This year admittedly, I have focussed much of my time on learning new things. It was primarily because I had more time given that I work three days a week (personal choice for my mental health and wellbeing) which left me the other days to focus on everything else. Given that there wasn’t much going […]
Using Social Media on the Desktop Only – Results So Far
One week ago, I deleted all social media off my phone and only been using some of the them through desktop only. This means that I’m spending less time doing mindless scrolling and wasting time on it because I’ve effectively reduced picking up the phone at odd times at the expense of doing other activities […]
Nostalgia
I’ve been thinking a lot about the past this year. Guess you can call it “being nostalgic”. I’ve been thinking more about the good times in the past where for whatever reason I seemed to feel as if I “was in my element”, a time where I seemed to have a carefree attitude without negative […]
iTalki – A Great App If You Need to Practice Speaking a Language
I have written a lot on Twitter about spending time learning French. This year, as part of a personal challenge (and also being in lockdown), I figured it was high time for me to get back into French with a vengeance. The last time I had any formal education was back in 1981-1985 so you […]
The Women Talking About Learning Podcast
A few weeks back, I was invited by Andrew Jacobs (@AndrewJacobsLnD) to chat with Laura Overton (@lauraoverton) on his new podcast The Women Talking about Learning. This is a different podcast where Andrew, as the host effectively holds the space but doesn’t contribute or engage in the conversation between two women who are in the […]
A Distracted Mind
For the last few days, I’ve not accessed social media on my phone because I deleted all social media off it! After a hissy fit where I felt like shit because I was constantly picking up the bloody thing to Twitter that would feed me information that made me angry (mainly news related), I […]
Mindset
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]