A Week and a Half In

Well, I'm a week and an half into full-time school and I must say, it feels pretty good.  For May and June I'm taking two courses - Non-Verbal Communication and Visual Communication.  Each course is twice a week, so that means I'm driving out to Waterloo three days a week.  Not too shabby.

At the same time, my condo rental is shaping up nicely.  My daughter's bed is up so now we just have to go out and buy the mattress. An Ikea box lays open with the contents staring back at me.  One day it will turn into a shoe rack, I promise.  And the new printer.. well, my daughter will help me get that up and running too. I'm blessed to have a child who enjoys putting things together and figuring out how they work.

The best part of my courses so far is that for Visual Communication, one of my assignments has been to create a blog on Tumblr.  I'm actually going to get graded on creating a blog - how great is that?! If you want to check it out, it's here. I tend to update that blog more regularly than this one at the moment. And the other great thing about all of this is that I feel as though my day-to-day life now has meaning and purpose. It's how I'm 'daring to live' my life right now. And it feels wonderful.

One Week Left!

In five days I will end my tenure at my present job.  It's been seven and a half years of joy, frustration and growth, all rolled up into a ball. I started in a dual role - as both the President and CEO's Executive Assistant and a new role in employee communications.  It was a position I took on with excitement and motivation and which eventually led to me becoming the Manager, Communications & Social Media. As I moved along in my career I found I loved the communications field on the employee side - I wanted employees to be happy in their jobs, and I knew that keeping them in the loop was all part of it. The need for better communications between the various offices across Canada was lacking and I was happy to find some solutions. With no budget but gusto, I created an employee newsletter that consisted of an interview with one employee per issue, and a mixture of corporate and fun articles. It involved pulling information from various areas of the company, and last month I created the 55th issue, my last. I also created a book club for the CEO and employees to share together, a quarterly CEO newsletter and regular town hall meetings where the CEO would address the company on progress to date.

A couple of years into the job and social media was getting big. It was something that interested me and I looked for ways in which our company could utilize the tools. It is one of the great things about working here - I was able to create my job to large extent. As one of the first companies in financial services to start using social media to connect to clients and prospects, with the hope of increasing brand awareness, it has been both fun and challenging incorprating the new digital world into a traditional business.

Last summer I was aware that it was time to leave. I had been struggling off and on for a while, but by last August I just knew. Time to say "bye-bye" and move on to my next adventure. And so by January I was working out how I was going to quit my job, sell my house and go back to school full-time to finish up my communications degree by the end of the year. And here I am, 5 days to go until this part is done.

It has been a great ride, and one I will never forget.