Personal Update
Dec. 24th, 2020 07:34 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
yonkyuGood evening my friends,
It's been quite a rollercoaster of a year. I have to say that my emotions were all over the place and have yet to settle. Not sure how others feel about the pandemic and moving forward in uncharted waters. I was fortunate to have made my trip to Vegas for Vegas Con with my dear frienddeanshot1 and neither one of us will forget this trip anytime soon or the rest of our lives. Once I returned home, I worked the rest of the week and everything was in lockdown. At first, it seemed like a mini-vacation, but then it changed into months of a new way of living.
At work, we started to zoom meetings with the children, and my class age ranged from 2 years old to 33 months old (2.9 years). It was quite the experience to be using zoom and working from home. Being an early childhood educator, I never thought I would ever work from home, while in a pandemic, and yet that's what I did for almost 4 months. After the first two weeks of zooming with the children, it became a habit and I new routine was in place. A routine that I missed because I had a set routine with the children. It was quite the challenge of trying to work in a new routine with everyone being home. I live with my aging parents and there was a time to get used to the new routine and schedule of everyone being home. The children loved the zoom calls and they felt comfortable enough to run the show while we guided them to how the meetings were run. It was a great learning experience for all and was grateful I had a job during this time where many people lost their job and have yet to find anything new. We finally went back in July, and it was crazy setting up the room and keeping around apart, and having multiple baskets of toys for the children. Cleaning increased and toys were sanitized often. The same went with the doors, phones, iPad, toilets, and sinks. But I have to say after 6 months of being back to work, it's like I never left in March. The routine was easy to jump right into and get back into the swing of things. Working with the kids has been great and being with my co-teachers again has been wonderful to reconnect with everyone. Its been the staffing situation that can be a challenge and new rules we have to follow. Sometimes I've worked an 11 hour day multiple times in a week. We have a special holiday celebration week and passing out gifts has raised morale and the spirit of being together. I'm grateful for my job and being able to work. I pray for those who are looking for work to find it and can get back into the swing of things again.
As some of you know, I take karate and I've been training for 22 years now, we had to train via zoom too. I was even competing in karate tournaments as well and they were canceled for the year. I continued my training via zoom and only go into the dojo on Fridays and Saturdays to train. Keeping these days makes life easier at the moment. As for tournaments, they turned into virtual tournaments. I would have to record myself performing my katas and sending the videos off to the judges. I competed in the local circuit and even competed on a worldwide circuit too. I have seen so much progress in my performances and the skills I have to achieve my goals. Like everything, it takes time to achieve, and it's this lesson that's helped me with the next topic of this post: writing. For a long time, I thought I could never improve or make a difference. Competing in these virtual tournaments, even the world wide tournament, I received feedback that blew my mind. The feedback opened my eyes to the skills and abilities I do have and can use to improve over time. In the world's tournament, I came in 4th place in both division I competed in out of 7 competitors and then 20 competitors. This was mind-blowing to me. I've worked so hard to push myself in training and put just a little more effort, for myself, and not for others. I've taken their feedback and tried my best to apply it. I'm excited about my journey. I will keep you posted!!
Now comes to writing, at the beginning of lockdown, I wrote at least 5 to 6 pieces of work. I was happy for completing these rough drafts and was excited to send them out for feedback, but something held me back. I wanted to attempt part of the editing process myself and realized I never wanted to look at what I wrote. The ugly self-doubt crawled in and I was afraid that I would get stuck in this stage of the process and never get out of it. And I went to my cheerleaders and support team who let me complain and vent about how I was feeling and not sure how to move forward. Then I realized, they are there to help support me when I need them to and will do their best to help me move forward. I had to look deep inside myself and admit that my inner voice critic needed to be silenced to a mere whisper. I needed to do it for myself and not others. Not even for my support group of talented women who love writing!!! I want to write stories that mean something to me and hope they will mean something to others. But, I realized writing is not fully for my audience but myself. I want to write stories that I would read day in and out, no matter what. And to do that, I have to start where I am in my progress of writing. My characters in my fandoms: Supernatural, Royal Pains, Splatoon, and Original works may be out of character, but I hope to evolve and make them a version I'm happy with. I know many people out there don't like out of character characters in specific fandoms but everyone's version of fandom characters will never be like the show. I don't expect mine to be that's for sure. Though, I'm working on a version that suits me as the writer for said characters. I don't expect to be the best writer out there but I hope to achieve my goal and be comfortable and happy with where my writing has gone and will go in the future. I've had so much pressure from myself by trying to make my support group happy and proud that I've taken their feedback and put it to use in my stories. I've realized that doesn't help either. I plan on writing for myself and hope others will find them and enjoy them too. I'm happy with my progress so far and have done well. There is always room for improvements and I plan to do so in my future works. But please, let me explore these characters that fit who I am. They may not be the version others like but I hope that my version will grow and evolve from how they are now to what they could be in the future. And the best thing is, I do believe in myself, but I need a little more time to go through the editing process. I'm hoping the new year will feature some of those pieces I wrote months ago!!!! For the first time in a while, I'm excited to write and share something new!!!
I hope everyone is doing well and I wish 2021 is better for all!!!! Miss you all! It's been nice to reconnect with some old friends through email!!!
It's been quite a rollercoaster of a year. I have to say that my emotions were all over the place and have yet to settle. Not sure how others feel about the pandemic and moving forward in uncharted waters. I was fortunate to have made my trip to Vegas for Vegas Con with my dear friend
deanshot1 and neither one of us will forget this trip anytime soon or the rest of our lives. Once I returned home, I worked the rest of the week and everything was in lockdown. At first, it seemed like a mini-vacation, but then it changed into months of a new way of living. At work, we started to zoom meetings with the children, and my class age ranged from 2 years old to 33 months old (2.9 years). It was quite the experience to be using zoom and working from home. Being an early childhood educator, I never thought I would ever work from home, while in a pandemic, and yet that's what I did for almost 4 months. After the first two weeks of zooming with the children, it became a habit and I new routine was in place. A routine that I missed because I had a set routine with the children. It was quite the challenge of trying to work in a new routine with everyone being home. I live with my aging parents and there was a time to get used to the new routine and schedule of everyone being home. The children loved the zoom calls and they felt comfortable enough to run the show while we guided them to how the meetings were run. It was a great learning experience for all and was grateful I had a job during this time where many people lost their job and have yet to find anything new. We finally went back in July, and it was crazy setting up the room and keeping around apart, and having multiple baskets of toys for the children. Cleaning increased and toys were sanitized often. The same went with the doors, phones, iPad, toilets, and sinks. But I have to say after 6 months of being back to work, it's like I never left in March. The routine was easy to jump right into and get back into the swing of things. Working with the kids has been great and being with my co-teachers again has been wonderful to reconnect with everyone. Its been the staffing situation that can be a challenge and new rules we have to follow. Sometimes I've worked an 11 hour day multiple times in a week. We have a special holiday celebration week and passing out gifts has raised morale and the spirit of being together. I'm grateful for my job and being able to work. I pray for those who are looking for work to find it and can get back into the swing of things again.
As some of you know, I take karate and I've been training for 22 years now, we had to train via zoom too. I was even competing in karate tournaments as well and they were canceled for the year. I continued my training via zoom and only go into the dojo on Fridays and Saturdays to train. Keeping these days makes life easier at the moment. As for tournaments, they turned into virtual tournaments. I would have to record myself performing my katas and sending the videos off to the judges. I competed in the local circuit and even competed on a worldwide circuit too. I have seen so much progress in my performances and the skills I have to achieve my goals. Like everything, it takes time to achieve, and it's this lesson that's helped me with the next topic of this post: writing. For a long time, I thought I could never improve or make a difference. Competing in these virtual tournaments, even the world wide tournament, I received feedback that blew my mind. The feedback opened my eyes to the skills and abilities I do have and can use to improve over time. In the world's tournament, I came in 4th place in both division I competed in out of 7 competitors and then 20 competitors. This was mind-blowing to me. I've worked so hard to push myself in training and put just a little more effort, for myself, and not for others. I've taken their feedback and tried my best to apply it. I'm excited about my journey. I will keep you posted!!
Now comes to writing, at the beginning of lockdown, I wrote at least 5 to 6 pieces of work. I was happy for completing these rough drafts and was excited to send them out for feedback, but something held me back. I wanted to attempt part of the editing process myself and realized I never wanted to look at what I wrote. The ugly self-doubt crawled in and I was afraid that I would get stuck in this stage of the process and never get out of it. And I went to my cheerleaders and support team who let me complain and vent about how I was feeling and not sure how to move forward. Then I realized, they are there to help support me when I need them to and will do their best to help me move forward. I had to look deep inside myself and admit that my inner voice critic needed to be silenced to a mere whisper. I needed to do it for myself and not others. Not even for my support group of talented women who love writing!!! I want to write stories that mean something to me and hope they will mean something to others. But, I realized writing is not fully for my audience but myself. I want to write stories that I would read day in and out, no matter what. And to do that, I have to start where I am in my progress of writing. My characters in my fandoms: Supernatural, Royal Pains, Splatoon, and Original works may be out of character, but I hope to evolve and make them a version I'm happy with. I know many people out there don't like out of character characters in specific fandoms but everyone's version of fandom characters will never be like the show. I don't expect mine to be that's for sure. Though, I'm working on a version that suits me as the writer for said characters. I don't expect to be the best writer out there but I hope to achieve my goal and be comfortable and happy with where my writing has gone and will go in the future. I've had so much pressure from myself by trying to make my support group happy and proud that I've taken their feedback and put it to use in my stories. I've realized that doesn't help either. I plan on writing for myself and hope others will find them and enjoy them too. I'm happy with my progress so far and have done well. There is always room for improvements and I plan to do so in my future works. But please, let me explore these characters that fit who I am. They may not be the version others like but I hope that my version will grow and evolve from how they are now to what they could be in the future. And the best thing is, I do believe in myself, but I need a little more time to go through the editing process. I'm hoping the new year will feature some of those pieces I wrote months ago!!!! For the first time in a while, I'm excited to write and share something new!!!
I hope everyone is doing well and I wish 2021 is better for all!!!! Miss you all! It's been nice to reconnect with some old friends through email!!!