On the hunt / by Helen Arase

The last couple of weeks have been both interesting and boring. 

My sister graduated from her master's program with a Magistrate in Philosophy from Concordia University in Montreal - so we all went to Montreal.

I thought it was pretty cool that they had genderless degrees, and I'll admit I never considered that master or doctor were "male" so it's cool that Sophie was able to pick if she wanted to be a master or magistrate. 

So we all flew over there, ate poutine and flew back. 

I shot an assignment around the same time and got the selects back this morning so I'll be doing that today.

from the Santa Monica Kiwanis Club's Make a Mess Day

from the Santa Monica Kiwanis Club's Make a Mess Day

That was the more exciting of the last month. 

I'm job hunting still, yes, but that's not really what I mean by my title today... I'm on the hunt to make myself better and seek out education, opportunity and risks.

When I graduated college and was not working full-time (I guess I've been brought up to consider myself unemployed unless it's full-time but we're not going to unpack that here) I was in a bad place. 

I definitely wallowed in self-pity, but there was genuine self-hate, and the more I sat around with my thoughts of how much I must suck the less motivated I got.

This time around I'm being more proactive. You know, hindsight, 20/20...

I've gone to a journalism mixer, reaching out to people or mutual contacts - which I would never have done before - thinking about the kinds of workshops I can take; I'm not just applying for jobs or whatever from behind a computer. 

It's a weird feeling for me to have confidence. Or like, to be able to show someone my work and not have disclaimers about what I would have done or here's what happened, but to just think that it was my best work. 

For my documentary website, there's a small disclaimer that I'm not a web developer so you have to view it on Chrome but that's because I want you to get the full experience of the material and not frustrated that my coding didn't transfer 100% to all browsers. You know?

Anyway, back to work...