Wonderemployment

"I want to use my empathy, intuition, creativity, and leadership skills to help youth and young adults, particularly young women and girls, feel heard and valued. I want to help them build the confidence and skills to be healthy, resilient, and engaged individuals, so that they can in turn build healthy, resilient and engaged communities." This is my personal purpose statement. Believe me, it's scary to put it out there because it's not fully refined, it may change in a year or month or two, or I may never fulfill this "purpose". But for now, there it is. This all came about because my boss encouraged me to develop a professional development plan. I've never made one before, so I signed up for a workshop at Compass Point on exactly that. I don't know what I was expecting, but this far exceeded what I had anticipated and I left really energized. Through a few exercises, we were encouraged to think about and explore our: Unique contributi...

I often pass this woman walking her dog on my way to work. Most mornings we don't talk, we just wave from a distance. If I'm within close enough proximity, she will invariably say "have a good day!" with more sincerity than is customary. Finally one day a couple years ago, I stopped and introduced myself to her. It felt strangely old-fashioned. After learning my name, she instead started saying "have a good day, Mai!" when I passed her. Such a small addition, yet decidedly more personal. Then I didn't see her for a while because of my erratic wonderemployment schedule. I wondered about her now and then, but didn't know anything about her besides the time she walks her dog each morning. Now that I'm back to a regular commute I've been seeing her and her dog again. The first week back, we stopped to catch up a bit about why it had been so long since we'd seen each other. She mentioned her poor little dog had been sick and not up for wal...

A little recap of the tumultuous, yet glorious year of 2014...  PS. I've been using this infographic design program, Piktochart , at work, and couldn't resist trying it out for personal use too. It's pretty fun! I use the Pro version at work, but used the free version for this one (since I share the work account with the whole office!). The main difference is the watermark and the download format options. If you've ever wanted to make an infographic for work or pleasure but are not a graphic designer, I highly recommend checking it out!