Bro's browsings

Turning hobbies into new career paths

One of the exercises I'm undertaking at the moment to focus my job/freelance work search is to identify what skills I really enjoy using and how I might use those.

Apart from my publishing, online and project skills I happen to be a very able knitter who already occasionally teaches and produces samples for designers. And it seems I have found a way to combine this with my editing experience.

This week I've been on a course to learn the art of technical editing for knitting patterns which is, I have to say, very technical combining an understanding of the craft and of garment construction with attention to detail, an understanding of the target audience and maths - square roots for example are important.

Who knows what proportion of my future employment will come from this but isn't it everyone's goal to have work that comes from something they truly enjoy?

A blog revival

Bro's Browsings has been more of an echoing black hole because of work blogs, other personal blogs, twitter and life in general.

Then, in December, I was made redundant as the result of a restructure at work.

This in turn has lead me to rethink my work life balance, to find more time for my creative activities and to decide that for the moment the least I would like a break from being an editor. Well certainly from certain aspects of being an editor, such as being the "face" of an information brand.

On the other hand I want to use my change management skills, my content strategy skills, to find some new challenges to offer creative solutions for and to write in a less constrained way (on some personal projects).

So at the moment life it is about taking a big breath and thinking about what is important to me, what I'm good at and choosing the right new directions.

And so I've revised this blog to chronical some of my thinking and experiences.

And the picture. Well one fixed point for me is being an Olympic volunteer - I've already worked on the fencing test event. And like Locog I'm building for a great 2012.