Month: April 2016

I decided three days ago I wanted to go on a trip. So I’m visiting some friends in the Philippines and Indonesia for the next month or so. I’d be mostly traveling on my own during the week and meeting up with friends during the weekend. The perfect balance.

Trips don’t always need a purpose, but for this one:

• I was getting restless staying at home for too long. This will be an adventure to spend my newly regained energy.
• I want to try being a digital nomad with the course I just launched.
• I need to work on flushing out the big new idea I have
• I want to get some interviews done during the trip with some interesting people working in development.

Today, I soft launched my new venture: an online video course called “Jump Start Your Career in International Development” hosted at Udemy.

The course is aimed at 1) fresh university graduates and 2) professionals looking for a mid career change who are curious about how it is like to work in the profession of international development and humanitarian aid.

For more information and free preview videos, please visit:  InternationalDevelopmentCareer.com or www.udemy.com/international-development-career . Further questions and comments are very appreciated and can be directed to tiffany@internationaldevelopmentcareer.com.

As you are a dear reader of my blog, please use the coupon code TTBLOG for a 50% discount!

I spent quite a few hours helping a good friend prepare for an important interview today. My take aways:

1. Helping other people really clarifies my own thinking about topics and techniques
2. Using tone of voice, speed of talking, and gestures to emphasize are all really important. I need to practice more.
3. Take a moment to collect your thoughts before answering.
4. Decide on your three main advantages that make you the best candidate. Drive that home through each question, in a slightly different way. Use the bridge and stop technique to change the questions you don’t want to answer into an answer where you can go back to your three main advantages. Use the questions to build your narrative.
5. I’m a pretty good interviewer, but as an interviewee, I need more work. (Don’t we all)

Just booked a two month long trip visiting some friends in SE Asia. Going to try out being a digital nomad and have some quiet time to develop the new idea. Very excited.

Energy level: Higher than normal. This is an achievement: a personal high in the last half year. The old me is back.

P.S. videos still exporting…

I’m now finished editing my 30+ videos, each 2-6 minutes. But, little did I know that exporting videos to mp4 format takes so much time…

Nervous as I’m so close to publishing. I’m hoping to catch the just graduating wave starting in May…

And new goal: apply to Start Up Chile!

I wrote a few posts ago that “being at the desk when inspiration hasn’t struck is just as important as being at the desk when inspiration has struck,” or, in short, “Be There.”

“There” can be any number of goals.

For exercise, it can mean going for a walk instead of a run if you’re not feeling as energetic that day. For blogging, it could mean quoting an interesting article instead of writing an original post. For learning to be vulnerable, it could be mean instead of giving vulnerability an awkward hug, maybe just have a cup of coffee together. For battling misogyny, it could mean instead of arguing with an all male team at work, maybe just save your fire for another battle.

It is not a weakness to not be perfect, day in and day out. (Even when the current project is to learn to celebrate imperfection.)

Be There. Just sit where you are and push forward a few inches. Those add up.

One of the reasons for my new project, of creating an online video course sharing my experience in starting a career in international development, is that I want to grow thicker skin. I want to be able to take criticism (well-intentioned or otherwise) with grace. What better place to learn than on the internet? I also chose to host it on a teaching platform instead of youtube because the commenters on youtube are generally not very constructive.

This reminds me of when I started to train myself to do public speaking, back in high school. I was terrified. I naturally try to avoid the spotlight; I think much better on paper than in speech. Yet, I knew I had to learn in order to represent my ideas well. So for years I pushed and pushed and pushed, envious of those who had natural public speaking charisma. At one point, I became much better.

Now is time for training for a different type of public speaking.

I read this article called “The Courage to Stay in One Place” back in 2014 and it really resonated with me. The past few months, though, have given me a new perspective and more nuance.

Two paragraphs that particularly stand out:

When the first pangs of anxiety hit, my default is always a suitcase and a ticket to anywhere. I have gotten used to the idea that an Italian train and fields of red poppies are the cure for any sort of trouble, but then at a certain point that is no longer true. Because even in travel there are moments where you pause and it all catches up with you, where you stand on the top of Masada and the Dead Sea looks like somebody painted the sky on the desert floor and it’s so damn beautiful and you’re so damn lucky, but you just think of him and that smile and the email you wish you could send. At a certain point, every breathtaking vista just becomes another backdrop for your broken heart.

There is bravery in traveling, but there is bravery in staying home, too. There is bravery in staying still long enough for everything to catch up with you, in trusting that whatever it is, it won’t drag you down. Because it hurts like hell when there’s nowhere to run, when the only place to circle is within the confines of your own addled brain. I lie awake at night trying to figure out ways to escape the barbed wire thoughts closing in. Every memory digs a little deeper into my skin.

I wouldn’t categorize my need to see and experience the world as an escape from anxiety or unpleasantness in general. Curiosity drives most of what I like to do. Yet, I also understand the feeling of wanting distance between those problems in life largely outside of my control, but, by necessity, are within my emotional sphere.

I resisted coming home to rest back in January. I thought I would be off again, as soon as I could. I knew I needed to rest, yet I didn’t want to believe it.

Now, after a few months, I’m starting to savour the taste of having the bravery to stay still long enough for those dreaded little beasts to come make friends.

One of the biggest personal lessons I’ve learnt in the past year or so:

Being at the desk when inspiration hasn’t struck is just as important as being at the desk (or where ever you work) when inspiration has struck.

It’s the daily steps that build up a project. And it’s easy to forget that when those fingers just don’t seem to be typing or those thoughts just don’t seem to be flowing.

“We’ve forgotten how damaged we’ve been by oppression and injustice. People think that apartheid was just a political yoke, but it got into the psyches of both the oppressors and the oppressed. We’ve not yet found the remedy where we help people recover their sense of self-worth. When I went to Nigeria for the first time in the 1970s. I got on a plane in Lagos. Both pilots were black, something I’d never come across in South Africa. I grew inches in my excitement! We took off, but then we hit turbulence. The first thought that occurred to me was, “oh dear, there’s no white person in the cockpit! Will these black guys be able to get us through this?” The awfulness of racial oppression is so bad that it can make a child of God doubt that they’re a child of God. And you project your self-hatred on others who look like you. We need to recover our sense of self-worth.”

Read from here: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/elisabeth-braw/desmond-tutu-young-south-_b_899643.html