This week has been utterly crazy. When I finally sat down and thought about it, I realized I’d given five product recommendations in a very short period of time.
The first was EverNote. Their PR department asked to talk to me about my experiences with the product, and then asked if I could be used for future promotions. I live by my EverNote, so naturally, I agreed. It was the first time thatI realized that I really do use EverNote as my personal information manager. I keep so much in there: to-do lists, resources sorted and grouped, writing ideas, website development plans, grad school plans. I think i even have some recipes hiding in there, all ready to be located by a simple search!
The second was my favorite wine as I gained a wine steward. For those aware that I’m developing a “What a girl needs” list, a wine steward was not on the list. Gaining this one was pretty fun, and I’m happily awaiting the arrival of my happy wine!
Numbers three and four were for a coworker looking for a birthday present for his girlfriend. She enjoys writing, so he wanted to pick up the book I’d been raving about earlier in the week. Remembering how much trouble I had finding the book when I actually wanted to buy it, I recommended another excellent writing book to him.
The fifth was Oregon Chai, which happens to be powering my blogging this morning. My roommate has apparently been looking to try chai (And yes, Mom, it is technically dried. I have the powder mix!), and failed to mention this to me sooner. I warned him that I tend toward a smooth, less pepeery chai, and made him a mug. He enjoyed it! This may mean I’ll have to guard my chai now, but I’m glad to have converted someone!
At this point, I’m comfortable suggesting products to people. I think it goes hand in hand with my love of connecting people to information. It’s really much the same thing!
Posted by Rebecca as Uncategorized at 8:06 AM EDT
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One of the things I struggle with in my blogging is the way I deliver information. My best friend has informed me more than once that my blogging style comes across as stiff and academic. I tried to lighten up a bit, and my mother became concerned about me because my vocabulary was shot.
When I blog, I try to write as if I were just sitting here talking to you, and admittedly, my speaking has become more low-level over the past year because of my job. Talking on my normal level is the quickest way to baffle the adorable second graders I’m trying to teach math to, so I have tried to make my speaking more accessible to my little students. The problem is, I tend to keep this simplified speaking style while I’m working at the center.
When I sit down to work on my blogs, I’m still in my little-kid teacher speaking mode. It can be very difficult to shift back to my normal, high-level discussion pattern. I’m working on trying to find the middle ground, or the point where I can slip easily back and forth between the two, and it’s been frustrating.
In some respects, I really identify with this article on finding your voice as a blogger because I think it relates in a way to my own situation. I’m trying to create authentic posts without feeling like I’m being stiff or elementary, and really having to think about what I want to say and how to best phrase it.
I wonder how many other bloggers find that they have to make some sort of shift in their mindset between their work and their writing.
Posted by Rebecca as Uncategorized at 8:08 AM EDT
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I’ve taken more than my fair share of Myers-Briggs assesments over the course of my life. I took it for fun once as a child because my father had a book for assessing it lying around. I took it at the career center in the first university I attended. I took one in almost every single teacher preparation course I took in grad school. An amazing number of the online quizzes I enjoy are MBTI.
Needless to say, I’m fairly in touch with my MBTI.
Generally speaking, I’m clearly an Introvert, but I straddle the line on every other scale in the indicator. Most assessments agree that I’m either INFJ or INTP, but the truth of the matter is, I’m right on the line.
I was taking a quiz that threw out an MBTI result the other day, and realized what the problem is. A number of the questions ask about the person’s decision-making process. You are asked repeatedly if you follow logic or your gut when you make a decision.
It occurred to me briefly that I could have just gone through and alternated my answers and not been lying. It also made me think long and hard about what I base my decisions on. When I am asked to make a decision, I first look at procedure and previous decisions. That’s the logic part. If there are multiple or no possibilities, then I go with my gut instinct. That’s the emotion part.
This decision-making process has served me so well that I am often left with challenging decisions in every area of my life, deferred to by coworkers, supervisors, and subordinates alike. In my personal life, I’m the one who often gets to make decisions if I don’t deflect them quickly enough becasue of this process.
Interestingly enough, I’ve also come to realize that I am trying to instill this same process in the students I work with. I teach them to work their way down to reasonable answers, and then follow their instincts. It may not seem educationally sound, but it does actually help build up their confidence that they do know what to do, even when they don’t necessarily understand it.
My question now is: Is it truly possible to make decisions based purely on logic or emotion?
Posted by Rebecca as Personal development at 7:56 AM EDT
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It’s a somewhat well-kept secret that I have actually started pursuing work as a freelance writer. It’s been a rather half-hearted pursuit, allowing opportunities to come to me rather actively pursuing them; and it’s been entirely pursuing positions rather than submitting or querying.
Still, all things considered, I’d have to say i’m doing fairly well at the moment. I’ve had a couple of maybes, or else I’ve received no response. It occured to me yesterday as I was thumbing through things that receiving a couple of maybes (basically, they’ve added me to their roster of writers, but don’t currently have work for me), it occurred to me that things have gone too smoothly. Straight out of the gate, I made a couple of connections with potential future projects.
This pretty much flies in the face of everything I know about freelance writing, or writing in general. I have no rejections to respond to artistically. I feel somewhat cheated. A lack of response isn’t a rejection, it’s just a lack of response. I need some actual rejections! Every freelance writer is supposed to have that stack of rejections that mark the beginning of their career so that the maybes are a good sign, a happy change.
I’m going to work on being a little more aggressive in pursuing freelance work and see if I can’t take a small step backwards and earn a rejection or two!
Posted by Rebecca as Uncategorized at 11:22 AM EDT
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I can tell I’m starting to feel a need to push beyond where I currently am professionally. Unsurprising, as my career seems to have derailed several years ago and been struggling to find its way back on course over the last year. As a baby step, where I currently am sitting is fine, but there’s that little voice in the back of my head saying, “This isn’t where you belong. You should be doing more.”
Oddly enough, my supervisors at work would agree with that little voice.
Recently, I’ve been reading more and more on informal learning and constructivism, preparing to start the application process back into grad school. For so long, I’ve felt shut down because the career I chose for my lifetime career ended gloriously and repeatedly on the words “overqualified”. It’s taken me far too long to get past that, reorganize and move on.
What’s truly funny is that while I’ve been sitting there trying not to regroup and move forward in my life, I’ve always been driven in work and recreational settings to create learning materials. I’ve created training material, cheat sheets on small topics, guides to various topics. Currently, I’m working on a process document that will cover all four of my positions in my current job.
I knew when I worked in museums that I jumped at any opportunity to develop workshops or resource guides. As a high schooler, I never missed a chance to write how-tos for various things. I’ve always received high praise for these works.
Now, in a need to satisfy my need to put knowledge out into the world (and to hopefully start saving up money for grad school), I am planning a series of books on various topics that I’ve noticed people struggling with, both at work and in my journeys. I’ve given thought to other information channels, but for now have decided to focus on these books.
It’s weird to realize you’ve always known what you enjoy doing, but for whatever reason aren’t doing it.
Posted by Rebecca as Uncategorized, Personal development at 8:56 AM EDT
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