In an effort to change my mindset and not to be too wrapped up in my thoughts anymore, I deleted social media off my phone…again – for a bit of respite. This time when I use social media, it’ll be the times I happen to be sitting at my desktop – so expect less tweets. […]
Negativity
Last Thursday night, I felt myself going down a negative spiral. I’ve long since come to realise that when this happens, I have to struggle to change my mindset. (It’s getting worse, the older I get). I was sitting at home in front of the computer in a Zoom class with the Alliance Francaise and […]
The Costs of Learning Something New
You probably would have seen my rants and raves online about French. Don’t think I’ve lost the plot or something. If anything I’m letting off some steam usually because I think I should be at a level higher than where I’m at the moment. However, it’s all my fault of course. I’m more angry at […]
Capturing Video Testimonials
Sometimes we make things really hard don’t we? One of the things we’ve been trying to do is to capture success stories from customers that minimised the to and fro that goes with planning interview times, recording, editing and approving. To share stories of how you go through a process or how you overcame some […]
Without Feedback There Ain’t No Learning
For a while now I’ve been thinking “without feedback, there ain’t no learning”. Why? As you know, I’ve been learning French. I started this year taking a more self-directed approach to the language before realising that I can’t escape the fact that I need to speak it – and by speaking I mean having someone – […]
Time to Give Back To Your PLN
I don’t know about you but I felt that through the time of months of COVID isolation, I did more professional and personal development than I have ever done before. Not to make light of the situation that many find now find themselves in, I have mentioned that I am one of the lucky ones […]
When Learning Is Hard
This year has been quite a ride when it comes to new learning. Much of it has absolutely nothing to do with communities or corporate Learning and Development. It’s all personal stuff building new skills and capabilities in my work and daily tasks. In my role as Community Manager, I’m also helping out in various […]
Doubting Yourself
This year has been a weird year for all of us. As I sat listening to the early results of the USA election where Trump prematurely claimed victory and shared that he doubted the democratic electoral process, I started to doubt myself. I sat watching the coverage amazed at how close the results were. For […]
A Little Bit of Creativity Every Day
I’ve been enjoying the daily process of creating a video to share what it is I’m working and learning. Although I don’t create these every day, I’ve changed the way I capture these (I used to capture them on Instagram Stories and before that, Snapchat). Now, I simply use the video camera on my phone […]
Thread Helper
I like investigating new tools that help me with my work and learning. I’ve been using Twitter for many years and in recent times, I have been strongly deliberating whether to stay on it or leave. It’s true that I have made many friends on this platform and build a great network of people around […]
Some Ramblings for Saturday
Recently I changed my approach to doing my videos really in an effort to reduce my use of multiple social media. Truth be told I wanted to get off Instagram which to be fair, I don’t like as a platform other to have it serve me up some French infographics of vocabulary and nothing much […]
Learning Day
Yesterday we had our Learning Day at the company I work for, Adopt & Embrace. We value personal and professional learning and as such we dedicate four full days every year to this. We can set aside our work and our client work (if not urgent), to focus on all aspects of our mandatory compliance, […]
Creating My Daily Stories Old School
This morning I decided to do my “work out loud” story using my phone camera and video editing software on my phone rather than using Instagram Stories (or in the past, I used Snapchat stories). The reason is that as I have an old phone (iPhone 6), Instagram is now becoming glitchy on it and […]
Happy 5th Birthday Adopt & Embrace
Happy 5th birthday Adopt & Embrace! I have been working for Adopt & Embrace for a little over two years now and it’s been a fantastic job working for a great team of people and for a business that espouses a focus on people and community. We are a B-Corporation and everything that we do […]
Resources I Use to Learn French
Many people on Twitter have asked me what resources I’ve been using to learn French recently. Others have also shared their own resources and apps they use to learn a language. I marvel at the huge amount of resources we have available – mostly free and readily available to learn a language. I have written […]
Importance of Feedback When Using Video
Many of you already know that for some years since 2016, I have been showing and sharing my work and learning out loud using Snapchat as the video editor of choice. Since early 2019, I stopped using Snapchat because it came too glitchy on my phone. When I first started using it over 4 years […]
Everyone is Talking Learning But Beware the Myths
So a funny thought has been swirling around in my head lately. It’s because I’ve been in a few situations with people outside my field of Learning and Development and on various conferences unrelated to this field, who are now talking about the importance of professional development. Given the pace of change that we’ve all […]
Women, Be Like Rita
Since subscribing to Netflix this year (yes, I’m a bit late to the game because I had tons of other content I was accessing – and well, basically, life….until COVID hit), I have been watching some wonderful shows. Sure, there are some crap ones on Netflix (oh boy, are there some shit shows on Netflix) […]
Reducing Screen Time
Last night I received a notification on my phone to tell me that my screen time had reduced by 10% this week. What wonderful news! I was on leave for the last week and used much of my time catching up with various chores around the house and garden as well as long stretches of […]
What My Cat Teaches Me About Myself
I love my cat. Let me introduce you to him. His name is Pud. He is about 5 years old and he’s been with us – his forever home – for the last couple of years. Every day I’m thankful that he’s come into our lives because he’s brought with it so much joy, laughter […]