balancing

Say yes less?

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My blog tagline is: Musing, enthusing, libraries, emerging technologies, balancing, being mum. This post fits the “musing” and “balancing” part more than the “emerging technologies and libraries” bit of it.

About a year ago, my sons became more independent and the last of my parents’ estate was almost wound up. I suddenly had more time for me. So what did I do? I said “yes”.

yes yes yes uploaded to Flickr.com on May 15, 2007 by b.frahm

I read Danny Wallace ‘s book Yes Man, where he decided to say “yes” for a year just to see what happened. Without going to the same extremes, I tried starting my response to anything from “yes”. As I reported in August last year it lead to some great professional opportunities – ones I would have previously turned down because I had too little time/wasn’t organised enough/didn’t know enough/wasn’t good enough/was scared about.

So, where has this attitude got me now? Back from a week’s holiday with rather more on my plate than I should have, and less time for my kids than I want. I LOVE all the things I’ve said “yes” to, but won’t have enough “me” left if I keep up at this pace.

Much of what I’m doing is half work related/half professional development. I do most of it outside work hours, unpaid – although work is extremely supportive and has been very generous about allowing me some time. I think they hire me to do a job – not to tell everyone about it or develop other people’s staff – although maybe I should go back and read my last post about how libraries should blow their own trumpets.

So, here’s what’s in the “yes bunker” for the next couple of months:

  1. Presentation ready for Perth barcamp this Saturday called “What’s the Use of Second Life in Education?”. I’ve created a wiki with some embedded YouTube clips as I suspect Central TAFE blocks Second Life.
  2. Revisons and screenshots for a chapter that I’m co-authoring with two co-workers for a hybrid book/wiki about Library2.0 initiatives in academic libraries. (end of July)
  3. Rewrite presentation and slides about Second Life and Libraries for Libraries, Web2.0 and Other Internet Stuff, at the State Library of Victoria, July 23rd
  4. Doing something for WA Library Unconference planned for 3 August (NOT about Second Life)
  5. Create an enhanced podcast about Libraries and Second Life and learn how to use shoutcast and winamp, for a presentation to be streamed into Second Life as part of the University of Southern Queensland Faculty of Education Symposium Online Learning Using Virtual Worlds 16th August 2007
  6. Record a voice track for the movie clip of the Australian Libraries Building in Second Life so that it can be archived by the Pandora project at the National Library of Australia
  7. If they are accepted, write one paper for the VALA conference, and co-author another.
  8. Write a couple of “how to” posts for librariesinteract.info

What have I learned from my yes-filled adventures?

  • If I am well prepared and talk about something that interests me, I won’t fall flat on my face in terror during a presentation, and can even find it enjoyable.
  • Accepting all friend offers in social networks (except the utter kooks) can lead to some unexpectedly delightful gems.
  • Each hour of presentation takes at least 5 hours of preparation, and often much, much more.
  • It’s not cheating to recycle material if its fresh to the audience.
  • It’s fun to be part of other peoples’ learning.
  • “Yes” works best with a reason behind it. These are not good “yes” reasons – “No-one else can do it”, “Housework is more boring”, “My family won’t miss the time with me”, “It’s such a good opportunity”, “I can miss a bit of sleep/exercise/leisure time”.
  • If I’m really interested in a project, I will simply not sleep, just like in High School.
  • My time is precious and I should use “no” to guard it
  • Instead of approaching situations and thinking “I can’t do that because…”, I am approaching them with the attitude “I can do this – do I want to?”.

Lazy Easter patchwork post

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I’m taking Easter off from PCs ‘n’ stuff, I think. I don’t even have a suitably thoughtful post to keep at the top of the aggregator for the next week..so four disjointed, lazy woman bitties…..

1. A GROSS GENERALIZATION BASED ON A HUNCH WITH NO EVIDENCE TO BACK IT UP

The biblioblogosphere has seemed a bit quiet in the last couple of months. Is it because many of our libraries are implementing the projects we’ve been jumping up and down about in the last year?

Last year there was a lot of “Wow..this stuff is so COOOOL and I think we could use it in our libraries, maybe..why doesn’t my workplace GET IT”. Now it seems to be more often “I’ve been asked to talk to a roomful of my colleagues about this Cool Stuff”.

I think there’s a glimmer of “I’m setting up this really great project using the tools I was speculating about last year”..and even “one of my colleagues had this great idea how we could use this stuff”. Maybe I’m just projecting….

2. WHAT THEY SAID

Ever find yourself nodding and saying “aha, aha, yep, aha” all through a post?. Here’s three from the last 24 hours, where the only thing I have to say more on the topic is “what they said”.

3. AN IMAGE

hedgehog_001.jpg

 

Emerald Dumont talks to BrianA Corleone atop his treasure trove and hopes the dragon’s egg will hatch.

4. A CLIP

Via HeyJude

David Berlind, Managing Editor of ZDNet describes mashups in a way that makes me understand where APIs fit in the mashup food chain.
[kml_flashembed movie=”http://www.youtube.com/v/U9sENSA_sjI” width=”425″ height=”350″ wmode=”transparent” /]

Embedded video: What’s a mashup

Getting Ready For Canberra

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If our kids tell you that they’ve been fed nothing but baked beans for too many dinners in the next few months…I’m afraid they’ll be telling the truth.

Their parents are preoccupied with the serious business of Getting Ready For Canberra.

The Co-Pilot flies over at Easter because his Fremantle-based choir, Voicemale, will be performing at the National Folk Festival. Their set is around the theme “A New Agenda”. They are thinking of their all-male blokey group singing “Sisters are Doing it for Themselves“. As I write this, there is the “thump, thump,thump” of someone keeping time upstairs as he arranges “Brass in Pocket“. So lots of singing and practice and co-ordination for him until April.

ozflylib.jpg

Me..well, I’m busy making movies and taking snapshots in Second Life. I’ll be in Canberra for something else in early February. To calm my nerves and kill some time, I emailed Matthew Stuckings at the National Library to ask whether I could meet someone to chat about what we’ve been doing with the Australian Libraries Building in Second Life.

Well…they were interested, and now I’ll be giving a public talk about Second Life as part of their “Digital Culture” series, on Wednesday February 14th 12:30pm – 1:30pm in the Library Theatre.

If it was on any other topic, I’d be really daunted. I was daunted..but I decided to do it partly because it’s a really invigorating topic for me…and I know enough about it to talk for an hour (half an hour plus questions!)..and I’d love to see people’s faces as they experience SL for the first time. And… an hour after it was suggested to me, I read Ivan Chew’s post about “chickening out” of being on blogTV.SG.

In my talk, I’ll be pointing out that Second Life provides new chances to collaborate. It’s been illustrated by the four or five generous Second Life Librarians who have shared with me their power point slides they used for live presentations. If anyone reading this has any ideas of what I should include or what they think people would want to know, feel free to contact me.

I’m doing a practice run at MPOW on February 9th for WA academic librarians. I hope to do a live demo for both talks, but am getting together lots of movies and snapshots as backup for both. (Hence my new toy).

The talk is titled “Flying Librarians of Oz: What’s all the fuss about Second Life and what’s it got to do with libraries?“. More info on the NLA Events page. (Now, if I’ve used Cite Bite properly, that link should go to the page, then magically jump down to a yellow highlighted heading, “Digital Culture Talk.)

TODAY’S HIPPIE CARD: Content

My Life-hacks

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Was just commenting over at Pop Goes the Library on Sophie Brookover’s post, On Not Doing It All — Further Thoughts on Life Hacking. She reports changes in her life since her column on the life/work balance in the September 2006 Library Journal, Priorities and Professionalism.

Among her life-hacks are:

  • getting a career coach
  • using Remember the Milk
  • chunking her tasks
  • Ensuring that her extra-curricular activities match her long term goals

Here’s how I responded to her question about how I Not Do it All:

I’m mum to 2 little boys, work 2 days a week looking at new web tools for my library, and do professional development many, many hours more. My trap is that my employer lets me do half my work from home, around the household chaos.

Thing 1. For me, it’s the maxim “SLEEP COMES FIRST”. Sounds simple, but every time things go out of whack with us, it’s because I’m not sleeping enough. With babies, that meant restructuring so I slept when the baby slept, no matter what else needed doing, or other interesting adult fun was to be had.

Now, it’s turning the PC off at night so I get enough sleep. I’ve not been doing it in the last few weeks (working on projects, having too much fun) and am a gumpy messy b*tch. I know I need to go back to that first principle for my life to work.

Thing 2. I live by my PDA. Have bought one for my Co-Pilot and we sync. to the home PC, so I can share the load by putting tasks on my calendar I know he’ll pick up.(They have his name next to them – he has to :))

Thing 3. I’ve been experimenting with saying “yes” more. When I did that, I realised that most of the things I’d been saying “no” to were things that I said I couldn’t do because I had a family. I was saying “yes” to baking cakes for the kids’ schools, but “no” to professional opportunities and fun nights out. Worth the experiment. I’ve become happier, but now need to re-tweak my life to get it back in balance (see Thing 1.)

Thing 4. Exercise. It works. I sleep better and have more energy, so the time pays for itself by making my other hours much more fun and productive. Now, after a 5 week family holiday, I have to get back into it. (see Thing 1)
TODAY’S HIPPIE CARD: Rest.
(Oh, now you will think I’m making them up..but they ARE random. Honest)

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Need debugging

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…me that is.

I went away to camp for the weekend and came back to find that Mr4 had been throwing up. Mr8 and the Co-Pilot had become very messy by Monday/Tuesday.

Wednesday night during my reference desk shift, I began feeling a bit woozy, but wasn’t sure it was the bug. I tried to talk myself out of it, but gave up at 8pm and went home an hour early. Good thing too. What I did next was not fitting for a library.

Staying home from work this morning, but hope to make it in this afternoon to lead a play session with the new internal blog. The launch has been delayed until library renovations are finished at the end of January.

The Co-Pilot is off on his own camp this weekend, so I need to get perky to look after the kids. I definitely need to be better by Thursday when I help with the Year 3 end-of-year-sleepover-at-school camp.

TODAY’S HIPPIE CARD: Talk to someone

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