Well, the third week is over, well almost as I've still got a bit of work to do over the weekend for the Scottish Executive seminars which start next week. I'm still upright. I don't think I've had any second thoughts about what I've let myself in for and some things are starting to come together.

The images above just about sum up the first three weeks.

You always want to get up and 'Go' and achieve some short term results - preferably positive ones.

However, sometimes you have to 'Stop' yourself from going headlong into projects without proper planning or organisation. A great lesson so far is the amount of administrative work that I have to do which takes up valuable time when I could be doing other things more suited to my skills.

And then at times you start questioning yourself '?' to find out if you're doing things the way you want them to be or the way you think others want you to think they should be.

And finally there's the big alert sign '!' which is warning you about all the things you think that could go wrong, when you should really be thinking about all the things that could and will go right for you.

Never mind the weekend is here. I'm off to a fund raising poker night tonight which is bound to set me back a bob or two. Maybe a bit of gardening and tidying up the house tomorrow and possibly get to see the Departed movie at some stage. Golf early on Sunday and the under 17's are playing on Sunday afternoon. Oh, and time for work too, whatever hapened to the 35 hour week. I'll have to rejoin the union and complain to management!!

Met up with my good pal Fiona this morning, along with her cute little fella Michael, for a coffee and chat about how things are going and some of the ideas I've seen or heard about recently that she might want to follow up for her own work.

I've decided that if I'm going to be working on my own as much as I've done in the past three weeks I really need to make a point of staying in touch with people who you can bounce some ideas around with and hopefully they can give you some hints and tips too, as well as some contacts for further work.

Jacky's working rule number one. (with hopefully more to follow as the weeks progress!!)

Don't lose contact with people who've helped you previously or who you have helped along the way. You can't do it all on your own and every opinion received or shared is probably saving you a few hours of anguish, or worse, trawling through the Internet looking for the ideal solution to your current problem/challenge.