Welcome to the mediual Medium Newsletter
Issue #175: Honest Classical Music Performances, What to Do in Scotland, and Ultimately Throwing Away All Those Morning Pages
Carly Rose Gillis
When I was a little girl, I dreamed of one day… becoming the lead in content operations.
Of course, this is a lie. It’s a common type of joke - John Mulaney created that version at a Salesforce conference based on how most of us have not achieved our childhood dream jobs of being astronauts, veterinarians, or marine biologists. We grow up and get jobs with strange titles that make our younger selves feel confused or bored. Sometimes we wonder about our jobs: Is this what I wanted to be?
Sarah Cordivano, a consultant and author at Dei, recently provided a "blueprint" for reevaluating your career in her Medium story "What Do You Want to Be When You Grow Up?". It offers three key themes to reflect on when thinking about your job satisfaction, but one stood out to me in particular:
How do you want to show your day?
Cordivano recommends asking yourself these questions to paint a picture of your perfect workday:
- Where do you go to work (office, home, co-working space, etc.)?
- What does your workspace look like?
- What fills your day?
- Who do you meet and interact with?
- How would you like to be contacted by colleagues during work?
- In what scenarios do you feel most productive?
- In what scenarios do you feel least productive?
The answers can move you toward practical changes you can make now, and the desires rooted in who you already are in your real life can drive you, rather than who you might have wanted to be as a child. And you may realize that you have already achieved parts of your ideal day. This can lead to gratitude. Thinking that way, being the lead in content operations is, after all, quite a dream.
Other things we are reading:
- Continuing the theme of childhood nostalgia today… When I was a child, my grandfather took me to the local museum to see classical music. Mario López-Goicoechea's this memoir brought those feelings back again. López-Goicoechea elaborates on what truly makes live performances special. They have to call on a part of themselves that might expose them to a hungry and unknown audience.
- I will soon be traveling to Edinburgh, Scotland, but I am certainly procrastinating on planning specific things to do and see. So, I was delighted to find this engaging and very useful story to help me in my research: "Artistic Historian's "Unconventional Tour of Edinburgh". It is filled with great advice and wonderful animal stories. For example, did you know that Edinburgh has its own version of the kanji story? Or that it has a Chihuahua café?
Today's dose of practical wisdom: Throwing Away Morning Pages
"Morning Pages" refers to a very popular creative practice by artist Julia Cameron of writing pages in a stream-of-consciousness style at the beginning of each day. However, the point is not the content but the process. It’s just about getting things out of your brain so you can move forward to achieve your day. Throw them away to embrace their value.
Zooming in on the updates
This is the first of the Medium Newsletter.Since I didn’t guess correctly in last week’s quiz, I’ll reveal it here.Jack Handey’s latest Medium story "Young Love" features an illustration of a diamond.
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Scott Lamb & Harris Sockel edited and produced
Questions, feedback, or story suggestions? Email: tips@medium.com
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