Finally! Made a move.

My blog has been bugging me. Every time I looked at it, or thought about it, I was reminded that I haven't made any moves towards my career dreams in months. Finally, I got my web page together.

Here I am, a career counsellor, helping people with their career dreams, and being stuck for so long. I guess I'm not any different than most people, getting frustrated with the perseverance needed to follow through on a dream.

I must admit, by writing out my dreams, or at least blogging, created a personal accountability (it's always there to bug you)....and it works. I strongly recommend everyone to document your dreams. It gives your dreams extra potency.
Go ahead, click on my website and check it out. I made it with iLife on my Mac. I needed to upgrade my iWeb to iLife in order to handling the HTML snippets from Paypal (to generate the payment buttons).

Don't forget to wright out your dreams.

Working in the Wilderness

It was a good experiment working on my sailboat from a Northern Ontario lake, Lake Temagami. From the town docks I picked up the free wireless internet form the local library. On the sailboat I was able to Skype people, give feedback on a cover letter, and send out a career counselling training proposal.
Once we sailed to our destination lake, Spawning Bay, we were out of wireless range. However, I noticed a cell town at the Municipal Docks in the centre of the lake. I have no doubt that with the portable (cell) internet stick I would be able to access the web.
What I like about our 21' Sirius sailboat is the ability to trailer it to remote locations. Lake Temagime is huge...45Kilometers from top to bottom. We took our canoe along, tethered behind the sailboat. I would not recommend teathering a canoe since it's just one more thing to add to the already numerous cables and ropes involved with sailing. It's not bad with a head wind, but is tricky with a tail wind. We disovered this as the wind blew the canoe sideways and the teather rope ended up pulling the canoe over filling it with water. What an ordeal! I should have tied the teather under the canoe looping up through the front seats, that avoids the teather rope from capsising the canoe. Oh well...live and learn!

Life is like building a boat

For the past 6 months I've been helping my friend, Steve, building a canoe. We've taken our time wanting to build it from wood we cut and shape ourselves, taking pride that it does not contain any nails. Looking a several completed canoes we had a vision of what we wanted.
I find building that "perfect career" is much like canoe building. My inspirational song this morning, Dare You To Move, by Switchfoot, made it clear that going after your dreams is not easy, full of challanges, and sometimes fears. It's easier and safer "not to move".
Steve and I could have taken the easy way with the canoe and bought a kit and used nails....but, it would not be as close to our vision of a "beautiful boat" if we did not persevere.
This convinces me to preserver after my career and work dreams. What are your dreams?

Am I called to Make a Living on a Sailboat?

It may sound silly wondering if I am "called" to find a way to make a living from a sailboat. During my daily inspirational Podcast I was challenged to consider how I have been gifted to help others. This made me think of two people I wrote resumes for; one in person and the other online. In both cases I could sense the person's confidence building as I helped them create accomplishment statements (such as Katie moving to Toronto from Vancouver who needed a resume to go from the movie industry to event planning). I feel I can help people see their inner strengths and encourage them to find work matching their strengths. I need to not be so lazy and spend more time finding opportunities to do resumes both on Elance and through my own website. It's funny how our weaknesses can get in the way of blessing others. I just got to make a point of getting my website done. I need to make a public commitment....that's it....I'm going to set September at my target month.

Give Elance a Second Chance

Had a good Elance experience writing a resume. I find the trick is not to set up too many project markers for payment. What I mean is not to ask for multiple payments. In stead of establishing a partial payment after each resume draft, simply request 50% up front and the balance after the final resume draft. It's a lot less administrative work and there is less chance your customer's credit card will be cancelled due to suspicious activities with numerous small charges.
I'm surprised that I rank in the top 25% with only $110 in sales and two positive customer feedback comments, and that's out of more than 25,000 frelancers. I guess a lot of people don't actively bid, but just hope customers will look them up.
Even though I get three free bids per month, I think I will purchase the minimum of 20 bids for $20 and see if I can "drum up" more business.

Many make a living from a sailboat.

While on my sailboat this weekend, at Kon Tiki Marina, I discovered several people make a living from their sailboats. The owner, George, said that some of the other sailboat owners work from their sailboats, saying "If you can work from a computer, we have the wireless."
I thought I alot about that anchored in the south end of Lake Simcoe on Saturday cooking dinner on the boat BBQ. I though of how peaceful it would be anchored there all day writing resumes for clients.
I got to start putting out more bids on Elance and getting my webpage done!!!!

Want cheese with your Joomla?

My webmaster, David Bird of www.birdwebwork.com, set me up on Joomla as a tool to help develop my Unlimited Worth website. It's a great idea, I use this interface to create the content of my website. Once it's functioning in Joomla the website "skin" (the layout and images) can be applied over the content.
This makes it much easier to create websites. It eliminates much of the time involved in sending content back and forth to the webmaster. Not only is David Bird a smart webmaster, he's my nephew. Talk to him if you need a website.