SWOT Analysis: the O and T part

After a longer hiatus than intended, I now present the second half of my SWOT Analysis.

Opportunities:
What are the [business] personal goals you are currently working towards?

Goal: As I have said, I am trying to find satisfaction in my work life. Or perhaps, more accurately, the right amount of satisfaction in my work life.*$ I'm trying to determine if I should return to a 'regular' job, or go full-force into a 'creative' job.

How could I improve myself?

Aerials: Take more teach trainings to improve my skills as an instructor. I'm hoping to take a teacher training course this summer, which will build on the previous two I've taken. I could also look into flexibility workshops (so I can give students safe advice on stretching), or possibly yoga workshops (to improve my knowledge of body mechanics).

I would also like to be a better aerialist in general. Watching my daughter take classes in gymnastics and swimming (even though classes at this age level [3.5 years] are very basic) I miss having semi-regular instruction. I need someone to give me reminders about what my toes are doing (especially the left ones), or whether or not my legs are straight.

Writing: I really ought to get involved in some kind of writing group if I'm going to get back at it. I can't operate in silo. As much as I like to work alone, I need feedback and I need editing. I also need to learn how to better market my self-published books.

Librarian/Research Positions: If I want to get back into librarianship, I probably need to take a course or two. Some topics that occur to me as useful or potentially interesting are: database management, information literacy, some kind of course on reference librarianship, or maybe something on social media use. If I decided to take the research route, my current job is probably doing a decent job at giving me recent, updated skills.

Other: I feel like workshops or courses in a variety of computer-related skills such as social media use, and software like Adobe, or some other graphics-type program couldn't hurt. I can make a passable (if barely) flyer or fact sheet, or book cover, in Microsoft Publisher, but it's a laborious process. I think I would enjoy actually knowing how to use such a program and having some basic knowledge of this would probably make me more appealing in the work force.

As I take it, the Opportunities part is mostly about how I would like to improve myself to make myself better at whatever job/career path I choose. In an ideal world, I would do all the things listed above, be a better aerialist, aerial instructor, writer, and creator of media. Interestingly, being a better librarian or researcher didn't immediately fit into that previously sentence (and not because I think I'm amazing in these areas).

* I'm hoping to do a post in the near future about about the complex feelings and thoughts I have to confront when I'm on (or even thinking about) my day job.
$ Having written this sentence, I wonder if I also need to work on re-framing what I consider to be work satisfaction. Food for thought. Chomp, chomp.

Threats:
What obstacles do you face?

Me.

I could end it there, but that's not very thorough.

I am unable to commit to any one decision, meaning I'm trying to juggle too many things. I'm trying to do aerials (training, stretching, learning new things, teaching), write, work a day job (which could be up to 21 hours a week), help manage my household, and be the primary care giver to my daughter. Trying to balance all these things means I'm not giving as much as I could, or should, to any one thing. Further, it means I'm not particularly good at any of these things.

Other questions to consider in this category, don't translate quite so well to my personal exploration, since they're looking at the strengths of Competitors, and what's going on in the Industry/Economy. At least I don't think the translate, or maybe I'm simply getting tired of SWOT Analysis and don't want to think about these questions anymore. Perhaps the questions of competitors and industry/economy will make more sense once I'd decided what path I want to pursue.

Overall, I think I am my biggest threat. I'm so concerned about making the wrong choice that it leads me to make no choice. And by not making a choice, trying to make do by juggling multiple options, is leaving me tired and stressed, and at least moderately unhappy.

Where does this leave me? I think another post is yet required to finish this analysis. I've put down a lot of thoughts and I need to think about this further.

Ciao,

Andrea

A selfie from this weekend (May 26th), prior to a 'rare' public performance at the Hohner Porch Party.

Testing my skating skills

As I posted in January I've been working toward taking a couple of skating tests and Wednesday was the day. I took my preliminary skills test first--I was the only one taking this level. From the look of the other girls taking the tests it seemed like mostly older skaters take skills tests (as opposed to the 8 year olds I was on the ice with for the freeskate test). I'm not sure why this is, possibly because the patterns are supposed to be skated to a specific time signature (i.e. waltz-time), which might be too tricky for young kids. Skate Canada introduced the skills tests to replace the compulsory figures, which were last skated at senior level competition in 1990 (at the world championships in Halifax). In terms of comparing this to a piano exam (of which I took several as a child) this is sort of the like the scales and arpeggios part of the exam. I only received 'satisfactory' ratings on the 3-turn and mohawk  patterns, but I received and 'excellent' grade on my circle (or held edge). It's about as good as I could hope for, since I'm not exactly an undiscovered talent or something.

The second test I took was my junior bronze freeskate test (I took my preliminary test in this when I was young). There are two parts to this test. The first part is preforming the skating elements one at a time (i.e. jumps, spins, stroking). I was a bit (or very?) nervous so some of my elements were shaky. I fell on one jump I don't normally (my lutz), and I had trouble with my spins. My spins have always been weaker than my jumps, but I completed enough of my elements (12 out of 14) to receive a pass. I even received a mark of 'good' on several of my elements including my stroking, spiral and salchow-toe-loop combination.

Me in motion, probably about to preform one of my elements.

Preforming my backward spiral. See? Not bad, although I wish my knee was a bit straighter.

The second part of my freeskate test was a 2 minute program. My program started off really well, unfortunately I had a fall on my second last jump--the same jump I had trouble with earlier in the test. I'm not sure why I had so much difficulty with this jump on Wednesday, as lately it's been really strong, but unfortunately that mistake lead to a really bad fall on my very last jump. I was trying to catch up with my music so I rushed through the set up. To make matters worse I fell on my left knee the day before and I'm now still quite stiff and sore. Ultimately I passed, and I even received marks of excellent on the use of music and program composition parts of my program.

Showing off the skating dress my mom made for me. If you look closely you'll notice the pattern is steampunk-style!

This now means that I'm qualified to take the first coaching level course offered by Skate Canada--if I feel I have time (which I'm not sure I do), but I think in the future it would be fun to teach little kids. This also means that if I want to take the next freeskate test I'll have to start landing doubles (in two different types of jumps) and continue to improve my spinning.

Ciao,

Andrea