Category: Work

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Flattened.

Squashed. Like a bug that’s been steamrolled. That’s how I’m feeling after this week. I mean, I knew it was going to be a biggie, going into it, but didn’t really expect to be feeling like this at its conclusion…

Monday was work day. Head down, bum up, get-a-heap-of-things-done day, because the rest of the week would be drive-around-like-crazy day. It didn’t help that I had negative-gig left in my data quota due to a mix-up with Telstra this time last month. But, I had to get it done, so done it got.

Tuesday morning I spent at St Paul’s, getting stuff done on campus – stuff which would have been nigh-on impossible to do remotely, then it was pick-up-the-kids-from-care-and-drive-up-to-Minyama for my last (sob) Speech Therapy session with Suzanne at Sunshine Coast Speech Therapists. Lovely lady. Truly lovely. And even though that nodule on my right vocal cord isn’t gone yet, at least now I have some techniques to speak properly without exacerbating it – and hopefully it will go over time. Then I taught that evening.

Wednesday morning was meant to be playgroup-before-podiatirist, but Miss 4 and Mr 2 weren’t going to cope too well with that, so we ended up just visiting our neighbour in the morning, then heading out to collect Miss 7 early form school and driving down to Brisbane for her Podiatry appointment, then driving back to Caboolture for her swimming lesson, before driving to Morayfield for a *fun* time grocery shopping, then finally back up the Coast to home.

Thursday was diagnosis day. Miss 4 got dropped off at my mum’s at Currimundi while Mr 2 came to Nambour (Selangor Hospital) with me. Autism diagnosis confirmed, he then spent the afternoon back at my mum’s villa while I visited Tullawong Primary College, Medicare, the Family Assisstance Office, CentreLink, and finally Telstra (Yay! Got the internet working on my iPhone again!) before collecting the kids and heading home exhausted…

And Friday, I relief taught a very full-on Prep class. And Miss 4 managed to lose one sandal at care. One half of her favourite (and only!) pair of sandals. And Hubby fell victim to an unfortunate accident – our HUGE German Shepherd pup tripped him up badly in their morning run – which not only meant that a) he spent the majority of the day visiting doctors (X-ray of right wrist revealed just tissue damage thank God!) and dentists (teeth shaken about and chipped, but little other damage) and b) being laughed at because he’s limping and looks a sight – and his dog did it to him, but also that he’s completely out of action when it comes to helping with the kids because they don’t understand that they can’t jump on him anymore – plus he has zero use of his right hand / wrist anyway.

And Saturday morning was family-time. Half-great; half-tragic. I guess it’s no wonder that I spent most of Saturday afternoon yawning, if not dozing / less-than-conscious. Which is why I’m blogging now, at 3.07am Sunday morning. Nuff said?!

Phew! And it looks as though this coming week will be almost as full on…!!!

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Bloxham Marketing family anecdotes momentous events More about me Random thoughts Technology

*Thursday*

I did it again: wrote the post, scheduled it to post at a ‘daylight’ hour, rather than at the just-prior-to-midnight-ish of actual writing, then realised days later that it was set to ‘Private”. LOL Whoops!

So anyway… this (below) was my Thursday:

* * * * *

My day today was non-stop. But perhaps it could be easily remembered through these three snippets.

1. My 4.11am entry on my church’s wiki – a few of the ladies in the church are reading through a chapter of the Bible each day, and recording our thoughts / whatever we’re going through, and are supporting each other / keeping each other accountable. Today’s post was on Galations Chapter 1. I wrote:

A new month – a new beginning…
I’ve been absent recently, both virtually and in head-space. But I’m now longer in denial that Mr 2 lies somewhere on the autistic spectrum, and that’s been the biggie over these last few weeks; coming to terms with this fact. He’s booked into a paediatrician next week on the STRONG advice of our local GP, so I guess we’ll have to take it one step at a time. And work’s been full on (yesterday was particularly crazy) so when I saw that today was the 1st of March, I thought it opportune to start again here, in Galatians 1.
What I love about this chapter today is verse 15. Paul was ‘set apart at birth’. Me too. And my son. Set apart to do His work, is the places and ways He has chosen for me, and for my son, to be in and to do. So who am I to argue?
I pray that today I might see God’s ways – and walk in them.
Have a lovely day, ladies.

2. This second snippet is taken from the end of my day – a fb update at 10.49pm:

Mr 2 was stuck on a particular level playing Wall-E on the PS2 today. I tried helping him – and then Miss 4 entered the room. “I can help, Mummy!” “Sure, sweetheart…” I answered, handing over the control. And she did – about a gajillion times faster than I ever could.
How’s that for an eye-opener!

3. And finally, a snippet of IRL, that occurred in between the beginning and end of my day (well, naturally! D’Oh!!!)…

I signed another client for Bloxham Marketing. Woohoo!!!

* * * * *

So. It’s now Sunday morning, 5.46 am, three days later. And life just has NOT slowed down enough, since, for me to write again – let alone realise that I’d set this to private. LOL Whoops!

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My online identity – part two of two

Yesterday I posted (well, re-posted, actually!) an entry from my first-ever (and now inactive) blog. It outlined three questions that I return to again and again, when considering my online identity.

1. What do my images say about me?

2. What am I saying about me? and

3. What am I not saying about me?

Well, that was a little over 18 months ago. So what has changed? How do I now view ‘success’ in creating and maintaining my online identity?

Source: Uploaded by user via Megan on Pinterest

18 months ago, I was just starting out with online tools. Sure, GoodOldTalk.com had been up and running for a little over a year, and I had an inactive twitter account, and I had been on Facebook for a while, but that was about it. No flickr, no YouTube, and so on – and I didn’t even know that tools such as TweetDeck, HootSuite existed – let alone EverNote, Instagram, DropBox, StumbleUpon, Tumblr, etc etc etc.

Now however, I’ve been self-employed for a year. I’ve been running my own Marketing business, and not only have I seen the need to be in social media for Bloxham Marketing, but creating and maintaining social media accounts for my clients is an integral part of my business. Which has meant that I’m a lot more ‘out there’ than I ever have been.

This blog has also played a major part in the evolution of my opinion regarding my online identity. I started it Christmas 2010, using @fionawb‘s #blog12daysChristmas as an impetus. My PLN, formed for the most part by Librarians on twitter, was integral in maintaining this blog throughout its development, to what it is today. Through the relationships I now have with online friends, I have come to see that it’s probably okay to relax a little from that hard-liner stance I had, 18 months ago.

1. What do my images say about me? That’s been a toughy. I like to add an image to each of my blog entries, however when I want to write about my kids, and I don’t want to upload their images to the net, that’s a little problematic. So a few weeks back now, I dedicated a post to each, and included their photo (albeit, not a particularly identifiable one!) Plus, in my recent exploration of Pinterest, and its ability to easily embed (and attribute, of sorts!) into WordPress, that’s made my life a little easier. Now I feel as though I can show a little of who I am / what I like through the images I display – even though these images don’t necessarily have me in the frame or behind the camera.

2. What do I say about myself? Again, I’ve probably been more vulnerable than I had ever thought I would be. From entries about my gambling addiction (coming up to 20 years not being at a BlackJack table – as much as I still think about it more regularly than I’d like!) to my miscarriage, from my employment problems to my time in a cult, I’ve exposed quite a lot about myself… but then again, “my friends IRL know this stuff about me, and I’m comfortable sharing with them, so why not others?” is how I see it. Obviously, I keep my personal stuff on this blog, and my Bloxham Marketing blog is all about the work side of my life, however when I think of my online identity, I’m trying to reflect who I am as a person. As much as I’d like to cover up the yuk stuff, and pretend to be something I’m not, I have a feeling that I wouldn’t be able to keep it up for too long, and then you, my dear readers, would see right through it – and then, where would I be?!

3. What do I NOT say about me? Again, this has changed, in the light of my being far more open online than I had expected I would be. I’m still wary of PII, however as a self-employed business owner, I need to be contactable by potential clients, so my contact details are accessible in what I feel are the appropriate places. And as for embarrassing myself with inappropriate photos / videos / stories? Yup – pretty much all of them are in the “not sayin’!! basket”!

So – this is me. What do you think? Agree? Or disagree? I’d love to hear your thoughts…

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Bloxham Marketing momentous events More about me Random thoughts teaching Technology Work

Toys for toys?

Today was Day 2 of LEQ’s Mini-conference, exploring iPads in education, on the Sunshine Coast. Again, another very cool day of exploring what iPads can do; how Apps, App chains, and even the tool itself, can be leveraged for better outcomes for our kids. Very very very cool stuff.

Amongst the myriad of sessions and workshops were two standouts for me. Firstly, the very tactile ‘app-cesseries’ – extra bits and pieces that accessorise the iPad (or iPhone, iPod, etc) to give it added functionality. My favourite – in the photo – would have to be the mini-Mater (from Disney’s Cars movie) that you could move on the iPad to explore the world of the movie.

 

And the other standout would have to be my extreme surprise at one of Greg O’Connor’s slides. Still can’t believe it, but there was a screenshot of hmmm… up there. Yes, you read right – he had my last night’s blog entry “The Good Stuff” up there on the screen, and was talking about this ‘cool blog he had found last night’. Absolutely INCREDIBLE!!! I was just so surprised, so grateful, so humbled! (If you ever read this, Greg – thank you SO much!) Absolutely stunned to think that everyone at this conference had, in a way, “visited” my blog. How COOL!!!

So yes, these were my highlights of the day. And if, by any chance, any of my readers also happened to attend the LEQ conference, please feel free to add below what your highlights were. And if you weren’t – then I’d love to hear what you think of the Mater truck!

(Oh, and I’ll be writing a blog post on the other great Apps / links, on the other page – “The Good Stuff”. Hope they’re helpful!)

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Tweeting a conference

Today I attended my first conference in a number of years. In fact, I have a feeling that the last one I attended was the Middle Years Schooling Association (MYSA) conference at Jupiters Casino, back in 2007. I was (just) pregnant with my middle child, who is now 4. Wow! That really *was* some time ago!

A lot has changed as conferences go. I read somewhere a couple of years back that “conferences can be awkward – but never for a twitterer”… and I realized the truth of this today.

I shook hand with people that I had interacted with online, but had never met face to face. I laughed as people recognized me from my twitter photo, or my handle (let’s face it, “Ceridwyn” is rather a unique kind of name!) and I felt as though I was more comfortable in a strange situation than I had been at such events in the past.

Then it came session time, and workshop time, and I was finally able to engage in tweeting the conference happenings to my followers… again, something I had never before done, as this was my first conference since I joined twitter. (Come to think of it, twitter didn’t even exist during my last conference! That’s pretty bad, hey, that it’s been so long ‘between drinks’!)

So back to my story, I tweeted away madly and probably bored my followers stupid with my #ipadexplore tweets. I wondered later at the whole ettiquete thing with regard to tweeting a conference. How much is too much? When does it become spam? Or if you don’t tweet enough, is that indicative that the conference is a bit of a dud one? Questions for which I don’t have any answers. But I guess I’ll work it out… especially if I don’t have any followers left after the conference winds up tomorrow!!!

Anyway, long story short, today was a brilliant day. And I’m looking forward to Day 2, tomorrow. And if you’d like a blow-by-blow description, join me following #ipadexplore, or follow me @KRidwyn – I’ll try to tweet as long as the dodgy WIFI holds out!

Til then, dear readers!

20120216-214026.jpg

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Excited!

I love the anticipation of a journey!

Source: bing.com via Heidi on Pinterest

Not knowing where it will lead, or where it will take you in the process… as an optimist, the thought of where I could end up always makes me smile with the possibilities!

Tomorrow and Friday I’ll be at my first Lutheran Education Queensland (LEQ) conference. Possibly my first of many! (At the next one, on the 28th of February, I’m actually the presenter! It’s called ‘Harnessing the Power of Digital Marketing’, and I’m the ‘Professional Digital Marketing consultant’ that they’ve got addressing the LEQ Principals and Business Managers. Cool or what?!!)

So I feel as though I’m taking my first steps into a journey I’m very much looking forward to taking.

Wish me luck, dear readers!

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A new ‘toy’

This coming Thursday and Friday, I will be attending a conference on iPad use in education, as the guest of Derek Bartels, Head of ICT at Lutheran Euducation, Queensland. Majorly cool stuff.
Unfortunately though, although for the past year I have been the proud owner of a MacBook Pro and an iPod Touch (last year’s “Back to Uni deal”) and for the last two months, the extremely proud owner of an iPhone 4S (the unfortunate loss of my LG Xenon meant that I needed a replacement, and what else was I meant to get – seriously??!) I had not extended my I-collection to include an iPad.

Owly Images

A difficult situation could therefore have arisen… but… I’ve managed to avoid it. I’m currently blogging from a $580 credit purchase. And loving it! LOL!!! (I’d say that maybe this is fairly appropriate for Valentine’s Day, but that may just give the wrong idea to my Hubby…!)

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On learning patience

I am not a patient person.

Source: google.com via Camille on Pinterest

Actually, I would consider myself a very impatient person. I dislike waiting. I dislike explaining myself over and over. I dislike being in a situation where I perceive my time to be ‘being wasted’.

I see this as a significant personality flaw, and try to be conscious of when I am being abrupt with others. But some days try me more than others.

On Tuesday of this week, I taught Prep. I repeated this yesterday. The same class – which made it easier as I knew some of their names. The kids, as a whole, were lovely children, and I did find the days enjoyable – although exhausting.

But what I found difficult to comprehend was the extremely poor level of “academic” knowledge of some of these children. Several of them, at 5 or even 6 years old, could not even identify their letters, and couldn’t answer what sound they made. Some would answer “nnnn” for the letter ‘P’ or would pronounce “S” with a ‘d’. And they seemed completely confused by the whole concept of letters, sounds, and words.

I was flabbergasted. As a mum of three young ones myself, and (I admit with major embarrassment) someone who only taught her eldest capital letters prior to her own entry to Prep 2 years ago, I realise now the importance of equipping your child – and doing it properly. Miss 7 had to “relearn” each letter, and that’s something I’m determined to rectify with my younger two cherubs. But as for these Prep children this week – it was as if the whole alphabet was a foreign concept! And that brings me back to the idea of patience.

I’m glad I’m a ‘High School’ teacher. I doubt I’d have the patience to teach younger children all day every day. But then again, it’s the constancy of the activity that has the most effect. It’s the pressure on the coal that turns it into a diamond; the regularity of a water drip that will form a trickle, then a stream, then the mighty waterfall.

Perhaps it’s not that I *need* to practice patience to be a better person, it’s that the situations I find myself in, where I must demonstrate patience, will form in me the traits that I desire.

Or perhaps I should not wish “patience” for myself – as there’s only one way that I will learn it!

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Exhaustion plus.

Source: flickr.com via Jessica on Pinterest

Ever had one of those weekends when you finally get there and just ‘stop’?! Where your week has been just SOOOOOO busy that you haven’t had time to just sit? And you haven’t really noticed if you’ve eaten, or slept? Well, that’s been my week this week.

Starting last Saturday, I woke up sick. As in, the non-stop dry cough kind. Sunday, this became a back-ache so bad I could hardly move, and spent the day flat on my back. This is extremely unusual for me, a person who is often told that she ‘never stops’. I was actually really quite worried, because I knew how huge the coming week was, and I just didn’t know how I’d survive it all if I couldn’t even walk! But God is good, and I was able to stand by Sunday night, and walk again by Monday morning. Thankfully! But the upshot of a day in bed was that I read ‘People of Heaven’ by Beverly Harper, which was rather reminiscent of Bryce Courtenay’s writings about Peekay and Tandia. An interesting story, but I’m not sure whether the author should have included so much history ‘tacked on’ in places, without being directly relevant to the plot. Nevertheless, a good way to spend a day in which you can hardly move.

Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday were a blur of work, podiatry appointments, childcare, swimming lessons, driving, and non-stop rain. On Wednesday afternoon, I pulled Miss 7 out of school early, planning to buy school shoes at Athlete’s Foot, Morayfield… only to discover that their store had closed, and the closest was at Caloundra. So the kids played with my iPhone camera while we waited in line at BUPA, to get some of the huge amounts of money back from the Podiatry appointment. And be yet more disappointed, because our Health Cover didn’t do much covering. And yet again, it was a day of poor health choices food-wise.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Thursday was Australia Day. A day of not ‘having’ to go anywhere. When asked that morning, I had told Hubby that I wanted to spend the day hanging pictures, now that I had finally bought myself a Wall Stud Finder. Instead, seeing as the rain had stopped, we took the kids to a crowded Kings Beach Pool, ate a fish-and-chips lunch, then took a lovely long drive. Mr 2 immediately fell asleep, and the girls played with home-made ‘helicopters’ made out of sandals and sunnies. Quite cute.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The rain returned that night, so on Friday morning I changed my plans and spent the day at home. It was splendiferous. Hubby and Miss 7 eventually made it to school, but not before being caught in the parking lot that was the Bruce Highway southbound, at Caboolture. And I caught up on work. Housework. Laundry. Dishes. Hanging those pictures. Filing. Blogging for Bloxham Marketing. Oh – and playing with iBooks Author, now that I’d upgraded to the Lion OS and lamented my touchpad now going backwards.

So. That was my week. Huge. And now I get to stop. Hooray!!!!!

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#blog5daysAustenese – Day Three

The dreaded parcel of educational books arrived yesterday morning, ending all my hopes for an uninterrupted day engaged in work. Time spent inspecting, naming, and covering was to be my unenviable and time-consuming morning duties. Little consolation lay in the fact that my book-covering efforts were being repeated the width and breadth of this great nation. Miss 6, the child for whom this book-covering process was centered around, was of some assistance when the decoration of same was called for, however her attention being ofttimes taken from her task by the variety of diverting activities of her younger siblings, her efforts proved to be rather a hindrance and an ineffectual aid.

Forced to remain indoors by the insistent rain, rather than take a turn about the garden, the children’s enthusiastic antics, when confined in the smallness of the house, were an added encumbrance. It is of no surprise, therefore, that my spirits were low and my thoughts were more maudlin than previously was my wont.

Indeed, my thoughts inevitably turned to the conundrum before me. The irony that lay in the circumstance being that, although I detest my annual chore that is the covering of my daughter’s school books, the chosen profession that I am currently studying for is that of Librarian. A profession, it can be reasonably assumed, owing to the large numbers of books a Librarian keeps custody over, which calls for the covering of a multitude of books, on a more regular basis than that of an annual chore.

Interesting, is it not? That one’s choice of profession often contains tasks for which we require payment, if we are to agree to endure said tasks with any degree of tolerance? It leads me to ponder what horrid tasks must my readers endure, and only because of the mostly-reasonable monetary compensation?

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Dear reader, if this is the first time you have visited, the above is the third post (of five) that attempts to recreate my day’s activities using the writing style of Jane Austen. There are currently four others also completing this challenge, and their efforts are published below:

@jobeaz, blogging at Macaronic

@Girlwithshoess, blogging at Justgirlwithshoes

@kalgrl, blogging at Feral Librarian Tales

@jzgarnett, blogging at Randomly Yours, Julia