Welcome

Hello and welcome to my first blog post! You might have already read my 'About' page which slightly overlaps with this post where I'm going to tell you a little about myself.

I love sports; my favourites are football (the real one that some people call soccer) and Formula One. I go to watch my team every home game, for my sins, but I absolutely love it. For me, football has provided some awesome memories, epic highs and sickening lows. Some people don't understand it, but the rollercoaster of emotions it puts you through draws me in more and more and I wouldn't have it any other way.

I regularly go to the gym, usually 6 times a week, some might say it doesn't look like it! (I tend to agree) but I've always been active, playing football, cricket and rugby in my younger days. My training regime is probably classed as bodybuilding style, I enjoy the aspect of constantly trying to improve whether it be technique or increasing in weight, seeing slow steady progress. It could just be me but nutrition is by far the hardest aspect in my opinion, I love food and always struggle when the time comes to lose a few pounds for an upcoming holiday (which are never too far away).

Making a nice segue into holidays, its another thing I live for. Lots of people spend there money drinking and going on mad nights out or buying new clobber and trainers but I prefer to keep as much back as possible to splurge on as many holidays as I can. Annual leave from work is my only sole limitation regarding how many I can squeeze into a year! As I'm getting older I'm drawn towards more active holidays, travelling around and seeing more of places and countries rather than sticking to all-inclusive resorts and not moving far from the sun lounger. I'll definitely be covering holidays and travelling, it would be good to exchange experiences and ideas for upcoming trips.

Coffee. Need I say anymore. Three double espressos a day. Pre-workout, post-workout and around lunch time. Every single day, like clock work. My partner bought me a coffee machine and I'm fully making the most of it. I'm always trying to improve my latte art, it's not often I get it right so when I do I think you'll know about it ha-ha!

Over the past 12 months I've been looking to generate passive income and investing in the stock market has really sparked a passion. I won't go into it too much now but I'll be covering this in the future. It ties in nicely with my studies, I'm in the process of becoming an Accountant.

Whilst the future me hopes to become an Account, my present self is a Data & BI Analyst for a multinational corporation. I joined the company as a 17 year-old pup, working in the Customer Service department as a call centre agent and have worked my way into a data role. Initially it involved pushing Microsoft Excel to breaking point by writing so much code that you could click a button to automate as much of my working day as humanly possible. I'd be sitting there for hours watching my screen flicker whilst I tried to look busy, probably drinking coffee if my memory serves me right. Since then I now create datasets by writing SQL and build reports and dashboards for stakeholders. If anybody would like to know more about Excel, VBA, SQL or anything relating to the Microsoft suite, let me know, I'll be happy to discuss and write about it if there is any interest.

If you've gotten this far, fair play, and thank you! If I'm being honest I have little faith I'll ever get one view but if you're reading this I really appreciate it.

I've posted a picture with this post. I took the photo and I really like it, so I thought I'd share it,  I’m definitely not a photographer (as you can see) and I don’t know, or have an interest in, adding filters to photos, but I hope you like it as much as I do! I'll let you in on a little secret, my partner is really into photography so if (when) I put any of her photos up you'll notice the difference straight away haha!

I feel like I've spoken a lot about myself, I hope I haven't come across as self-centred, I'm really not, I promise. I'm a quiet and reserved person, a man of few words, and look forward to connecting with people, broadening my horizons and seeing where the journey takes me.

Thanks for reading and all the best... hopefully until next time.

Andrew