For anything to begin there must be a starting point, my starting point will involve developing a plan which I can follow and carry out which should help me on my new journey towards being a more creative person. Now I am already aware that this plan has to be a living document one that will be constantly changing based on how I'm developing in the position I find myself in. Now in developing this plan I will have to consider the lessons I learned during my Leadership Development class. A class that has been worthwhile to me because it made me realize that I have to start taking control my life instead of letting my life control me.
To begin my plan I must have a series of goals in mind since I have multiple projects and skills that I want to develop. Some of my goals include learning Photoshop and Illustrator, getting back into photography and developing my photography skills, begin to world build my literary worlds, learn to draw as well as continuing in developing my own blog. Now as anyone can see from all that my plan will have to be diverse to cover all these areas and in fact may involve multiple different plans for each one while keeping in mind that I must continue job hunting to find a new form of employment.
One of the items I have to keep in mind is the goal of finding a new job and what that may entail for me. It may include making a slight career change for short period of time, or speeding up bachelor program to complete it sooner or even entering a new diploma program at NAIT after completing the bachelors. My primary goal is to find a new job which I hope will be in my previous field but I have already come to the conclusion that I may have to change and may involve in taking a severe pay cut compare to what I previous was making at my first job. I already know that I won't be making as much money as I did my last job unless somehow my old union gets me back old job back or some close to it. To be truthful I'm not going to be holding my breath since that is unlikely, though I am hopeful.
Now my plans will take some research to do everything that I want to accomplish. One of the items that I will have to take a look into is how much longer till I complete my bachelor's at NAIT. If it's under a year then I might have to consider getting a student loan and just completing it as rapidly as possible. Once I get my education out-of-the-way then I can start considering other forms of employment since all have the educational background I may need. I will have to speak with one of my instructors to discover which courses would suit me and my final educational objective. I want to balance the project management branch and the sustainability branches available within my program since I believe these two branches will best server me once I regain employment. It may involve taking one or two extra classes beyond what is required but I still believe it will be worthwhile to have as much underneath my belt as possible. It may even help me finding a better job in the future.
Another part of my plans will be to develop a routine which will allow me to continue improving my writing, my photography and allow me to develop some drawing ability. No irony realize that once I have employment I will have to reset that schedule or routine to still allow me to do what I want but I believe its well worth it. Getting into the habit of creating these blog is but one step in developing a writing routine. I hope to get in the habit of at least creating one blog week and dedicate at least a few hours a week world building my literary projects. First have to discover which part of the day would best suit me for writing for prolonged periods of time. Now this will take some experimentation on my part, whether its getting up earlier or writing later into the evening. I do believe it is possible since every other writer out there has been able to do it themselves and if they can I should be able to too. It may even result in me needing to find a different location to do my work in such as coffee shops, writing at school, going to the local library or I hope discovering that I'm able to write at home.
My photography may be a little bit more difficult to progress since for some styles of photography I will need willing subjects take portrait shots of. I hope one or two individuals can still fit in their wedding dress so I can begin practicing some wedding photography. I already own several photography workshops’ books which I will allow me to explore different types of photography and give me something to start from I just have to find the time to do so. I believe that I can persuade my sister-in-law or even some of my friends to pose for me if I want to practice portrait but I am not one hundred percent sure on that. I may have to look into possibly getting some models to pose for me. Now I'm little bit hesitant in using professional models since with my limited funds right now I can't afford to pay them all for their time. I have heard some models a willing to pose in exchange for photos for their portfolio which is an alternative I will have to explore.
I also plan to take part in the photography challenges posted by my photography group as well as the different photography communities online. Taking part of these challenges will I hope help improve my own creativity, develop skills and even possibly getting some productive feedback on what I am producing. The Shutterbug group that I joined have monthly challenges which I will be taking part and I know some online groups have weekly challenge but I don't believe I can keep up with those especially since I'm still learning how to edit my photos. Developing my editing skills goes with my photography development which is something I have to keep in mind as I keep find project to work on. I have already invested some money into some books to learn more about Lightroom and Photoshop and found online tutorials that should help improve my editing skill and understanding of the programs I am using.
I might discover the greatest challenge to my photography is not the photography but developing my skills and ability to edit my work. Already found even small amount of editing as drastically improve the quality of the photos I have taken and that's my only scratching the surface of what these programs can do for me. I might have to dedicate a piece of time were I'm only editing photos which may be boring at first but I have to keep in mind the results, which I hope will be better photos. I think Lightroom will be the first program I invest time in since I have already been using it for some of photos and already seen some positive results from it. I hope to continue to improve my skills using the program as well see what Photoshop can do for me down-the-line.
Now continue my development and understanding of the drafting platforms I have used in the past and may have to use the future is a whole another matter. I already know that I have become rusty using AutoCAD and Civil 3-D, which fortunately I do have student copies of the programs so I can brush up on my skills. I may have to talk to some my old instructors from my engineering design and drafting program to see if they can give me so I can improve my skills with. I may even have to buy some workbook from the school bookshop to do this and look into buying more student programs to learn the different drafting programs out there such as Revit which is used in architectural drafting. I have more positions open for architectural drafter than I have for civil or the standard AutoCAD drafter. Even learning the basics of those programs may open doors to potential employment and will allow me to find a new job faster.
I've already downloaded several books on the basic AutoCAD programs I have which I hope to use to increase my skill level with but MicroStation on the other hand may be a little bit more difficult to develop. The public library doesn't have as many books on MicroStation as they do for AutoCAD and I already have from my original program all that is available from them on MicroStation. I may have to use alternatives such as YouTube or the Bentley forums to continue my development in MicroStation. It may prove a little bit more difficult but it is one of the few choices I have open right now. I hope using the forums and hunting around on YouTube will be the only resource I’ll need but I what books are out there to help me even if I have to buy one or two of them.
The most difficult goal that I want to accomplish is not my writing or photography or even developing my drafting skills but learning how to draw artistically. Drawing isn't like drafting or at least that's what I found so far, I may be able to draw buildings or other geometric shapes but animals’, flowers or even people still prove a challenge to me. Luckily the library has assortment of books on learning how to draw from figure drawing to cartoon illustrations. The more difficult part of this goal will be the amount time I will have to dedicate to learning how to draw properly. I will have to dedicate more time compared with any of the other goals. To succeed at this one goal I will have to set up her daily routine where I dedicate several hours to simply drawing which for me might be a little bit difficult especially with my attention span as it is. But I still believe this to be a worthwhile effort especially since I can transfer some of those skills to help develop sketches for photography projects or even design projects for drafting. If I become good enough I may even start a web comic and possibly develop some revenue from it.
Now how I go about performing all this? To be truthful I don't know, and just reading over what I wrote, I am feeling a little bit overwhelmed with everything I want to do. Looking at it as a whole give it does give the impression as something too great to be carry out but if I break down each goal to the most simple I should be able to do everything. Its about breaking down everything I want to do into the individual parts and then sorting how I want to go about doing it. Now how that is going to be done I don't know right now it will have to research or reflect more on this. I do believe the first step is writing down what I want to do and I hope what my angles which is the whole point of this blog post “beginning the process with the plan.” I know I need a plan so I can call this all this in the first step in planning is discovering what I want out of it which I think I've just done. So I hope in the next post or two I will be getting to developing a real plan to carry out everything or to the least the beginning of a plan.
I admit it might be madness want to do all this but right now madness is all I have. While madness and, a lot of time on my hands I might as well be using it to do something besides hunting for a job and waiting for the next interview to come. At least now I don't be so bored anymore or at least I hope so.
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