It’s been a little over a year now of not working. At the time of resigning from my previous employer, Rapid Circle, I had been planning to take the year off and then decide what it is I wanted to do. However, truth be told, the plan was never to return to the kind of work I had been doing in the past.

COVID, the state of the world in flux, uncertainty, and changes in my job all led to a realisation that what I did and believed in back then (with regards to social and virtual learning in business, all those things I was espousing) was irrelevant, insignificant and unsupported.

It just wasn’t important so why was I tiring myself out making it so?

It was time to move on.

It was time to kill my darlings.

And so I did.

The year off presented an opportunity for me to do and think of things differently. To radically alter my approach and do something completely unexpected. I had to remove those things that annoyed me the most that took my focus, zapped my energy and most of all, the things and people who I gave my ideas too.

In effect, I grew up and hardened. I like to think that I’m a tough bitch now. (Just kidding!)

Deleting my social media accounts in hindsight was one of the best things I’ve done and instrumental in allowing me the time to get my headspace back and filled with things that I enjoy doing and thinking about. It allowed me to clear that brain fog where I had multiple voices, viewpoints and perspectives to consider only those that I felt I could handle.

It wasn’t perfect because it left me instead with that noise now coming from closer quarters: family and friends so I have to navigate this completely differently.

In the last year, I have focussed on my French language skills and also my golf. Going through the Women’s Golf Program as a cohort of 25 women (it’s an award-winning Australian golfing blended learning program) has been beneficial in many areas: not only my mental health and well-being but also my social life. I look forward to playing golf a few times a week and having the club to be my second home.

However, I also started thinking about how long this would sustain me and if I need to consider some kind of alternative to fill my days.

I’ve been having an increased interest in Media Literacy especially for over 50s.

I think this interest has come about from listening to people – family and friends – of that age share news items from social media sites that are meant to mislead. I wondered if there was any association or organisation responsible for educating people of this age on how to identify fake news and how to fact check.

Are there media agencies that provide this as a service to the community?

I have started exploring this but it doesn’t seem as if this is widely available. I was thinking along the lines of providing cheap or free workshops to community organisations, libraries and other community gathering places to help people learn how to discern fact from fiction.

I can’t believe how many people I come across who get all their news from just their social media sites like Facebook. Many also are unaware or have not been educated about Australian politics. I believe that through education, can one then reflect and learn about their own practices and then discern fact from fiction.

I’m not one to say NOT to use social media. After all, I used it for many years (and I’m still using YouTube) but ultimately, we need to be responsible in learning how to pick out the fake news and think twice about what to share or not.

If anyone knows of an agency like this in Australia that provides community tutors (and trains them up), this would be something I’d like to get involved with. I’d love to be trained as a community tutor and provide this as a service to people in the community. From what I’ve seen, there are some overseas agencies like Poynter Institute that provide training (and I finished their free online course) but I have no idea if there’s an Australian equivalent.

(I can only assume that this would be the domain of professional journalists but I guess they have their hands full at the moment).