Still chugging along! I’ve switched gears to working on my historical research class, because I’ve taught it many times and have it already mapped out. It will be self-paced, and students can easily do it in an afternoon or a weekend. When I’ve taught it before, it runs about 3 hours. It has 9 segments including the intro. I want to keep each section fairly short because this material, by its nature, is complex and somewhat technical. And I need to tell stories and somehow bring it back down to earth for people.

I started teaching this class in a historical re-enactment group, and what I’ve found is that people even with advanced degrees don’t know how to do research, and anyone who doesn’t have a college education won’t even consider it as a possibility. If you google  “how to do research,” you’ll get how scientists do research or how to structure a scientific experiment, which is not at all helpful if you want to find out why your English ancestors moved from some obscure village to Manchester, then eventually came to Canada. Or if you want to know how people did your hobby in the past. Or if you’re designing a museum exhibit or talking to the public about how people lived in the past. I had a friend take my class and she had literally just completed her doctoral work in psychology. She was blown away to realize that her frustration with trying to do historical research is because it’s a different TYPE of research. She kept thinking, “why can’t I do this?! What’s WRONG with me? I have a doctorate for pete’s sake!” I tried to talk to my dad about doing research into the history of where our family lived in Britain, because he hit a brickwall in his genealogical work. He ignored me. But now I realize that even though he was an intelligent man, a professional engineer, he actually didn’t know HOW to do historical research. Maybe he wasn’t even aware it’s a specific method that he could simply learn like he learned anything else. It’s intimidating for a lot of people and I know there just isn’t much out there that deals with this in any accessible friendly way the average person can understand. Whereas I know I’ve taught this class at least half a dozen times and it always gets rave reviews. People walk in feeling freaked out at the prospect, like only some kinda genius can do research, they walk out feeling like they can actually do this. It’s not rocket science. I’m calling it “Touching the Past: Researching How People Lived.”

I haven’t given up on the drawing course, I just figure I can knock this one out in less time, and sumer is icumen in and there will be visitors and other projects on the go. If I don’t get a course done by the end of June, I may feel stalled and never get to it.

As far as my progress, holy moley, where to start?! Many changes in the past 2 weeks! The notes for the class are 90% done, and I just went back and looked at Creatora Heights again. I’ve been thinking that I need a quiz or some other active thing for students to do at the end of each section, and the emphasis on a clear Call to Action is right there, so that’s what I need to focus on.

I did a bunch of filming yesterday, just for practice, and I can probably get the bulk of it done in the next few days. Then I can add in short bits later with whatever the Call To Action is for each segment. I’ll write the final draft of my intro once I’ve completed my filming. How something sounds when it’s spoken to camera is not what it looks like on the page, so I think I’ll be better able to sum it all up once the filming is done.

And I’ve been watching Behind The Scenes for the Star Wars series, and George Lucas talked about how the filming is only the raw material. You actually create the thing in editing. One of my profs said the same thing about writing books: once you’ve got the first draft done, you’ve “broken its back” and then you can edit and rework, even make big changes. So I’ll just get the main part of the filming done, minus the intro, then I can do various pickup segments as needed to flesh it out but getting the bulk of the filming done will be the biggest hurdle overcome.

Yesterday I looked at teleprompter apps and decided on one for my iPad. I got PromptSmart Pro, which is voice-controlled, so it scrolls as fast as I talk and that’s perfect.

That entailed signing up for Google Drive and installing it on my iPad so I can transfer my script to the teleprompter. Got that figured out. And it’s working well.

What I’m finding is that my delivery is very stiff using the teleprompter, but that’s a matter of practice. I have a lot of experience onstage and with public speaking, and I do dramatic readings very well. So I just need to keep at it and it’ll come.

I got stalled for a while trying to think of how to frame my online business and my website. I’ve already had ideas for 2 very different unrelated courses, and I know this trend will continue because I’m not one to settle down to any one thing. Even thinking about how to design my website wasn’t coming to me, because I didn’t actually know WHAT I was designing.

But purely by fluke, because I’m on somebody’s email list, I got an offer for 14 products as a bundle for $97, all designed for people described as “multi-potentialites” by Emilie Wapnick. She did a TED Talk a while ago on “People who don’t have one true calling,” and that talk changed my life. I’ve always had many interests, and being told to “FOCUS” just makes it worse. Emilie Wapnick talks about the strengths of multipotentialites, all of which I have, and that these in themselves are incredibly valuable. Almost every person who’s created big changes in the world has been this type of person, from Leonardo da Vinci or Winston Churchill to Steve Jobs. It’s not what we know, it’s how we learn and how we put it all together. We always see the bigger picture, and we make surprising connections between facts or areas of knowledge, in ways that people with great depth in only one subject won’t be able to see. Once I saw her talk, I stopped feeling frustrated and embarrassed that I’ve never had a career, and started seeing myself entirely differently. Finding this package deal and her website was an incredible boost for me.

Part of this bundle is her book Renaissance Business. She has advice on how people like me can take our personality type and make that our business. Many of her concrete steps are the same as The Great E-course Adventure, with a few twists for us multi-pods. And once I’d absorbed her book (in less than 24 hours, because being quick studies is part of our nature and one of our strengths) I started putting it all into action. I already had a theme about adventure and exploration, so I’m going to really push that when it comes to my design and everything else, and part of my thinking is that leading off with my class on research, which lends itself to what multipotentialites do, is a better move overall than leading with a drawing class, which is a specific niche. Crafting my website and my materials with this multi-focus in mind will pay off down the line.

So I’m following her timeline for getting stuff done. One of the problems multi-pods have is distraction, and she has tips for how to deal with that. So I’ve set up a timeline and set my launch date for my e-course, website and business: June 27th. I always work best to deadline!

She even has a very clear timeline of a 5 week process to get my website launched. If all I do is only what she has listed there, it will still get done on time. Meanwhile, I can still go off and do all the things all over the place as long as I make sure I come back once a week and do what’s on my list. I’ve added my own checklist for getting the e-course done.

At this point, I’m actually ahead of the game. But her approach is really crucial, because I can race ahead so far so fast, I get overwhelmed by “all the things.” So now, I can go back to my timeline and say, okay, I’m still only in Week One. I can check these things off. I don’t need to solve all the problems of the world TODAY.

Having it broken down step by step has made all the difference. Which is also an object lesson in how to approach my course, too. If this works for me, it will work for other people.

I’ve created a Facebook page for my business (not active yet, I just wanted to make sure I got the name), I’ve also been carrying on with the design section of the Brand Mapping Method, and started creating memes of quotes related to my theme that I can post on Facebook.

I have about 10 or 12 websites I’ve created on Weebly, plus about 3 or 4 blogs (I’ve been designing websites for fun using drag and drop software since the 1990s) but making the move to a WordPress site hosted somewhere else is a bit of a leap for me.  I COULD carry on using a Weebly site, but it’s not flexible enough for everything I want to do, and I know I can integrate my Teachable courses with a WordPress site easily. Nearly 20 years of designing websites, and now I feel quite trepidatious about making this new one! But my stock phrase for encouraging myself is that if Ic na take myself to Africa and back, twice, I can do this!

And in the meantime, one tiny thing holding me back with my drawing course is that I wanted a human skull (not a real one!) to talk about the anatomy of the face, but wasn’t sure where I could even get one.  Today, one of my shamanic friends posted a resin skull he found on eBay that’s a replica of a carved Tibetan skull, and I thought yeah, that’s what I need. So I ordered it this morning. I have all the other props and equipment I’ll need.

So it turns out I needed a shift in mindset, and I got that when I stumbled upon Emilie Wapnick and her Renaissance Business concepts. Yay! I’m back on track!

Hey all! I’ve been off on a different adventure! I’m just now getting back to this mountain, after scaling a few of the sacred hills of Ireland, and exploring some of my ancestral homelands in England. I was away for a month, with several weeks of planning and preparing before that. So now I’m getting my game head on again! I’m just about to investigate some of the recent coaching sessions to catch up and get inspired!

See you all around the campfire!