The Virtual Wire

Group Holiday Wish!

Dear Readers, this is our last post for the year. Here are some heartfelt wishes for the upcoming holidays. Please come back and visit us on January 5 when we'll resume our regularly scheduled postings. Also, please note that the Blog will be Monday through Friday. I'll be stepping down. Read more about that below! :)

Antonette: It's been a pleasure writing for the Virtual Wire! This is my last post as I must get back to basics and remove a few things from my overloaded plate! :)

I started this year with my theme: 2008: The Year of New Things! Boy has it been a new things kind of year. I have a new organizational system, I have a new shiny VA of the Year award, I had all kind of new experiences flying back and forth to Vegas, and then I had a great new things kind of year just having a theme that always stayed on my mind. My theme for 2009 is 2009: The Year of Honesty!

Have a fabulous Holiday Season; enjoy your family and friends, and be better to yourself next year!

Gloria:
It continues to be my privilege to participate as a team blogger on The Virtual Wire. Thank you, dear readers, for joining in the conversations and for your support throughout this year. As we near the formal celebrations of this season, I'm wishing all our readers a most blessed and wonderful holiday - filled with overflowing love and laughter! May your New Year be filled with all those good things you're needing and desiring! See you in 2009!

Petra:
I am honoured to be a part of The Virtual Wire team for another year. 2008 went past in a blitz and taught me some valuable lessons on running a successful VA practice and for the first time highlighted strengths and weaknesses that I didn't even know I had. As we all take time out to be with family and friends, I want to wish our readers a fantastic seasonal break and best wishes for 2009. 2009 for me will be a year of immense change and growth. In one sense I am overwhelmed about the changes I see coming and of course I am mostly excited about the new experiences it will bring. I hope to share part of my journey with you. Have fun over the next 2 weeks!

Rob:
Though I realize many people do not celebrate Christmas—whether due to religious or philosophical beliefs, or simply due to having made a choice—I still feel it’s an excellent time to stop and consider those around us, and those in need.

One of my sisters recently quit her job at a nursing home in order to start a business with her husband. She’s barely been away from her former employer, and yet will go back on Christmas day to visit some of the many elderly patients she used to care for. A dear friend of mine who lives in Georgia will this holiday season visit some senior homes, harp in tow, and play for them. One of our local radio stations is heavily into their annual Christmas Wish fundraising, having done this for over 40 years.

Whether you celebrate in silence, don’t celebrate at all, participate a lot or a little, I want to wish you and your family my very best for the holiday season, and for a wonderful New Year. The personality of any holiday season is what we as individuals make it. I hope you make yours, and others, memorable.

What's your blog?

I had no idea blogging was so important. I went to a meeting some time ago, and one of the workshop presenters said that people would start introducing themselves by giving out their blog information. And, I’m finding that to be true especially on Twitter. On Twitter people aren’t asking about your website, but wanting information about your blog. It’s kind of like how we talk about people not asking what is a VA, but who is your VA.

So, if you don’t have a blog, consider starting one. There's no risk involved. Your blog can be about you and/or your passion. I have a blog all about my interest in things nonprofit. The most important thing to remember is to be consistent. If you are going to write weekly, make sure you do so. To help you drive traffic to your blog, be sure to add your blog address in your signature line. This is a great marketing tool no matter what line of business you're in.

Blogging is a responsibility; so, be faithful. In the end, you’ll reap many rewards from building new relationships, to increasing your visibility, to just having an awful lot of fun!

Jack the Pumpkin King!

It’s my favorite movie time of the year, Christmas! I love the feel good movies. I love the smell, and feel, of Christmas. I love that people are generally in a generous mood. And, most importantly, to you in my defense, I know I’ve started my celebrating fairly early this year!

I’ve already watched White Christmas, The Muppet Christmas Carol (my favorite), Patrick Stewart in A Christmas Carol, and The Nightmare Before Christmas. It’s the later that inspired this post. For those of you who’ve never seen this classic, here’s a quick synopsis: Jack is the Pumpkin King, a celebrated figure in Halloween land. Another Halloween has come and gone, and again Jack is left wanting more. He walks off into the forest and discovers doors to all the other Holiday lands. He opens the Christmas door and falls in. There he is overwhelmed by all the newness of everything. His senses are excited! He goes back to Halloween land, and tries to explain all the wonders of Christmas, but they just don’t get it. So, Jack decides to take over Christmas, and in a word he ruins it! Yet, what he walks away with is so cool! He walks away finally appreciating that he is Jack the Pumpkin King, and he vows to make the next Halloween scarier and better than ever.

What’s the lesson here for us:

Stop looking at what others are doing, creating, and even achieving. Look at you and your strengths, measure your own accomplishments, and then vow to be the best you only you can be. If things are too routine for you, shake them up. If you need to, take a class; learn a new skill, or even hirer a coach to help you look at your business from a fresh perspective.

The point is, you waste your time trying to emulate others. Authenticity is much more attractive!

Moving beyond here

I was recently inspired by an AssistU VA that took the plunge and left her VA practice to pursue another dream. Way cool!

I love stories like this because they remind me to stop to look at myself, and take stock to see if I’m still on track; I am. I love what I do, and I love my clients. I am currently exactly where I should be.

Are you?

Privilege or right

A very interesting question was asked on Twitter by @stacybrice (Stacy Brice) a few weeks back: “Why do you vote?” And, it came on the heels of one of those PowerPoint emails with stirring pictures and an inspiring song. Check it out if you can. I got it!

I understood as soon as the first image came up why I vote. My granddaddy was born in 1914 in Virginia. He was the son of a sharecropper. He was pulled out of school at the age of 8 to work the fields to help the family put food on the table. When he got his first pay, he said that he went to the country store and purchased a pencil and a pad of paper. He said he taught himself how to add by counting the money he got. I’m sure the last thing on my granddaddy’s mind was voting. It was surviving! And, while that is true for the then, it wasn’t for later. My granddaddy took that privilege very seriously.

Today, for me voting feels more like a right. The same right as everyone else; yet, I’m haunted by the images in that little slide show. I’m reminded that many people sacrificed much for me to be able to causally approach voting. Not just blacks, but women suffrage as well. While voting is a right that I can neglect if I want, I treat it like the privilege it is for me in honor of the people who suffered to make it so!

Why do you vote? Or not?

How do you say...

It strikes me as interesting how you can tell what region of the United States people come from by the way they pronounce certain words. For example I say aunt (änt), and then I have friends from other parts of the Country who say aunt (ant). And, we are both talking about our mother’s sister. What even made me even think about this is I’m in Las Vegas hanging out with Toni Jo and her cat Samantha. Toni Jo says, “Samantha, Aunt (ant) Antonette is here!” And, at home my nieces say, “Aunty (äntee) Antonette!” How funny!

When I finished the VTP in September of 2000, I remember clearly Stacy Brice giving me a verbal evaluation. She said in her very lovely Stacy Brice tone (if you’ve ever had the chance to hear her voice you'd understand this exactly), “You are going to make a fabulous VA. However, you’ll need to work on your speaking skills. There are some words you say incorrectly.” I had no idea how difficult this was for her to tell me until years later. I have never been more grateful to a friend for being honest with me than I was with her those eight years ago. The number one thing that I did, very common in my neck of the woods, (growing up in the hood of DC) “axks” for ask.

What I did next, Stacy thinks is so remarkable; I immediately started working with a speech therapist. I met with Linda for a year and a half every Tuesday at 9am. I would drive at least an hour away from home to have private sessions with her. She noted that not only was I saying that word WRONG, but I was also dropping the endings off of my words. So I would say something like, “Hey, you wanna go to the mall to do some shoppin? I’m just axksin.” Boy, Linda had her work cut out for her, and so did I.

Now there is still regionalism in my pronunciation and my tone. I don’t really need to work on changing that unless I intend to become a public speaker, and want to appeal to a crowd as an "articulate" black woman because I sound less regional. Otherwise, I’ll appeal to them with my southern drawl. Yet, it is VERY VERY important to me that I pronounce words correctly. So, if you hear me say pecans (pē-kans) and you say pecans (pi-käns) please do not correct me. We are saying the same thing just differently. On the other hand if I say zoology (zü-‘ä-lə-jē), correct me. The proper pronunciation is zoology (zō-‘ä-lə-jē).

Personal note: This is a shout out to my homegirl Dawn Goldberg. Dawn if you read me, then I know you love. I'm making a public acknowledgment that you taught me something ELSE after last Friday’s lunch! ;)

I’ll take education for a $1, Alex

Recently, a poll was taken at AssistU to determine how much money VAs set aside for continuing education. Then again in Twitter the question was asked, “How much do you set aside for continuing education?” It occurred to me that this is one of those areas that business owners neglect.

When I worked in Corporate America, I loved that my employers sent me to training on a regular basis, and on varying subjects like: Career Counseling, Diversity, Managing Multiple Projects, and Mistake Free Grammar just to name a few. There was one class I sought out every year, a writing class of some kind to keep my writing skills sharp, and to stay on top of the most recent grammar rules. (Thanks to Dawn Goldberg for creating Write Well U, I now have an excellent trustworthy place to go for my writing refresher courses.)

I’ve observed that VAs do what they have to do to get their businesses started, and that’s it. Perhaps they’ve set aside funds for continuing education, but as soon as hard times hit they tend to kick personal and professional development to the curb. All of a sudden training is seen as a luxury instead of the critical piece that makes the difference between growing a successful VA business, and just staying status quo.

Developing and growing yourself personally and professionally becomes more important as soon as you start a business because your clients are looking to you to keep your skills sharp, your technology skills current, and to continue to grow in your industry. So what are you doing? How much money do you put toward continuing education?

Pushing through poverty

My mom is a single mother who did all she could to raise three wonderful girls living one paycheck away from complete poverty every day of our growing lives. So, sure it didn’t mean new clothes, and yes we shopped the dented can aisles, but our poverty didn’t stop my mom from wanting other things for us like a home and great education.

To this day, my mom still lives in the first home she ever purchased 38 years ago. She was able to do this through a program started by a group of nuns to help low income families purchase homes in the city, and my mom qualified. My mom made the most of that house by modeling for us the gift of sharing. There were many families that she helped by allowing them to stay with us in our two bedroom, one bath home. Some families had lost everything, and needed the respite to regroup and rebuild. My mom never accepted a dime. She just wanted them to be able to have a stronger start when they left.

My mom took the same stance with our education. While it always stretched her, she made sure we had a good education. So, in our high school years she sent us to Catholic School. My mom is a true example to me, and my family, of how you don’t let your situation determine who you are, but you use it to make you stronger, better, and caring no matter what.

I was happy to write this post today in honor of poverty awareness, and highlight my mom who taught me, and my sisters, that poverty is not an ugly word, but a horrible situation that with the help of a community people can really push through it.

Know the lingo

What’s up? ... How’s it hanging? ... Totally gnarly! .... Dude ... Twitterverse ... Tweeps ... Pokes... Pieces of flair...  These are samplings of lingo from various social networking sites (i.e.: LinkedIn, MySpace, Twitter, Facebook, etc.).

As times change, language changes, and dictionaries try to keep up with it, but the pace is moving so rapidly people are creating online dictionaries for the many genres. I am a new fan of Twitter. I love the instant updates; I’m excited about who will reply to what I’ve written; and I’m having a ball making new contacts. Yet, the phrases people use, and the tools they’ve discovered to make posting easier, are still mind boggling to me. So, I did a little research!

If you’ve been wondering, “is it Twit or Twet,” then you need this glossary. Not only is it full of great words to use, my new fav (Twitterized – shorten to save characters since you only get 140 to tell people what you’re up to) is Twittcrastination - avoiding action while Twittering, procrastination enabled by Twitter use. I believe there are quite a few of us experiencing this as we get wrapped up in what’s going on in the Twitterverse.

If you would like to add more functionality to your Twittabilities, here is just one of many toolkits with various applications you can add to enhance your Twitterperience. I know, enough already with the Twitter prefixes. But you get the point. There are ways to make this new media adaptable to your life without it totally consuming you. So, embrace these new ways of connecting, and have fun!

 

Games I play

I am recognizing a pattern in my life. It started with the introduction of Sudoku, and next came Facebook. Now, I'm spending my days preoccupied with Twitter. Twitter is my newest obsession. These are what Dawn Goldberg referred to as shadow activities in her October 2006 blog post.

I spend quite a bit of my spare time engaging in shadow activities. I must admit, I sometimes get caught up in them during work hours as well. Just yesterday, I noticed that my left eye started twitching. I did a quick search on Web MD and discovered that it may be due to my HOURS of Solitaire on my Treo. Ahh my Treo, that’s what I used to type this lovely piece, along with my foldable keyboard. My Treo is a vehicle for access my shadow activities. I use it to keep up with my Twitter peeps, play my games (several of them), and to type blog posts.

Anyway, I need distractions in my day. Believe it or not, they help me to refocus. Each time I complete a certain task within a certain time I distract myself with a game. I just have to remember to go back to work, and usually when I do I’m much more alert and productive. It’s probably the reward stimulus that does it for me.

So, share - dish on yourself- what are some of your shadow activities?