Decisions, decisions....

Spoilt for choice

I left rehab in late October last year, and I remember thinking ‘so what do I do now?’ I spent the first couple of weeks worrying about where my life was going, and what the hell to do next. Right now though, I have a few options and for some reason I feel – you guessed it – equally worried.

Jess made it clear I am welcome to stay on and do some work for Poached Creative, and Rokpool seem pretty keen too. On the mentoring side of things, I have now completed my level 1 course and I have the option of taking that further. And the other day I got something in the post asking if I wanted to be some kind of course recruiter. This seems to involve, in short, going around local rehab centres and roping the clients in to going on various courses. There’s also the small matter of Camden Calling.

Don’t upset the balance

I guess my worries come from having to make some tough decisions – and being nervous about making the wrong ones. I can honestly say that since rehab absolutely nothing major has gone wrong in my life. For that reason I am inexperienced when it comes to dealing with difficult situations, so the prospect of messing things up is a bit scary.

What’s the worst that could happen?

Life involves taking risks though, and making informed decisions. I should probably look at my situation as an exhilarating one, laden with amazing opportunities at every turn on my quest for self-actualisation. Does anyone really think like that though?! Either way, I really am grateful for such an array of choice, and I shall carefully consider my next move. I am well aware my situation is infinitely better than one where I had no choices at all, so I should look at my predicament as a positive problem.

That time already?

It’s nearing the end of the month, so the new Camden Calling newsletter will soon be with us. Or at least it should be, providing I can finish it by then. This is my first ever attempt at writing a newsletter, and I have to be really focused as the attention to detail is so important. Small things like dates, times, and places can easily be missed or written incorrectly; and a lot of people are counting on all of that being correct.

Jess gave us a lot of pointers on how to successfully write a web newsletter, how to edit one, and how to get the best out of one. I’m still not sure what kind of personality my newsletter will have, but all this information will definitely be useful as I try to meet my completion deadline. Jess has helped me figure out how to organise the newsletter - i.e. which sections should come before which others. Prioritising sections like this is so important, simply because people rarely read right to the end.

Valuable external assistance

I was grateful to guest speaker Louise for her input today. She talked about proofing, which is another phrase I have heard used many times, but never understood fully. We did a proofing exercise, which involved correcting an extract of text from the grammatically nightmarish Camden Calling website. I felt this was of great use and kept the learning experience interesting. I have a vague recollection of seeing some of the proofing corrective symbols before, but many are alien to me. Memorising the symbols is secondary to developing a corrective system all parties understand, however.

Measure of progress

We have passed the half-way point of the course now, and so it was time for a PDP progress check with Jess. Mine is going to plan, and we should be able to cover all the things we initially aimed to. The day the PDP was drafted seems a long time ago now! Not in terms of amount of time that has passed; rather the progress I have made and the knowledge I have acquired since then.

Talking of knowledge, I know the average attention span when on the internet is pretty low. So, with everything covered, I will say thanks for reading and goodbye until next week.