Something New Every Day Challenge: Day #4

Today’s ‘something new’ was easy to find as it was waiting for me on an empty Tube seat:

Yes, from today, Time Out London magazine has become a free publication, handed out at train stations during the daily commute. I have, of course, read Time Out before, but it’s a new initiative to make the magazine free. I suppose sales must have been down due to the large amount of content available on their website, and also because of the other free publications which are available in London.

I have to admit though, I’ve never really liked the format of Time Out magazine. I quite like their website, and love the weekly emails highlighting free things to do in London and advertising competitions, but I’ve always found the magazine a bit of a waste of money. So, does being free make it any better? For me, no. As I’ve mentioned on this blog before, I’m prone to a bit of FOMO (fear of missing out), so adding another free publication advertising things to do in London to my already growing pile is actually a really bad thing for me. Every day I can pick up the Metro and Evening Standard, and then once a week I find Stylist and Shortlist thrust into my hands. Sometimes other free magazines like aMuse Magazine pop up too. All of them have online versions as well as paper versions, and all of them are bursting with far too much information and more “things to do” than any human could ever possibly fit in. It’s exhausting!

So, after flicking through my new, free copy of Time Out, I recycled it, and decided not to bother picking it up again. Along with all of these…

My other new thing today is to try to put myself first a bit more. I was supposed to go to a talk tonight, which no doubt would have been interesting, but I wasn’t feeling great and I wanted to go home, eat something warming (veggie sausages, homemade oven chips and Baked Beans!) and blog, so I did. I need to learn that I and only I make my decisions, and I mustn’t feel like I’m under any obligation to do things if I decide I don’t want to do them.

The ‘Something New Every Day Challenge’ is going well so far. I’ve decided to try to keep it up for 7 days, and then after that it will just be as and when I can, as it will become too much to post every day (especially with November and NaNoWriMo coming up…). So, 3 days to go…