Social Media…The New Age

Going into this course I thought to myself “How much can I actually learn about social media? I have been on it for years now.” I completed an advanced Marketing diploma last year and all of a sudden thought I was qualified. What they don’t teach you is that they only skim the surface of 5 billion topics and social media was one of them. While I know that SM (social media) accounts definitely have the capacity to make or break a company’s image or make someones story go viral, I didn’t realize how powerful it actually is.

In the last few weeks I found out that one of the main methods  Barack Obama used on his campaign trail was social media because it was free and his budget didn’t allow for such fancy promotion. He is President because of a free online tool. That is amazing to me! Don’t get me wrong, the latest uproar to the insurance company, or promoting a business, or even self promotion is fantastic…but the President’s social media is pretty on point.

Or even look at WestJet and their awesome Christmas campaigns that they role out every year. Old Spice and the amount of followers they now have from all the campaigns across so many different platforms is so impressive or even Budweiser launching their famous puppy or Clydesdale commercials during prime time Super Bowl time slots. Social media is one of the

It’s amazing how people are becoming social media famous now. You don’t need to actually be a celebrity anymore to make that money.There are so many different helpful hints on how to get to that point it’s crazy.

I have come to the conclusion after looking into this, that I shall be quitting any kind of regular job and just becoming social media famous! I have had it with the day to day grind of adulting and am going to get a very over priced and comfy chair to just have a seat on and social media my life away…

On a serious note, do you know anyone that has made money in a significant way? I am very curious about the ins and outs of this kind of venture.

 

Keep cool peeps 🙂

 

 

The Ups and Downs of My Weightloss Journey

My entire life I have always been a little bit heavier  while all my friends were the “perfect” weight. I didn’t pay too much attention to my weight until I was in middle school. Then the catty girls and the name calling started. It was horrible. I wouldn’t go to school for days, or I would wear clothes much too large for me. By the time I got to high school I had found my group and things got better for the most part. I started to thin out a little bit and I felt better about myself. Then as my teen years got closer to my 20’s I started to gain weight back again. I was never small in that time period but wasn’t as heavy as I could have been I suppose.

As I progressed into my 20’s I was always around the same weight until my long term boyfriend and I broke up. At the same time we had quite a few family problems going on. Around that time is when I lost a bunch of weight, but it was mostly due to stress. For an entire summer I felt pretty and that guys were actually paying attention to me. It wasn’t the right kind of attention though. After that summer I quit smoking and started to gain some of the weight back. I battled on and off for years with the quitting and starting of smoking and in turn gained more weight back each time I quit. By this point I was at the highest weight I have ever been, but I had no idea. I never felt that big or felt it in my health. It wasn’t until later on and I look at pictures of myself and think I couldn’t believe I was that big.

A little over two years ago I started volunteering at a gym which in turn gave me a free membership. I though “heck ya I’m going to use this all the time”. And I did for a couple months. Eating healthier and working out. Then I quickly got too busy and everything went downhill again, and again, and again. I then realized it’s hard to jump head first into meal planning and going to the gym, especially when you have a schedule like mine. Since then I have joined a nutrition class to work on my eating. I know I can work out, but 70% of weight loss and muscle building is what you put into your body. Although I feel better I still have those moments that I don’t look so great. So I just keep reminding myself that little milestones have been made. Even though I can’t make it to the gym every day I try and do something at home. My meal prepping is on point some weeks, but lacks in desire others, but Pinterest and my Nutrition Coach are amazing resources. There are also lots of other places on the lovely internet that are free for meal planning and at home or in the gym workouts.

My weight-loss is not something I usually discuss with anyone, but I think maybe it’s time I recognize I need to talk about it. I know those little issues we have are not easy to talk about maybe to friends and family, but just remember we are all strangers and we have your back.

Has anyone had similar issues as I have?Do you have something you would like to talk about?

Bullet Journaling…Mind Blown

Last time I talked about how I came back to school and blah, blah, blah. Well, as I got through my first year of missing many assignments and quizzes I realized something had to change. I started actually using the FREE agenda the college handed out at the beginning of every year that no one used. At the beginning of the semester I would print of my course calendar and get everything written in where it needed to go. For the first semester it served its purpose if I remembered to look at it. It was boring and I didn’t want to carry it around. So for the following semester I decided to colour code things, moving on up in the world. So I added a little bit of colour and I liked it a little bit more. For the last year of school I bought a pretty little agenda, and a separate notebook for nutrition and another for work outs thinking I had beat the system and it was going to work. Ha, not a chance.

Fast forward to last night when my friend sent me this amazing article from Buzzfeed on Bullet Journaling. Well holy crap- mind blown! This is probably one of the most creative/organized journals I have ever seen. And this isn’t just a nothing thing, there are blogs, and Instagram accounts that show you how to Bullet Journal (bujo). Not only is this system a fantastic way to organize your life, there is a whole rules and regulations to bujo-ing. It of course is all about you, but at the same time it isn’t just a pretty coloured agenda from what I am reading. The inventor of this fun filled world, Ryder Carroll, took years working on his to perfect it as talked about in Marie Claire. There are so many different ways and concepts, and colours, and it is all cascading around me and I’m not even sure what to do. But it is so cool and I can’t look away. These are just a few examples of some fun and creative pages and the basic essentials you will need to start your bujo addiction.

  

Not only is this new found interest going to organize my daily life, but I will now be able to focus on those goals and have everything in the same place. This is going to allow me to follow my workout plans, nutrition goals, and all those other failed separate journal ideas and make it work. I have a feeling it also might be make a dent in my bank account, I’m a sucker for new fun coloured pens and the perfect notebook.

Is anyone a part of this amazing BuJo community already that has any helpful hints for me moving forward? I hope some of you (or all of you) find some Zen in this and it works for you too 🙂

Job Hunting After Graduation

Job Hunting After Graduation

So everyone is always saying “go to school, get an education, you want a good job don’t you?” Well it’s not always sunshine and roses after graduation. Lets rewind this a little bit.

When I was 25 I was working a minimum wage job, and my boss (and the owner) didn’t know how to run her business. I updated her on multiple practices that she was not following, and even then I didn’t know everything because I wasn’t a business owner. But working there had already changed me in so many ways; so I decided why not one more change? I had decided I was going to go back to school. Dun dun dun… Now I didn’t get the initial response I had anticipated from my Mom. It was an “are you sure? That’s a lot of money if you don’t continue and graduate? Do you even know what you want to do?” I understood why the 21 questions though. I hadn’t really been reliable or followed anything through up to that point in my life. Things are gradually started to change, but nothing substantial enough to trust I was going to do this. So that gave me more determination than ever. I applied for the Business Administration program at Algonquin College and was accepted within the month. I was going back to school and I was terrified. Everyone kept saying that at least I will have a diploma now though and an education. That it’s what I needed to move up in life: schooling.

That was in April. So in August I quit my job, moved into the city with a friend and started college. I was determined at that time I would be going into Human Resources so I could learn all the little laws that people didn’t know about, but the boss (and owner) should have. I was going to learn how to do all that and own my own spa. That was the grand plan by the end of the three years. Well by the time I got to that point, I realized I had no desire to be in HR. Operations and project management was what I wanted to do. That also didn’t last long. I had fallen in love with Marketing. So I started that in January 2014 and graduated with an Advanced Diploma in Marketing and a few courses here and there of Human Resources and Operations Management. I immediately started working after my last exam. But it wasn’t in my field. I became an Event Coordinator for a couple months, then worked retail, then worked a series of other jobs, but only because I couldn’t find anything in the area I had just graduated in. Everybody is always saying that having an education is going to make you more desirable to industry professionals, but what they don’t say is that people are hiring for an entry-level position with 3 years of experience. I don’t even understand how that’s possible. Isn’t entry-level self-explanatory? Doesn’t it mean that you can have little to no experience? So I’ve now been graduated for a year and had two- 3 month social media contracts…so obviously that means I decided to do some more schooling. So I have recently started an online Social Media Certificate and am just finishing my first level of Spanish, and still no job in my desired field. I have now started to pay back the student loans that accumulated over the years and it sucks. I’m kind of at a loss as to what I’m doing wrong at this point. I’m constantly applying to positions that I know I am qualified for with no reply.

Am I doing something wrong? Is there a component to this job-hunting thing that I’m missing?

 

 

Single in Your 30’s is Fabulous

So in less than two months I will be turning 32. I know everyone has these “I’m not where I wanted to be at this age” issues, but I can’t remember thinking about what I was going to be doing at 30 when I was 15 or 16. I never thought about the car and the minivan, husband, two dogs and a cat with 2.5 kids, and a white picket fence ever in my future. I remember always living for what was right in front of me and diving in head first. Although that might have gotten me in trouble more than once I always took away a lesson from it.

So back to my point. In less than two months I will be turning 32…and I’m single AND don’t want kids. While to me this isn’t an issue, it seems to be to everyone else. I remember from a young age never wanting children and wanting to travel and have a career. Everyone always said, “I’m sure you just need to meet the right man and your biological clock will start ticking”. Well guess what? I haven’t met the right man, and I think the batteries in the clock are dead.

 

When I was in my early 20’s I thought I had met the man I wanted to marry and had a decent enough job that I that I would OK with. At the time I was just going to be turning 25 and life to me was over. My relationship was over, that job was gone, and life was upside down. It was the worst age I could possibly be turning. That year I decided I was going back to school. So I applied, got in, and moved into the city. Things were still pretty rocky at first. Living with a boy (just a friend), starting school in your mid-20’s while everyone else was 19, deciding dating was the devil and not doing it until after graduation, and so much more. The year I turned 30 though I had so much going for me.

I had started travelling finally and obviously loved it, I was going to be graduating by the time I turned 31, meet my family in England, and had been able to volunteer abroad. Those have been some of the most life changing experiences, and they all happened after I turned 30. So while all my friends are getting married, having babies, and making sure they get that white picket fence I have a profession that I love, I’m touring all over the world, learning new things (Yo habla Espanol un pequito), meeting new people, not being afraid to do it alone, doing what I want to do, and I have much more freedom doing it.

I’m now in the process of planning more places to travel and possibly moving to the UK because I can. So to those ladies that are having mental break downs as they get closer and closer to 30 remember this:

So what makes your single life fabulous?

COM0011 Blog #1: The Grey Area

For the last four or five days I have been trying to find something interesting to write about that someone else might possibly want to read, just staring at the blank page in my brain. Or even write something longer than the 140 characters that Twitter expects you to cram your life into.

It’s not like I don’t want to write something, but I have been told my entire childhood life that I need to “cut out all the extra garbage and explanation and just get to the point”. So that is what I learned to do…not realizing I would be getting into marketing where I need all that grey area and explanation.

In my first semester of marketing my professor asked a question that I answered with a quick, short answer. She then asked me to elaborate and I didn’t know how to reply. She wanted the when, why, where, what, how, and the kitchen sink.

So here I am this lovely Monday morning reading about writing blog posts and finally getting this done. I am seriously hoping that expanding my writing and making it “flowery” again isn’t going to be as hard as it was to teach myself to be concise.

If you have any helpful hints on how I can expand my thoughts on paper, I  am happy to listen!

So until next time…peace out homies!