Way back when I first started my blog I wrote a post called A Day in the Life of a Virtual Assistant. I didn’t think it would be a popular post; who wants to know about what I get up to all day? But it turned out to be one of the most clicked on posts I’ve written about virtual assistants, and many of the visits have come through searches on Google.
Since writing this post back in January things haven’t really changed too much, but I wanted to write an update today because it’s a little bit different, and hopefully today will be the first of many.
I am writing this blog post from my partner’s farm, in France of course. While he is off getting the wood in the tractor I am sat outside at the rear of the farmhouse in the sun, the temperature is around 21 degrees and directly in the sun it’s over 30!! We’re still in March, it’s unbelievable.
There is no Internet, I barely have a 3G signal on my iPhone and the sun is causing some screen issues but who cares, I’m not stuck at my desk in the office which is probably colder than outside right now.
All around me I can hear various animals, a couple of lambs were born last night so they are safely in the barn and their Mum is bleeting away. The cows are rather quiet today, they’re not out in the beautiful weather, I asked my partner why and apparently it’s because the grass isn’t ready for them to eat yet. The ducks and geese are happily swimming in the large pond I am sitting next to. One of the ducks seems to be billy no mates and he’s lost a lot of his feathers, not seen anything like it before – it appears that the other ducks are picking on him. There’s also the odd lizard running up the side of the farmhouse, or basking in the sun, certainly something you don’t see in the UK.
As well as having no Internet, there’s also no toilet… this is a major problem for me, so until the fosse septique is installed I doubt whether I’d be able to spend a whole day here. Although as I mentioned in my last post, my partner comes home for lunch, so it’s quite possible if I didn’t have much Internet work to do.
Most of my clients recently have been authors who need their books formatted for eBook, so this is the perfect task to be getting along with on the farm. I don’t need the Internet, I just need my trusty netbook and a seat and I can get along with the formatting in the peace and quiet of the French farm life.
I just wish Google worked out here, it’s handy to be able to look up random things…
I could get used to this though, although I’m not sure how much work I’d get done around watching the antics of the various animals, it’s quite addictive, I used to people watch a lot, now I animal watch.
I hope you’ve enjoyed my post, a bit different from normal but I hope my new calm working environment might spark some creative ideas for new blog posts, so watch this space.
I recently set-up a board on Pinterest called The Farm, I have some more images to add to this from my recent visit.
