sacha chua living an awesome life

I’m starting to accumulate a backlog of things to write about. Life is too interesting to capture, and yet too interesting to let slip!

• Check out the Smarter Work Jam to brainstorm what a smarter organization might look like. The kick-off videocast was good – got to hear from the author of “Wisdom of Crowds”.
• Today was the last class in the “Taking the Stage” women’s leadership development program at IBM. The key thing I took away from that session was the importance of being present and sharing your energy. The improv classes I’ve been taking are a surprisingly good complement to that session, as they help me practice being in the moment and making eye contact with, listening to, and responding to people. Next steps for me: continue to take improv classes, work on figuring out more of myself, and share what I’ve learned with people. Oh, and put together tips on remote presence, as I seem to have stumbled across some things that work.
• I remembered that I really don’t like traveling because I hate being away from home, making arrangements for transportation, and rearranging schedules. The less travel I do, the better. I’ll just have to get really good at connecting and learning online.
• Had a great chat with Martin Cleaver yesterday about entrepreneurship and jobs. He’s currently independent, but is thinking of trying the corporate world again.
• Brought my handmade lunch bag to work today. Yay!
• Had lunch with someone who wanted to know about the awesome stuff I get to do for work. Yay passing on career advice!
• Got a lift from David Ing (one of my mentors). On the way downtown, he shared lots of tips on facilitation.
• Last class of Improv 101 was great. We played through the first scenes of an Armando again. Still haven’t made it to the second set of scenes, but that’s okay – maybe in the next series of classes. Annie (our teacher) gave us all feedback. She said I’m good at developing strong characters. To improve, she suggested that I work on creating characters who aren’t endearing, as all the characters I played that day had at least a little bit of niceness about them. (Yes, even when I was playing someone conning someone else…) Given that I don’t actually swear in real life and generally don’t find myself in nasty situations, this could be a challenge, but it’s all for fun.
• First class of Improv 201 was great. Am starting to get the hang of the Threads game, helped with lots of eye contact. Our instructor (Matt) likes doing a lot of side-coaching, tweaking the scene while we’re playing. I like that because the scaffolding helps us learn and we get to explore different ways of doing things.
• The zucchini is taking over the backyard. Next year, I’m going to plant it towards the back, where the wild things are. ;)
• Biking is lots of fun and a great way to get around. Next week, I’ll try biking to work.

I am looking forward to sleeping in this weekend, and to fleshing out these quick points.

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