roryosullivan.co.uk

January is a tough month for a lot of people, budgets have to stretch further for several reasons, the money has to last that little bit longer as people get paid earlier and they forget that with the traditional over indulgence at this time of year that they end up spending more on food, drink and presents for the friends and family you haven’t seen in a while.

Without proper care people find themselves on a very tight budget once the New Year’s celebrations have died down. This is the situation I find myself in.

Photo By Jeff Keen - http://www.flickr.com/photos/spiderpop/

I’ve got a very tight budget for food and travel this month. So I’m trying a few things to make a boring and tight budget more interesting. To start with, I have my own adjustments:

• I’m eschewing drink completely so there’s a considerable cost cut back.
• I’ve switched to smoking roll-ups rather than my normal brand of cigarette. Yes I know I should give up, but I fear that won’t help my appetite or the money situation. I’ve tried going cold turkey before and the cost of nicotine replacements is expensive.
• I’m avoiding as many temptations as possible to stop me spending which essentially means apart from work and home I’m not going anywhere this month.

I was chatting to a @Jemimah_Knight yesterday about the situation I’m in. As well as a kind offer of cooking me dinner she also bought about an idea that I know has been done before but I thought I’d give a try. It’s based a simple premise – “Will Work For Food”. This time though I will swap and trade food for favours, and you can stop sniggering at the back I don’t mean those kind of favours!

Kudos, praise, whatever you want to call it, can be more valuable than cold hard cash to people. In the modern free work environment where movie reviews, news images and various other media are created by an ever expanding social media base, a small thank you, some recognition, can mean even more. This could mean all sorts of things that can be exchanged instead of money online.

Recently, through a work offer, I helped friends get half price Sky+ for a year. I got a note through the message board we frequent that it was all installed and running and they were pleased. I got a thank you for something I had done that whilst It wasn’t a lot of effort to arrange for me, meant a large saving for them.

It was the thank you that made me happy, something that in these days when I get a glare at holding open a door or sidestepping away from the tube doors to allow people off, that really meant something. The bonus was when they extended that thank you to a great gift of some photography books the next time I saw them. The thank you meant a hell of a lot and the books were the cherry on top.

With that in mind I’m experimenting this month to see if I can make the days go by using my skills and friendliness. Simply put – ask me for what you need, knowledge, skills whatever I can do and in return maybe I can get a nice email or better – a nice slap up meal to talk terms and say thanks.

So – what can I offer? You may well ask.

I’m not a master of any particular trade and I’m not a jack of all, just some.

I’ve got some areas of knowledge that might be useful to people, I can code HTML, and order a server and domain name, and install WordPress (well that’s what I did here!), I know my way around the web and I am used to researching and shopping for people online.  I can stitch video together and have published pod casts. I’m also fairly handy with a camera and a little digital processing. So there are some web skills for start.

There not the only things I can do though, whilst I don’t have a car at the moment I do have a clean driving license so maybe you need someone to drive a van with your belongings in it if you are having a reshuffle or moving house and I can help move things around. If you just fancy someone to chat with in the pub with or need a partner for a class to learn with then maybe I can help.

Basicaly, if there is small job you need doing that you think I might be able to help with, advice on online shops or how to find things, if you need some things photographing or just want to ask me some questions and get some advice, then I might be able to help. You never know until you ask and you know what? Neither do I!

In return all I need is a thank you and permission to write it all up here as I go along. It might be quite a journey, depending on what you all think you need.

Hell, if you fancy taking me out for dinner for no reason at all then I probably wouldn’t say no! But no kissing on the first date – i’m not that sort of guy.