Advice worth taking.
What advice would you give?
Starting a new job is like…
…becoming a Mother for the first time.
There’s the anticipation of something new. The transition phase you move through as you leave one life behind and approach the next. The sense you have of being competent in what it is you do and a quiet assuredness that this next stage will be OK, you’ll be up for it.
Then it happens. The birth of the new. There’s the intake of breath when you walk through the door and appreciate the expectation, the responsibility that lies with you. The realisation that you really don’t know the rules, that you have so much to learn. You need to understand the personality, appreciate that it’s developed and you need to work with it, not fight against it.
You leap in, because it demands that you do. Sometimes there is calm, but often there is chaos as you stumble from one new experience to the next. You are constantly learning, and it engulfs you. You feel out of your depth and you seek reassurance – you are grateful when others reach out and offer support, a kind word, an encouraging smile.
As the weeks go by, the new becomes more familiar. There are ups and downs, moments where confidence reigns and moments where it plummets, but gradually, you begin to find a routine. You begin to move in step with the new.
You’ve reached an understanding, a reciprocal relationship. You’re in this together.
School’s out Friday
Otherwise Engaged from Jack Sidey on Vimeo.
You know, if this didn’t make me laugh so much I’m pretty sure I’d be crying instead.
What’s happened to moments? What’s happened to shared experiences between two people that necessitate and deserve alone time? Why do we feel a need to share beyond the moment?
I don’t have the answer, but I do know that I participate in this new era of sharing beyond the moment. I did it tonight, although not in the context of a moment like a marriage proposal. My husband and I were at a trivia night, and I was engaged in a dialogue via text message with a new colleague who is making my life at a new school joyous. We were sharing repartee via text about my husband’s purchase of a sleeping bag that weighed enough to warrant the hiring of a sherpa when my son ventures on a school trip to Central Australia.
And you know what, even though it took me away from the people I was sitting with, it was a shared experience with someone who is making a difference in my life, someone I truly value right now when life is tough negotiating a new landscape. And that means something. So, even though we exit real life spaces for brief moments to engage in online spaces with others, sometimes we do it because the connections there matter deeply.
Is that enough of a answer to the questions posed above?
Maybe. It worked for me tonight.
Have a great weekend. Make a connection with someone. Face to face or otherwise, just make a connection. 🙂
Graphic notes from Rachel Dight – lucky me!
Earlier this year I presented at the AIS ICT Leadership Conference in Canberra. My session was about Deploying Google Apps, and I was thrilled when I saw Rachel Dight walk in the room with a whiteboard!
Rachel was creating visual representations of speaker’s talks and I’d been impressed with the work she had done of Jane Hunter’s Keynote (see a pic of Jane and I and her board at the bottom of this post). I love seeing how great graphic artists interpret a speaker’s words and to have a visual artifact of what I said meant a lot to me. I was completely immersed in delivering the presentation and wasn’t concentrating on what Rachel was doing during the session, so I was really surprised to look at it at the end and see her interpretation. It’s a fabulous representation of what I was saying and I think it’s easy for someone who wasn’t in the room to gain comprehension of my words.
I have no idea how an artist like Rachel does this. She needs to listen intently to subject matter that is not within the realm of her normal life and come up with creative ways of representing these ideas. It’s no mean feat. It’s certainly a gift I don’t possess!
If you’re looking for a great graphic artist to attend your conference and create lasting artifacts of a presenter’s words, then take a look at Rachel’s website. There’s an array of examples from presentations she has recorded as graphic notes- I’m sure you will agree that she is one very talented lady.
Lucacept - intercepting the Web 