Sometimes I re-watch this when I can’t quite remember the direction I was going:
Swiggtalk chats with Betsy Agar about following your passions, advice on choosing to do what you love, and the many career options available to teen girls. More at http://www.swiggtalk.com
Atavist facilitates the process from beginning to end, in any digital format:
Likened to Etsy by the NY Times, Atavist is a platform for media craftsmen. It’s a platform that integrates all media formats and adapts to emerging devices, and not just for “serious” writers, this app may very well do for writing what the printing press did for reading and the Internet did for knowing.
I can here the click-click-clicking of your thoughts already!
If destiny is predetermined, then perhaps I have always been a writer, with skills and passion lying in wait, building on personal experiences that would define that destiny. Although, it is equally possible that I might never have been a writer. Last night, I was reminded that there are a few chance occasions that have accidentally led me to this place.
Photo Credit: My 4-year-old son
The first was an event of outrage, which I was compelled to place squarely on the shoulders of a Letter-to-the-Editor. As I say in my bio, engineers are not expected to be able to write, and I are an engineer, as the saying goes. I never thought about writing, despite my way with words being my most valued asset while I was practising.
That letter started a habit and that habit grew into writing opinion pieces for the Hamilton Spectator. Most of these are now in archives, but one still lingers to remind me of my roots: The Balancing Acts of Motherhood.
The second was an event of irony. I tried to negotiate my way out of a Computer Science course, which is required for my program of study (CultureNet at Capilano University), but the Registrar refused so I had to “suffer” through. The irony: That course provided me with a set of invaluable skills in a number of unexpected ways. It was also the impetus for this blog.
Way back in May of 2011, when I posted my introductory “Hello world!” as is the tradition in the World Wide Web, I expected just to let the blog die along with the close of the course. I wrote about what I knew, namely parenthood, about what I was learning, mostly topics in sociology, and eventually about what I love, always concepts in social and environmental sustainability. It would seem that my blog didn’t die, and it won’t anytime soon.
The third was an event of luck, when I answered a call for volunteers to help with the We Canada campaign.
A year after relocating to Metro Vancouver, I was coming down from that initial high of moving to a new city (and frankly not looking forward to returning to classes in September). At the time, I was still juggling “littles” and school was my only prospect “outside of the home.”
When the ad for writers to craft online content for a national campaign appeared, a door opened, angels sang, my heart stopped, I saw a light at the end of the tunnel, in short, every promising cliché nodded smugly and said: See? Told you.
The We Canada Team, Partners, Sponsors, and Champions, are a stunning aggregation of Canada’s most passionate, dedicated, and focussed citizens and experts. They are the reason I continued to write, and I am forever indebted to them all for the opportunity and motivation.
I have only been calling myself a writer in recent months. The persona still fits more like a cardigan than a second skin and it has a long way to go before I’ll claim it with confidence, but like any labour of love, it is 110% worth the sacrifice.