, the ladies at Child Seat Safety wanted to look at how regular and focused blogging could best work for them and their aims.  Secondly, Moose MD, the amazing Graham Campbell, thought it would be a great event for me to attend, rather than a meeting, seeing as I am seven months pregnant and now have to actually start thinking about things like car seats prior to my baby being born!

The training day was absolutely fantastic (more of that in a future blog), but my point for writing today is to serve as a bit of a stock take for my own sanity.  As I am now in official panic mode about the arrival of my first born and my apparent unpreparedness around it all, I need to take a few minutes to look at the things I am in control of,  and remind myself that for every over-priced gadget on the baby list I am yet to be guilt-tripped into buying, I have ticked off some pretty cool things recently within my professional ‘list’ – cynically meaning I can afford the damn things in the first place.

Again, I mention my involvement with the majestic team over at Moose HQ, and thank them for their amazing support of me as I officially joined the herd last week (there was a photoshoot and everything).  They’re always off at awards ceremonies these days so I hope they get chance to crawl out from any hangovers to read this!

I’ve just received a fantastic testimonial from Mark Wallace, the COO over at Kingdom Security’s UK HQ, praising me highly for my work ethic as well as my actual work, which was lovely to read after spending some intensive hours and days working on their promotional literature and staff handbooks, and thinking that if I wasn’t self-employed I would totally want to work for them.

I’m still enjoying my affectionately named “ghosty” status behind a book I wrote earlier in the year called Kindness Matters, which within the last 24 hours resulted in the ever-upbeat author and long term client, John Magee, being able to promote a massive project surrounding Random Acts of Kindness in his hometown in Lancashire, following an official meeting with the local council.  Well done, John.

Earlier this week, I returned home from an intensive few days with Joseph Valente, winner of the 2015 series of the hit BBC TV Show, The Apprentice.  Although there’s still a lot of editing we need to do, and despite us both already planning exciting future projects together, I’m delighted to say that in terms of first and second drafts, after a relationship that has blossomed over just two months, we have now completed Joe’s upcoming Autobiography / Business Book, which should arrive on shelves in all good bookshops within weeks of my child arriving (hopefully) in a hospital birthing suite in Bolton.

On a rare night out last night, I got the opportunity to attend a lovely Patron’s Gala Evening for a local charity supported by my good friends, Chris and Lindsay Dawes, who are doing amazingly well with their venture, ScruffyMonkey Digital Media.  Team Monkey was born at the same time as I ‘went live’ with agoodwriteup, and I’m delighted that we have always supported each other as clients since we started, and as friends since so long before.

Next week, I head for a couple of days away in Torquay, where I shall be boarding a Press Boat to support and document my lovely colleagues and friends, Mike Newman and John Galloway at Speed of Sight charity, as we add another chapter to Mike’s upcoming book – the chapter that will hopefully see him break his own Guinness World Record for being the fastest blind man on water, where just he and a trusty F1 Powerboat will aim for breath-taking speeds of 100mph.  This will be Mike’s ninth world record – but I get the feeling it won’t be his last!

And finally, I was a serving as a ‘SuperSub’ at the Manchester Pioneers chapter of the popular BNI networking group this morning.  I have to say that every time I’ve had the opportunity to meet those guys, I’ve come away with some great potential for partnership working to indulge my love of copywriting for brilliant people and even more brilliant concepts, including the opportunity to write content for a great new website for 360 Dental Care, working alongside the talented Danny Callan and the visionary Dr Jayme Adams.  Watch this space for developments.

So, in summary, I am completely unprepared for the arrival of my first born, but at least I know that when that fantastic day does arrive, and my child grows up in what is hopefully an environment that is a little more stress-free than it is right now, they can be proud of the work that mummy has done in the final months in order to make the little one proud one day.

I will be mainly panic buying this weekend.  Hope everyone has a good one!