You Tube to my rescue!

On Friday night I discovered that my home television allows me to watch You Tube videos - I'm not sure if one of my tech savvy children added the television to our broadband internet or whether now that Sydney has gone 'fully digital' this is part of it, but either way I have a feeling I am going to spend a lot more 'television watching' time over at the You Tube videos than the television stations.

Friday night, and Saturday evening I learned new blogging skills: I downloaded a few social media buttons a number of weeks ago and finally with the help of one of the You Tube videos guided me as I added them to my Char Mesan Job Training blog. For someone 'old' I'm slowly catching up to being as tech savvy as they are - and my business blog is starting to look and feel more the way I imagined it would be!

MayYou Tube always be around to help save the day :-)

1 year Anniversary

Happy Anniversary, me!

I never imagined twelve months ago today when I started this blog that I would soon discover a new love in blogging, and that my blog would reach over 8000 page views and that I would have written 118 posts.

I am so glad that I finally took the step to create a blog, as blogging has taught me that I love writing more than just novels - I just simply love writing.

Did I achieve the goals that I set out for myself?

- Blogging - yes.
I blogged a lot more than I thought I would - I 'hoped' to write two or three posts per month.  I ended up writing just for the Char Mesan Writes blog 118 posts.  I also opened up a couple of other blogs and wrote articles and posts for those blogs; it makes it that my 'hope' was very conservative in estimate.

- Weight Loss - no!

I started the year off (like all good New Year's Resolutions) really well, but by late February, early March I was losing momentum.  I've since realised that every summer I naturally lose weight because I love eating fresh seasonal foods like cherries, raspberries, strawberries, peaches, plums and mango to snack on, and it can get too hot to cook so I enjoy salads and grilled or BBQ'd meat for dinners. With all that healthy, non-fatting foods, and the natural increase in drinking water to stay hydrated against our soaring temperatures, I tend to 'slim down' about a dress size without really trying.  The only time I don't lose that weight slowly is if I eat too much ice-cream to cool down.

But then winter comes back and the summer foods that I love so much disappear from the supermarket shelves, and the weight slowly creeps back on again.  As much as I would love to be slim again and at my ideal weight, I've worked out that I don't stick at fad diets or 'get fit' kicks.

So, this year's resolution was to just accept my size and try to eat healthily without resorting to diets that once I fail at only cause me to become fatter afterwards.

Although I set the goal for myself to walk four days per week, after a fall where I skinned and bruised both knees quite badly because my poor night eyesight caused me to not see a huge 'pothole' in a grassy gravel section I had to walk through, I ceased going for walks on my own, especially because it had taken me ages (after badly injuring my right arm at work two months earlier) to get back to my feet.

Though, you may be interested to know, that my non-goal setting or following son, moved out of home and made improvements to the foods he now cooked for himself, and he lost the ten kilos that he had wanted to lose not from following any diet or exercise program but from simply (finally) adding salad and vegetables to his diet - I know, I know, why did he fight me all the way for so long! 

- Change Employer - yes.

I applied for a lot of positions outside of the Employment Services industry which I was getting increasingly fed up with, (ultimately) without success.  Too many employers interviewed me and later said that I was too over-qualified for the job, even though I had removed a lot of my great skills from my resume so I wouldn't be dismissed for lesser roles when I applied for them. Unfortunately, although I was getting results in that I my applications were working and I was being invited to interviews, overall I was not successful in being offered the jobs because I didn't disguise my higher abilities during the interview and employers felt I would get bored with a role which involved me just coming to work, doing my job and then going home. Maybe they were right for the long term, but it was what I was craving for the short term.

After setting the goal and following a strong action plan and technically still not getting success, plus with my current employer continuing to place even greater demands on its staff that was simply impossible to achieve, I realised that I actually genuinely love helping people gain work; and that it is just the different focus on placing people into a job, any old job, whether the client wanted to do that type of work or not, that I didn't like about the employment services industry and the work I was doing, plus the constant demand to do more, achieve more and never being given any time to do any of it that was what was causing me to hate my job so much. 

So, one day, I just resigned.


My mum was sick with chemotherapy treatment and had needed me to act as a carer for a few weeks, and the employer expected me to put my work ahead of everything including my mum and told me that if I take the time off I would be expected to still place the same amount of clients into jobs when I got back, so, worried about Mum and also developing a few health issues myself, I resigned.


By this time, I had completely fallen in love with writing and blogging and desired being a full time writer; and after discussions with my children once Mum was over the last of her chemotherapy and had 'survived' her cancer, I decided to become self-employed again.

A number of years ago I worked for myself as a typist and resume writer, and now having even greater experience and those same abilities to type and write quality resumes for people, I figured I may as well return to working for myself so that I could once again focus on helping the client without the push to place and keep them into whatever work we managed to gain for them.

And, for the short amount of time I have been operating the business, I'm starting to get more and more work - which I am happy about.

This year, I am going to keep writing resumes for my clients (I love seeing the delight on their faces when I give them their new resume), and writing articles to help with their jobsearch (I love readers telling me that they are finding my articles and blog posts helpful).  I have a few 'ideas' up my sleeve, which I will be working on during my 'quiet' business periods.

So, Happy 1st Anniversary to me; hopefully this time next year I'll have even more positive results to share!

Message from the Traveller: I don't want to scare anyone, but...

So my daughter who is travelling overseas decided to scare me 'just a little bit' by letting me know that she had a fall and has probably broken her arm.  The possible breaking a bone wasn't the worrying bit, it was her messaging to say that she refused to go hospital in the ambulance.

I can't rant and rant my motherly concerns to Miss Independent, so I'm going to have let loose here: What!

Your fall was severe enough for people to call an ambulance?

The ambulance officers wanted to take you to hospital?

You refused? Why????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????

Goodness, chil--woman! If you think your arm is broken, why the *bleep* are you not getting your arm x-rayed and getting necessary treatment?

Are you able to wiggle your fingers, move your elbow?  Can you at least go and see a doctor about it?

You do have travel insurance, don't you?

Seriously... are you really having that great a time on your tour that you are willing to ignore/tolerate the pain so you don't miss a second of it?


And my children wonder why I'm going grey!

Gonna start updating

Over the coming weeks, I am going to upgrade and unify the look of my pages and blogs from each being different in style and appearance to establishing my 'business brand'. The first step I'm going to need to take is to create a banner that I will be happy with, instead of using the generic designs that come with Blogger.

Once I have a decent banner, I'll then begin making changes to each of my blogs. I need to complete this as soon as I can, because my (jobsearch training in particular) business is starting to gain momentum, and, with an increasing amount of my time now being directed towards earning income, keeping business records and completing small business management training, I want to upgrade my blogs' looks so I can continue writing articles and posts - especially for my Job Training and Reviewing blogs.

I will be a bit quiet on this my personal blog for a while, but rest assured that over the next three months I will still be 'writing, writing, writing,' and loving every minute of it!

My novel is on a temporary back-burner again, but I'm not upset by this; once my business is firmly established and generating enough income, I will hire a part time or casual staff member to act as my personal assistant and admin to free me up so I have personal free time again.

I'm feeling so excited about what is ahead for me in 2014.  I'm hoping it will be one of the best years I've ever had!

Allowing my mind to wander

Even though I get eczema, I have recently started washing up the dishes by hand again rather than using my dishwasher because I find it relaxing and it gives me time to let my mind wander. I've semi given up on novel writing at the moment because having started up my own business I need to spend more of my free time on building up my business.  I have the novel's storyline clear in my head, and have a master outline recorded electronically (yWriter is FANTASTIC!) so now I can put the project on hold for a while knowing I will be able to pick up where I left off when I do get the time in the future. I'm still 'keen' on the project, even after five years, but I have other priorities at the moment.

I still love writing (I am not abandoning this in the slightest) and this has proven itself to me over the past year where I have spent a great deal of my time novel writing and blogging.  I'm really loving blogging though, probably because you can write in small bursts and the post is done, whereas with novels you are only chipping away s s l o ow l l y at a larger project.  I'm thinking the smaller projects end up making me feel more successful for having achieved completion, so I am more encouraged to do another one, and another one to keep this positive feeling alive. So, I intend keeping my 'writing muscle' strong and healthy by continuing to write blog posts for this and my other blogs.

Anyway, allowing my mind to wander has given me opportunity to come up with ideas for blog posts and given me ideas for my business; ideas that just don't come to me when I busily doing other things.