A no-brainer title to be sure but I find it even more difficult to express my thinking in words these days and often choosing to create more spoken form content than written. The worst part is that I started this blog post three weeks ago with the intention to simply publish something already and then got distracted and… well, here we are now.
But I wanted to sit down once again and write something as it’s something that I used to do quite a bit.
September was a decade changer for me, which I hope you’ll begrudge me the leeway not to declare exactly which decade, though I’m sure you know. Why so “cagey” about it? I’m not entirely sure to be honest, it’s just something I’ve always kind of shied away from. That being said, I was in the process of writing a blog post exactly about the things I’ve learned over the last few decades. It might be of help to some, even though my target audience may never read it. As is so often a case with blog posts written by older people about “things I’ve learned”, the post is mainly targeted at the younger me rather than to anyone else. If I could speak to younger me today, the article goes, what would I say?
Alas, you’ll have to wait for that article as that, too, has been buried in a seemingly never-ending stream of projects that keep me busy and occupied. From studying Mandarin Chinese, touching base with another Eastern European language similar to Ukrainian, working full time, creating a daily podcast and conducting lengthy interview podcasts with other individuals, not to mention working out quite a bit, I’ve found my days to be full. So full, in fact, I wonder how I could ever change anything or even what I could change. What could I make anything more efficient? More streamlined?
Oh, I forgot to mention that I’m also “up skilling” once again by way of studying for the DELTA Module 1 exam. For those of you outside of the ESL (English as a Second Language) circles, the DELTA stands for Diploma of English Teaching for Adults and is as a rather rigorous, theoretical, practical and hands-on course. There are three modules total, I’m on the first and expect to write the exam in December. Module 3 will begin in January. Module 2, however, requires a classroom environment which I am not currently in, so that will have to wait.
As it stands, I started this post a couple hours ago a few weeks ago and was since interrupted. This is not a bad thing as I’d rather be busier than not. The result is that some projects tend to take a while to get done. Longer than I’d like.
In a nutshell, I’ve started a few different projects:
- A “big cast” in which I talk with other people, be them fellow expats, creatives or others who simply like having a good conversation
- A “small cast” in which I yak about the daily goings on of life here in Beijing and some of the things that keep me busy.
- YouTube Shorts, Instagram Reels, TikTok whatevers and other short video content as I’ve found even my attention span to create content has finally been met with a method to publish quickly and to several different platforms.
- Still trying to learn Mandarin Chinese while building up an ESL repository of sorts which I publish under the moniker of “Steven’s Language Vlog” on Youtube.
- Several month-long challenges throughout the year, notably the Jamuary song a day challenge, March Motion (which uses Apple Motion, a computer graphics program), May You Make Your Movie (in which I try to make some sort of movie or creative video every day for a month) and December Drumming (in which I try to create an original drum or percussion track every day for a month).
All of this in addition to working full time.
I’d say it’s busy but it’s a choice I’ve made. A lot of these projects are meant to hone skills that I’ve left to atrophy over the years. As the technology has progressed so much, I’ve found it so much easier to do things in a much shorter period of time (including studying Mandarin Chinese) and so it’s that much more tempting to try to do so much more. I have wondered what my breaking point would be, but, as I get older, I’ve also come to realize that some things simply take time and that it’s okay to let some things wait while you work and learn on something else.
All that said, I’ve just signed up for a Substack account because apparently it makes publishing newsletters that much easier, something I’ve been meaning to do for a while. You can head over to stevensirski.substack.com to have a look but my intention is to publish only every month on that platform as sort of a “round up” of things going on.
Thanks for reading and I hope things are going well for you. If you have any comments or questions, please get in touch with me through my email address: stevensirski [at] gmail [dot] com.