So, why do we all Dooyoo?

Personally I think that occasionally stumbling across a "lounge" read on Dooyoo is a nice way of learning something new about someone who, let's face it, you spend a fair bit of time with! And that illustrates one of the reasons that I love this site - there's a society here. I moved to the Midlands a few years ago and between personal and work issues I've never found a network of friends; equally I have become quite guarded through life experience and don't mind keeping myself to myself, whilst my friends from back home have dispersed following their own lives. So it is sort of nice feeling that I belong to something, and for me Dooyoo does that. As a bonus, you also get some rewards from it. So, where do mine go?

Well, whilst it is tempting to go for Amazon vouchers now and then, I hold out for the £50 cash-in point. Why? Well, when I first joined I had an allotment. I was by far and away the youngest person on the field - something greatly appreciated by a certain flirty gardener who by his own admission was "sadly far too old" to even think about it! So my original aim was to use my first £50 for the next year's seeds. Fast forward a bit and the allotment is no more - the commute and other commitments, plus a summer of perpetual rainfall meant it was just too much for me on my own.

Then along came Mr Rarr, and my plan was to keep all money I make online - Dooyoo, surveys and eBay - for us to have a nice weekend in a really nice foodie place. My aim was Tom Kerridge's Hand & Flowers "restaurant with rooms" - basically a Michelin-starred restaurant which realised that people will want wine with their very pricey grub and consequently need somewhere to sleep! This is basically the poshest pub known to humankind. Then two problems intervened; first the waiting list and secondly, before I had the time and money to earn enough to make this happen, Tom Kerridge showed himself up in spectacular fashion. An amateur food blogger treated himself, after working hard for the money as I had been endeavouring to do, to a meal in a top restaurant. He met the chef and complemented him on the food - one would imagine it is pretty daunting meeting your heroes, even if you weren't that chuffed with the meal. He then blogged about it and made his personal opinion of the food known. Cheffy in question promptly goes mental on twitter, calls the patron something very uncomplimentary and Tom Kerridge weighs in despite it being completely unrelated to his establishment and also vilifies and insults the amateur enthusiast writer publicly - in short, he was behaving like a schoolground bully. I doubt his business will suffer from my reaction, but he will not be getting any of my money after acting like that, even if the place looks like it can turn out a damn fine bit of steak.

So what do I aim for now?

Well. I have learnt a lot in the last few years. Okay, so the allotment didn't work out, but I miss it and I love the countryside - there's a reason I opt to spend five hours of every working day travelling, and that's so I can breathe clean air and sit by rivers in gardens of country pubs and go for walks in which I don't get knocked half off my feet every five steps by a fat bloke with an imminent heart attack and massive sweat circles under his arms. Commuting is becoming the bane of my life - it exhausting and means I can't be as good as I would like at my job. I've also met the man I will share the rest of my life with and he is someone with the same ideals as me. So, the dream has evolved between the two of us that we will aim for a smallholding in the West Country at some point in our lives. His relatives have moved there, mine want to. It makes perfect sense. Throw in my increasing conscious awareness of the sheer wrongness of the modern food industry - we all should shoulder the blame for the current horsemeat "crisis" - and I cannot tell you how much I was to remove myself from urban culture. I'm a female aged under thirty and I want nothing to do with JLS, microwave meals, Cosmopolitan magazine, Kurt Geiger, Jane Norman dresses and Cheryl Cole's sodding hair extensions. I want earth, land, air, space, some bees and ten hens and three pigs and some ducks, a goose or two who I shall treat with good food and a wide berth as I have never forgiven them as a race for chasing me across my grandfather's farmyard when I was six. I want to "do a Hugh" and pretend London doesn't exist any more and every time we visit Mr Rarr's clan in the depths of the West I feel like a little bit more of myself has stayed there and I won't get it back until I change everything about modern life. I want my kids - if I ever get to that stage in life - to not be people who will ask stupid questions like my mother's townie employer once did - "didn't you know your hen was pregnant?" - and understand that our lovely little green island used to be a place where farmers were rewarded for their hard work. I don't want to feel guilty about what lands on my plate when I pursue a balanced diet

So like many Lounge posts this has turned into a slight rant. As Blur pointed out, modern life is rubbish. To answer the original question, I am now looking at my internet earnings as something entirely different as I used to. They used to be something that I could use as a superficial treat twice a year or so. Now? I have a plan. It might not work and it probably won't. But now every time I reach that magical £50 moment I will be investing the money not in a savings accounts - thanks to the weasel-faced git that our current Prime Ministers deems fit to run out money when he couldn't run a bath, there's no point. I shall buy Premium Bonds, and hope that one day luck decides to smile at me and give me a big win. Given that I have £50 of bonds in my name that my idiot excuse for a father bought me out of a guilty conscience when I was twelve and I only recently landed a windfall of twenty-five whole English pounds, it probably won't work. But it will still be my money and one day, maybe I will come to my senses and realise that the dream is unachievable. I shall forgive my oldest friend for pointing out recently that my dream is, after all, shared with 75% of the population.

But I might get lucky. Might, maybe, possibly, just. Then, the modern world will not see me for dust. I am an intelligent, cognitive person and I have come to realise that I am really, bloody well angry. I want to change my life and when I am eighty and on a rocking chair knitting some scarves I want to not feel guilty about my time on this earth. So I hope that my money from Dooyoo, worked for and earned in diligent and honest advice and reviewing, can help my luck in doing so. In the meantime, I shall continue to enjoy the community, the humour, the honesty and the help that Dooyoo provides, and even if I land a million tomorrow, I will still be on here. Hopefully you all will too.