blog @ spacebarpress » Life

Taking an Official Break

Julia — Sun, 07 Mar 2010 15:34:15 +0000

One of the reasons I haven’t blogged here in a while is that I was on vacation for two weeks at the end of February. I was in Vancouver watching the Winter Olympics! It was a spectacular time to be in Vancouver, even more so than normal. People were feeling very patriotic and were wooing and cheering all the time. Impromptu O Canada’s were sung at amusing times, like during curling matches or waiting in line at security to get into an event. We Canadians are a patriotic bunch, just as patriotic as Americans, however we’re not normally as vocal about it as they are. We just put on a Canada flag pin or sew a flag on our backpacks as we wander the world, we don’t normally wear a Canada tshirt under a Canada hoodie with a Canada scarf around our necks and Canada mittens while cheering “Go Canada Go!” But we did, and we liked it. We really liked it!
Now that I’m all rested up and my voice has recovered from the two weeks of cheering, I’m going to buckle down and get back to the freelancing attempts. Yes, famous last words, but I’m really going to try harder. As I mentioned before, I signed up for the first course in an Editing certificate, and I’m going to start devoting more time to getting things off the ground. Honest.

Building the Writing Habit

Julia — Sun, 17 Jan 2010 14:12:18 +0000

So it’s been a few weeks since I posted about how I was going to post twice a week here, and as you can see, that has gone really well. Since I know it takes a long time for a behaviour to become a habit (you have to repeat it 21 times before you stop thinking about it — I read this somewhere once, I think it was even an official thing like a medical study or something), I was hoping the posting twice a week would do it since it was a small thing.

Fat chance.

BUT, I have been sticking to my two other resolutions, which were to start some light exercising twice a week (trying to work myself up to some bigger things) and also checking out the freelancing job boards once a week. I’m pleased with that, as I want to be sure to keep my fingers on the freelancing pulse as it were, and also get off my duff to make sure I don’t turn into a complete couch potato.

So while I haven’t actually spent much time writing per se, I’ve at least started to ease back into the writing pool by checking the job boards. Next up I’m hoping to start applying to a few jobs, but I figure I should increase my posting frequency here to make sure my writing’s up to snuff. I’ve been doing a lot more actual writing at the day job at Acme Co., which is nice, and also getting my hands dirty with some fun things like SharePoint 2007, which have helped with my day job satisfaction. That’s always good. But my ultimate goal is to work freelance from home so my daily commute is only 5 minutes (and that’s with a pit stop in the kitchen for a coffee). Small steps, one at a time.

Starting off the New Year Right

Julia — Sun, 03 Jan 2010 14:06:53 +0000

Yes, it’s a new year, and time to get things started off right. I’ve talked and tweeted about getting off my duff and getting back to my writing, so I’ve decided that I should start it off now. I’m taking advantage of the new year and am going to start getting back into the swing of things. Normally I don’t make resolutions as I find them a tad hard to stick to, but I figure I’ll start off small so that I’ll actually manage to do it. So, I have resolved to

post twice a week.

That’s it for now, just post here twice a week. As most writing “coaches” will tell you, it’s important to get back into the habit of writing, so that’s what I’m going to do. Create the habit and get back to it. Hopefully each month I’ll be able to add something else to this, like post three times a week, read the freelance writing job boards once a week, then twice a week, and so on. I’m hoping that I’ll be able to snowball this whole thing and get moving on it! The full time job has been pretty good lately, so I haven’t been as keen on getting the freelancing work started, but after being off for the last week and a half for the holidays, I was reminded of how much I enjoy being at home and doing things at my own pace.

So here I am, making the commitment to you and the universe, and myself (most importantly), that I will write.

That is all. (for now)

Learning New Software at Work

Julia — Sun, 16 Aug 2009 14:48:45 +0000

This week I decided it was time to start learning some new software, and started to shadow my team’s SharePoint guru. I’ve used SharePoint a little bit in the past, however we’re currently upgrading to the latest version (MOSS 2007), and so I thought it was a good time to get re-introduced.

SharePoint is an interesting piece of software that allows for a lot of collaboration between colleagues, teams, and companies. I’m curious to see what we can come up with, seeing as how our previous usage of the software was pretty abysmal. This time around the Implementation team is taking the time to enable features and functionality as we decide we need it, and then is taking the time to come up with some standards on SharePoint’s usage. I’m excited to see what will happen with our SharePoint strategy, as I see great things for both the company and my team specifically.

So far I’m just shadowing my colleague, watching him as he works through his day, creating wonderful pages for other teams to use. I’d like to learn how he’s able to do all the things he is, that way there will be two of us on the team that can offer this as a consulting service to the rest of the department. This ensures our longevity at the company, because we’ll be able to offer more than just writing, more than just user guides. We’re actually thinking about this more like freelancers do, trying to increase our service offering so that people will contact us for more than just writing. I’m excited to see where we can take the team in the next while, and SharePoint is just the beginning!

I’ve Been an Absent Writer!

Julia — Fri, 24 Jul 2009 23:48:43 +0000

Good day everyone! My humblest apologies for my rather sporadic posting as of the last few months. I’ve been meaning to get back to y ‘all and say “hey!”, but just haven’t gotten around to it. I started the new job in April, and have been getting back into the swing of working full time again, and then just trying to figure out the rhythms of the new job. My plan was always to get back to the freelancing, but just doing it part time, on the side. Tonight I got an email from a fellow freelance writer that spurred me to action. She wanted to know if I was still alive, and what was going on with me. So here I am.

My plan for the next several months is this:

Get back on Twitter.
Get back to posting here regularly.
Make time to write, both freelance and my novel. (more on that in another post).

There, that’s it. Simple, no? Let’s see how I do.