learning to show my work.

I’ve had a strange feeling I could never really wrap my head around when it came to sharing personal things about myself online.

Back when I was in middle school / high school, I shared a lot. I wrote blogs on my myspace and posted heaps of random photos on facebook and instagram. It was fun, felt natural and so easy. But as I got older, I began to post less. Sharing online felt like I was putting my life on display, making me feel more cautious and hesitant of what I post.

I was listening to a podcast the other day about how the Internet used to be a place where we never used our real names for our email or instagram accounts and could share our creativity with a group of friends without fearing judgement. Now, almost all our accounts we have include our real names, making the Internet basically real life.

But recently, my mindset changed :)

After years of working full time, I have decided I want to start working for myself. As much as I love working as a teacher at a school, I have had enough experiences where I began to feel less connected with the school’s mission. Working in various types of educational institutions has helped me develop a stronger sense of what I believe education should be and how I hope to support students. I want to build my career based on what I feel is important.

To do this, I realized I need to show who I am.

I was recommended the book Show Your Work! by Austin Kleon and it changed the way I think about sharing. The book explains why it is important to share your creativity and how to take the first steps. The author explains that your work doesn’t have to be perfect for it to be something worth sharing. What is important is showing the process of your work because that is what resonates and connects people to our work.

In fact, as someone who hires people for the short courses I run, I am always more drawn to people who share their journey, rather than their skillset. It gives me more insight to who they are and why they do what they do, making them standout and be seen as someone who I hope to connect with.

So that is what I hope to do here.

I want to use this platform to share my journey. I want to show people who I am, what I care about and ultimately why my work matters. Hopefully, I can meet people who feel similarly or people who are curious about my thoughts.

I’ll end this post with a quote that was quoted in the book.

“What you want is to follow and be followed by human beings who care about issues you care about. This thing we make together. This thing is about hearts and minds, not eyeballs”.