Discovering yourself through blogging
2011 interview conducted by Holly Tse and Sacha Chua
Transcribed by Sacha Chua

You can find this blog series at
http://sachachua.com/blog/speaking/discovering-blogging/ and other
blog posts at http://sachachua.com. Connect with me on Twitter!
http://twitter.com/sachac

Available under Creative Commons Attribution License
(http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.5/)

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*Holly Tse:* All right, good evening, and welcome to the Lotus
 Blossoming Telesummit. My name is Holly Tse. I'm your host for
 tonight, and joining us this evening is Sacha Chua. Sacha Chua is a
 Generation Y tech evangelist, and she's passionate about blogging,
 and she's been writing her own blog since 2002. So, if you've been
 thinking about starting a blog, or you have a blog and it doesn't
 seem to be going anywhere, or even if you're a seasoned blogger,
 you'll enjoy Sacha's enthusiasm and you'll probably pick up some
 great ideas tonight. So, welcome, Sacha, thank you for joining us.

*Sacha Chua:* Thank you very much! I'm looking forward to things we'll
 find out in the conversation, particularly as I've managed to
 convince you to get into blogging again!

*HT:* Yes, it will be interesting to find out. I also want to mention
 that Sacha invites everyone to submit their questions live right now.
 If you're on the webcast, you can type into the Q&A box, and if
 you're on the phone... You have to press..

*SC:* Oh, just use the webcast. 

*HT:* Yeah, probably the webcast is easier, yeah.

*SC:* if you are listening to the recording, though, please feel free
 to drop by my blog. I'm at livinganawesomelife.com. That's
 livinganawesomelife.com. If you ask your questions there, I'd be
 happy to help.

*HT:* That's Sacha. She's so comfortable with technology. You can ask
 and she can talk at exactly the same time. That is awesome. So,
 Sacha, I wanted to ask you--because you have a really fresh
 perspective on blogging--how would you define what a blog is and how
 does that differ from what the "experts" say?

*SC:* Well, really, what a blog is, at its very core, is it's just a
 list of entries that are ordered in chronological order. It's usually
 the newest items first, and you go backwards from there. Now, many
 people think, Oh, blog, that's for self-promotion, personal branding,
 or search engine optimization, or all of these new buzzwords that
 have sprung up around it. But you know, it's actually a really,
 really useful tool to just practise writing and thinking about your
 life and figuring things out. And not only is it helpful to do that
 for yourself, but when you start sharing it with other people--and
 here's the difference between having a journal and using a blog--when
 you start sharing your stories with other people, you'd be surprised
 at the kinds of insights that you get from other people: the lessons
 they'll share, the encouragement they'll share, and also the ways
 that you get to help other people too.

*HT:* So, can you give us examples, then, from your own life and your
 own blog, where blogging has led to some unexpected benefits?

*SC:* One of my unexpected benefits from this blog... A couple of
 years ago, I was in the habit of posting not just my thoughts, but
 also my to-do list online. It got to the point where I was feeling a
 little bit embarrassed because there were certain things I knew I had
 been procrastinating for weeks, such as going to the bookstore and
 buying this particular book that I'd heard about but hadn't gotten
 around to reading. So I'd been procrastinating it for a good long
 while, and finally, someone went and bought me the book. Those are
 the funny things that happen when you share bits and pieces of your
 life online.

 But I've also come across situations where I'm writing about
 something I'm figuring out, whether it's my decision to take piano
 lessons or to stop taking them, or things I'd like to learn, my
 experiences with all these different hobbies and interests like
 woodworking or sewing, or all these things I've been trying in my
 life, right... and to be able to use that to reach out to somebody I
 would never have thought of e-mailing or finding elsewhere on the
 Web, and then having a friendship grow out of that. So it's been
 really, really helpful, particularly as I-- hard to tell from my
 voice, but--I feel rather introverted, especially around crowds, so
 this is a great way for me to get the conversation going without
 actually having to start conversations myself.

*HT:* I have been reading your blog and you keep saying you're
 introverted, but... it doesn't come across in your blog that you are.

*SC:* We often think that introverts have to be these people who find
 it really difficult to communicate, people who like spending time by
 themselves... Well, you know, we all find different ways of dealing
 with things. My favourite way of spending my evening is still staying
 at home and maybe doing a lot of reading or writing. I find
 conferences and networking events really intimidating. But on the
 other hand, when you talk about reaching people online, talking to
 them, maybe even becoming friends with people I've never really met
 or maybe I've only met once or twice... There's nothing stopping
 people from doing that, and in fact, it actually really helps,
 because then you're not always trying to make small talk about the
 same topics. You can actually get to really deep conversations that
 have built on other conversations.

*HT:* Yeah, you mentioned to me that you have 2,000 readers for your
 blog. Now, how did that grow to that level?

*SC:* Oh, one reader at a time, I'd guess. I started off writing just
 about very technical things. I'd been using my blog as a way to take
 notes in university, so I wrote about my philosophy classes, computer
 science, and some of the open source programs I was working on. As I
 started publishing my notes, I saw that, hey, you know, this is a
 great way to learn from other people. I'd write about something, and
 then always, someone would come along with an even better way to do
 things, or would come along and say, "Thank you for sharing that. You
 saved me five minutes" or "...two hours", or "You saved me a day of
 searching around and trying things out."

 As I figured out that hey, this is really useful for technical
 discovery, I started using it as well to write about other things I
 was figuring out. Personal finance, life after university... all
 these things.

 I guess people like the fact that I'm figuring things out, I'm
 optimistic about, I'm trying my best to write about all these
 different things that I'm learning because I know that if I don't
 write it down, I'm going to forget, and then I'm going to have to go
 through the entire process of learning things again. Whereas if I
 write things down, then other people might be able to learn from that
 too.

*HT:* It sounds like a really good learning tool for yourself and for others, then.

*SC:* In fact, a lot of people have started looking at blogs and
 social networks in terms of personal learning networks (PLN). So
 that's the educational jargon around it: personal learning networks.
 It's not just about the notes that you keep. If you think about the
 kinds of blogs that you'd like to subscribe to so that you can learn
 from something from them, the kinds of people who inspire you--role
 models--because you can probably find their blogs or find them on
 social networks and add that kind of regular inspiration to life.

 There's so much that you can learn that isn't in a textbook or isn't
 in a commercial page or all that stuff. You can learn from people's
 stories, and that's an incredible thing. If you have a blog, then you
 can tell your own stories, and you can write about what all these
 other things make you think. How they inspire you. How you're putting
 that inspiration to good use in your life. It's an excellent way to
 build those relationships.

*HT:* You mentioned social media, so... If you have a blog, how does
 Facebook and Twitter fit into the mix? Do they need to fit in the
 mix?

*SC:* You can if you want to. You don't have to. What I often find is
 that my blog is the primary place where I put things, because a
 third-party company like Facebook or Twitter--sometimes they change
 their mind about what you can do with your stuff. So I put almost
 everything on my own blog. If I think other people might find it
 useful, I might post a link and share it with somebody or share it
 with everybody on Twitter or Facebook.

 It also works the other way too. I might have a conversation with
 someone on Twitter. Most recently, actually - last Friday, I was
 having a conversation with people on Twitter about creativity. And it
 made me stop and think about what I think about creativity and
 stereotypes and "left-brain" and "right-brain" stuff that most people
 think of when it comes to that. You know, "I'm not creative because
 my work involves numbers or code or whatever, and creativity is
 drawing and painting and whatever." Anyway, it made me think about
 all this stuff, and I wrote about it, and then I took that and shared
 that back into Twitter. So it feeds itself.

 On the other hand, if you're not on Twitter or Facebook, you can
 still blog. It's a great way to write, and it's a great way to get
 your thoughts out there, too.

*HT:* Okay. I'm going to tell you my situation. I'm a full-time mom. I
 look after my son. My day can go from 6:30 AM to 8:00 PM at night,
 which is actively looking after my son. That doesn't include cooking
 or prepping for meals or shopping or me time (and I say that with a
 little laugh). I don't have a lot of time. Right now, I'm in the
 middle of running a telesummit. I've got a couple of interviews I
 need to record this week. Just before I connected with you, I was
 busily putting spices on top of personal pita pizzas so that I could
 get them in the oven, have them cooked, take them out to the backyard
 to give to my husband and son. They're outside because my son is a
 toddler and he likes to yell, so they're graciously going outside so
 that you won't hear them during this call. In fact, this might be the
 only telesummit in the world where I have a cat and a toddler who
 occasionally co-host with me. So this is my situation. I honestly
 don't have a lot of time. So, convince me: why should I start a blog?

*SC:* It's actually interesting, because you're a parent, full-time,
 very busy taking care of very important things in your life... There
 are a lot of bloggers whose lives are like that. This entire
 mommy-blogging phenomenon has really taken off. People [even] make
 good money doing this too. They're writing about the things they
 learn. There's a ton of learning when you're raising kids, of course,
 and so they do that and they share their stories and that's totally
 all right. For a lot of these mommy bloggers or parent bloggers -
 part of it is that sense of being able to take a step back out of a
 very busy and a very hectic day, have a little time for yourself,
 have a little bit of adult reflection time so that you don't go
 crazy. Part of it is that desire to remember these days. People are
 writing about what it's like to go through their pregnancies or their
 first days of anticipation, or the very firsts - you know, all these
 milestones. And the seconds, and the thirds, because all these things
 are special. You know that soon enough, the years will pass, and then
 it will be hard to remember what it felt like. If you're writing
 about that...

 So there's carving out time for yourself, the ability to remember,
 and the ability to connect with people. Especially when your schedule
 is all crazy - especially with people who have really young kids
 whose sleep schedules haven't sorted out yet - it can be really hard
 to plan social get-togethers. But if you're connecting with people
 through the storytelling, through blogging, then you've got a little
 bit of that sense of what's going on, and you can connect with
 people, and you can share your stories about what's happening in your
 life. You might be sharing this with just family. You might be
 sharing this with friends. You might be sharing this with new
 friends, and strangers you haven't met yet. So it's a great way to
 take care of the social interaction and the learning and all of these
 wonderful things.

 Now, in terms of freeing up additional time for sanity and other
 priorities in life... One of the other things I discovered while
 writing about all these little productivity tips that I was exploring
 was the idea of cooking a lot of things at once. And yes, you're
 thinking this is probably not very possible considering you've got so
 many things to organize, and you've got a kid and a husband and all
 that stuff... But we've switched over to cooking maybe once a week or
 if we're lucky, once every two weeks, just going through lots of lots
 of food - chopping it all up, cooking it all up, and then freezing it
 nicely - we've got this chest freezer that we stash things in now,
 and that saves us time too. You can find a lot of people writing
 about their experiences doing things like this: once-a-month cooking,
 or every so often, they cook, or they split things up and they share
 it with other families they know...

 So no matter what it is, there are other people who have been in your
 situation. There are other stories you can learn from. If you write
 about it, then you're also asking yourself these questions,
 reflecting on it, figuring out how you can make things better, even
 if it's just a bit a time. Blogging is just that extra little bit
 that helps you have that habit of reflection and improvement and then
 connect with all these other amazing people. So you can get most of
 the benefits by reading other people's stories, and gradually
 improving your life, but it's so much more when you can write about
 it and afterwards, look back and see how much your life has changed,
 see all the different things you've learned, and pass those on to
 other people, too.

 You're not hopeless. People have survived things like that before.
 There is always time for things that are important to you, and
 blogging can actually help you save time.

*HT:* You've given me some great reasons there. First, it can allow me
 to carve out some time for myself for reflection. It can help me
 remember what's going on in my life and in my son's life as he
 develops--

*SC:* And don't forget your husband!

*HT:* --my husband too, and it's a great way to connect with other
 people who are going through similar situations. So.

 I actually know two moms--I'm going to just throw it out there,
 because they'll probably catch the replay, I'll actually ask them
 to--because I know two moms who have been talking and talking and
 talking about starting a blog. They haven't started. One of them, she
 has a blog, but she kinda [mothballed] it a bit. She's busy. She has
 a seven-month-old. I know, when you've got a baby, it's a little bit
 more challenging to find the time. But the other one, she has time,
 so I think... I'm going to throw it out there and hope that they're
 inspired to start a blog. What would you advise them for someone to
 get started? What's the quickest way to get started?

*SC:* I think the quickest way to get started is to ditch your
 expectations. A lot of people think: Oh, I'm going to start a blog,
 but it has to be really interesting, and it has to get plenty of
 comments on the first day in order for it to be worthwhile. That
 doesn't really happen. What you want to do is you want to write just
 for yourself. Whether you want to start off writing a private blog or
 a journal, or maybe you want to just go ahead and tell stories even
 if no one's around to listen to them... It's already worth it, just
 for you. It's already worth it if you can write down a single thing
 that you learned that day, or once small thing that you would like to
 do better the next day. If you can keep doing that, then you're going
 to get better at remembering all these little things that you
 would've forgotten. Being able to get a sense of perspective about
 how far you've come. Being able to figure out, okay, how can I build
 on these improvements further?

 I think that if you change your expectations to that--so instead of
 thinking, oh, I'm going to write this, but then I have to be famous
 and then people have to comment, and get to be like a New York Times
 columnist--to: I'm just going to write about my life. Something
 small. It doesn't have to be profound. It doesn't have to be
 interesting. It's okay to bore yourself. In fact, you might as well
 do that, because you have to dig deeper to find all these things that
 only in hindsight turn out to be interesting.

 Anyway. It's okay to bore yourself. It's okay to write small, simple
 things, just slices of daily life, just questions and ideas to help
 you grow. That is totally okay.

 You don't see a lot of that advice in books about blogging because
 they're all focused on--well, not all, but many of them are focused
 on how people can grow side businesses through blogs, or how they can
 change their search engine rankings. You know what? You can use a
 blog to just write, to explore, to ask questions, and maybe connect
 with other people, and that is totally all right.

*HT:* Now, it's interesting that you mention that you may bore
 yourself at first. You said that you need to dig deeper to find the
 interesting gems. Can you share more about that, please?

*SC:* This is totally something that happens. You don't understand
 these patterns until you start writing. You know how you end up
 talking about some topics again and again, because it turns out those
 are the things that you're really interested in? Or you might think,
 oh, I think I'm going to be interested in sewing, but then if you
 look at what you actually do day by day, it doesn't really rank high
 on your list. When you start capturing these things in your life in a
 form that you can look back on, whether it's keeping track of how
 you've been spending your time or going back over your archives and
 seeing what you write about, the things that you keep coming back
 to--the things that you keep talking about, the things you keep
 writing about--those are the things that have a lot of interest for
 you. The more that you think about them, the more you learn about
 them. I can write about a lot of things again and again, and I'll
 keep learning something about them. I can write about time, I can
 write about personal finance, I can write about cats... There's just
 so much to untangle, to discover about these things. It's okay to
 write about something again and again because there's something more
 you can learn from it, and there's something more you can share with
 other people.

 Most of this will be boring, especially if you haven't had a lot of
 practice writing. The first few times around, you'll be thinking, oh,
 my grammar is kinda funny and I've got typos here and there, and it's
 _boring._ No one is ever going to read this. I've looked at my blog
 archives. I sat down and read through everything--not in one
 sitting--but I read through every single post that I'd written. From
 2002 to 2007, I was writing about technical things that were probably
 interesting to just me and maybe five other people. Anyway, it was
 there. It was only later, after I'd figured out more in this process
 that I realized that okay, here's where I don't agree with other
 people. Here's where I want to explore something different. It's only
 when you can write past that, when you can tell the difference
 between what you're supposed to think and what you actually think, or
 where you are and where you want to be... And you don't get there
 without thinking a lot about it, without writing it down.

 Writing down is important. If you're just thinking about it, you can
 fool yourself into thinking: this is what I'm really interested in,
 this is where I've got a clear opinion. When you write it down,
 you've got to be honest with yourself, and then you find out whether
 you're making sense or not. Most of the time--especially in the
 beginning--you're not going to make sense. That's okay.

*HT:* So, I have to ask you then... When you started blogging, or even
 today, do you ever sometimes read your posts and go, "Man, I'm
 boring, and oops, I think my grammar's funny"?

*SC:* Occasionally, I let embarrassing typos slip through. A lot of
 the times, I'm looking back at my posts from two years or six months
 ago and I'm thinking, "I wrote that?" Most of the time, it's a good
 "I wrote that?" though. Sometimes it's a "Wow, I've come a long way
 since then" kind of "I wrote that?" But it's fascinating because when
 you give yourself enough time to be unfamiliar with the things that
 you've written down -- which means that you've been writing for a
 while and you've made a habit of it -- and you have it in a way that
 you can refer back to, not like... So, in my pre-blogging days, I
 kept a journal sporadically. Most of the time, I'd get a fourth of
 the way through a notebook and then I'd misplace it, or I'd lose
 interest in all that stuff, and it would be hard to go back to those
 notes again.

 But with a blog, especially with a blog that's backed up, I can go
 back to old stuff. And that's how I can see, oh yeah, here's where my
 thinking is different now. Back then, I used to think that having a
 relationship would get in the way of the cool things I want to do
 with my life. Now I can see that having a good relationship can
 support the things I want to do with my life. You get to do that kind
 of spot-the-difference thing, and that helps you learn even more
 about who you are and who you want to be.

 So yeah, I've had those moments. I've had bugs in my published code.
 I've embarrassing typos. I've had places where I was just plain
 wrong, and places where I've changed my opinion, but that's part of
 being human. All in all, I'm really glad I've got that record.

*HT:* Now you mentioned that when you had a written journal that you
 wrote it in rather sporadically. I know with your blog, you write
 more often. Do you have a recommendation as to how often someone
 should blog?

*SC:* As often as you'd like to. Which is to say that you should never
 beat up for not writing often, and you should never beat yourself up
 for forgetting to write. It doesn't matter if you come back to it
 after a couple of months or whatever. The thing that really helps me
 write regularly is that I don't just use this as a way to look back.
 I don't just see it as a way to build audience or do other things
 like that. I use my blog as a way to figure things out. Whether it's
 "Do I replace the dead battery in my laptop? What are the pros and
 cons... Do a cost-benefit analysis..." (turned out to be worth it, so
 I did go ahead and do that) - so, making decisions, or whether I want
 to use it to do a quick review of what happened in the last week,
 what do I want to do in the next week, how do I want to improve
 things a little bit further... to things like, here's a little thing
 I'm going to forget, but I'm going to need it sometime in the future,
 so I'm going to stick it in here so that I can Google it. This has
 happened. I have searched for stuff, found the answer on my blog,
 completely forgotten that I'd written it, but have been so glad that
 I did.

 So yeah, write as often as these situations occur to you. I write
 whenever I'm trying to figure things out, or when I want to remember,
 or when I want to share something with other people. Let's say
 somebody e-mails me a question I think other people might be
 interested in the answer to. I'll write it on my blog and send them a
 link. That way, it's there for search engines. It's there for other
 people who want to share it...

 There's always those stories and tidbits. It's not that you're going
 to have any lack of material. There are a lot of stories you can
 tell. If you take the story that you care most about telling, and you
 do this as often as you'd like to build the habit... I block out time
 daily now, because I get fidgety if I don't write for a long time.
 Block off some time to do it, whether it's daily or weekly, or
 whenever you feel like doing it, whenever you've got a story to tell
 or something to figure out, and _write._

*HT:* So you don't need to be a skilled writer, like a journalist, to
 have your own blog.

*SC:* You don't get to be a skilled writer until you write. This is
 something surprising, but it is true. You don't expect to sit down at
 your computer and be the next Stephen King or Stephanie Meyer or
 whoever else you want to look up to. But you don't get to that part
 until you write. Even if you never get to the part of being a
 professional Writer (with a capital W), the fact that you've got
 these notes and they make sense to you--maybe they don't make sense
 to anybody else, but they make sense to you--even if they don't make
 sense to you after half a year... As long as you're going through
 that thinking process, it's already okay. You don't have to win a
 Pulitzer Prize, you've just got to write about your life.

*HT:* I think it's a great time for you to share how you did in
 English class in school, and why--

*SC:* I did _terribly_ in English class in school. I'm particularly
 good at taking standardized tests. It's a little bit of probability
 and you rule out a couple of questions and all of that stuff...
 Anyway, what happened was that I did really well on the entrance test
 for my school, so they put in Merit English. Merit English consisted
 of sitting around in a circle with other similarly "gifted" students
 discussing English literature. Which is all very nice and good, but
 wasn't something I really was interested in. Even then, I read a lot
 more nonfiction than I read fiction. So we were sitting around this
 circle discussing the Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock and the irony
 therein... As I was telling you in our previous chat, back then, I
 was, "I'm a programmer. I don't do irony. I want things to mean what
 they say and say what they mean." So writing for me got stereotyped
 as this terrible effort to write something--an essay, a book report,
 a term paper--that ended up being measured against somebody else's
 yardstick. You're writing for somebody else, a teacher who... I felt
 like I was making stuff up. I've since then made peace with these
 teachers. (Facebook friends, we're talking, we have conversations and
 all that...)

 But it took me until past university, when I figured out that writing
 is a great way to learn about life. I went from taking my technical
 notes to writing about this cooking thing can be actually (inaudible)
 sometimes... So I was writing about my CookOrDie project. Writing
 about that, and writing about all the other things I was learning,
 was the thing that unlocked it for me. This idea that writing isn't
 just something you do in school!

 Writing is a tool for thinking, because it slows things down enough
 for you to look at it. As I'm talking at my usual nervous speed here,
 things are flying by pretty fast, right? I'm not going to remember a
 lot of these things until I go back and I write things down and I
 think through, hey, what did I want to say here, or what else do I
 want to do... Thought and speech and life move by so quickly. If you
 slow things down enough to write just a little bit about it, then you
 have something more to work with. I didn't know that when I was in
 school. I'm glad I learned that, and I want other people to discover
 just how useful that is, because life moves too fast, and it's great
 to be able to slow this down.

*SC:* Have you ever noticed that life also goes too slowly?

*HT:* It can, yeah.

*SC:* Especially when things are changing just a little bit at a time.
 So you're looking at your son, for example, and he's changing. He's
 in the early years, so he's changing a lot, every month, but you'll
 get to the point where today is kinda like yesterday, and the next
 day is kinda like today, and the day after that is kinda like the day
 before it. All these little changes are harder to see, but if you're
 writing, you've got that record -- even if you're writing once a week
 about what you're seeing and what you're observing -- then you can
 look back and say, "Oh yeah, a year ago, you were still learning how
 to speak." "Oh yeah, five years ago you were still learning the
 multiplication table." "Look at how far you've come." Imagine how
 much he's learned since then!

 Life goes too fast, but it also goes too slow, and so writing becomes
 your way to get it to work at the pace at the pace that you can work
 with.

*HT:* This is a good point to share with people... People might think,
 okay, Sacha, you're Generation Y, you're in your twenties... What can
 you talk about motherhood? Do you want to share about your
 experience?

*SC:* I can't talk much about motherhood. I've got a sneak preview
 here. I have a stepdaughter. She's 13. What I'm learning from that is
 that kids are learning all these incredible things. We've started
 doing math study groups. We nudge her to learn more about spelling
 and math and science and all of these things... But just watching
 what she's learning... She actually has a blog too. She updates it
 sporadically. She talks about what she's learning at school and her
 favourite video games and all these other things. Just looking at how
 people are learning, and learning from their stories as well--that's
 incredible. Whether you have kids or whether you don't, whether
 you've got nieces and nephews or you don't, whether you're learning
 from your coworkers or people who are older than you, there's so much
 you can learn from other people's stories.

 It's a little difficult for people to tell everybody all the stories
 that might be relevant to them. It's such a good thing when you can
 come across people who are also in the habit of sharing their stories
 with anyone in the very efficient way of doing it through a blog.

*HT:* I heard you mention a lot about a blog being about sharing
 stories. We have a question here about Charles from Sydney. He's
 asking, "What happens when you blog about something that's private or
 could offend others if you were to publish it?" For example, he wants
 to write a blog article about the bad manners he encounters at his
 workplace, particularly inappropriate use of smartphones. What advice
 do you have?

*SC:* It's a tough question, especially since even with how careful I
 am on my blog to not offend anyone, I've accidentally offended people
 before. One time I was writing about my teaching reflections. I was
 teaching computer science in university, and I was writing about what
 I was learning in the process. The example I often bring in here is
 the Sartrian existentialism we learned about in philosophy classes in
 school where when you make a choice, it's as if you were choosing for
 everybody. In this case, my writing about what I wanted to do made
 this friend of mine feel that I was criticizing the way he taught. We
 had a bit of a fight about that. But in terms of offending people...
 Accidentally offending people, there's not much you can do, because
 you can't control other people's reactions. When you're writing about
 something sensitive that you know might offend people... I often like
 to step back and look for the really, really positive way to look at
 it. Not the fake-positive and not the constructive-criticism "I will
 smile as I will tear you apart" -- which unfortunately is the way
 most people put constructive criticism -- more along the lines of
 "This is what we've got. What are some small things _I_ can do to
 make this better?" When you're talking about what _you_ can do,
 whether it's... In terms of modifying other people's smartphone use,
 maybe I'll take my conference calls elsewhere, or maybe I'll mentally
 rehearse different things that I can say to people in case their
 conversations are disturbing me.

 When you're focused on what you can do about it, then you come across
 less "this is what you should do" and high-and-mighty and whatever
 else. Trying to bring that incredibly positive "Well, here's where we
 are; let's figure out how we can move forward" approach to it will
 probably will do you much more good. It will probably make you feel
 better in real life also!

*HT:* Once again, it's like using your blog to figure things out. In
 this case, it's a way to take a step back and try to step away from
 the heated emotion you might feel, and to think of a way to
 constructively write it... and that might result in a constructive
 way to approach it in real life.

*SC:* That reminded me of a time when someone close to me said
 something pretty mean--thoughtlessly mean, but still pretty mean--to
 me. I stopped and I thought about it. I managed to slow down and
 respond nicely during the situation itself. Afterwards, also, I
 stopped and I thought about it. I thought, well, how would I like to
 respond in the future, too? Do I want to take the approach I did
 (stay calm, don't take it personally, and all that stuff)? I realized
 that having that space -- being able to decide what kind of response
 I'd like to have, and maybe even rehearsing some of the things I
 might do in the future when faced with a situation like this --
 really really helped. It's like a fire drill. The next time you find
 yourself in a situation like that, you're not going for the knee-jerk
 reaction. You've already thought: okay, for the kind of person I want
 to be, this is how I want to respond. And I want to respond with
 love, even though sometimes people have a harder time maintaining
 their self-control. It happens. People are human, and that's okay.

*HT:* So I take it then that you blogged about the incident too.

*SC:* I did. I wrote about it because people run into these
 situations. If what I've written or what I've thought about can help
 somebody else put in that little bit of a gap between something bad
 happening--someone saying something mean to you, or someone doing
 something that annoys you--that gap between that stimulus and your
 response to it--and the quote by Victor Frankl is one of the things I
 used in that post as a point of reflection... Between that stimulus
 and response is our freedom to choose our reaction. Writing about it,
 thinking about it--bringing your conscious or more positive or more
 loving mind to bear on it--really really helps.

 I should say that it is also possible to use all of this writing and
 blogging to descend into a vicious circle of feeling really really
 bad. For example, if you wanted to take this as an opportunity to
 rant about all the things that are going badly in your life, and how
 miserable you are and all that stuff... Being able to look back at
 your archive will probably make you feel a lot worse. It's a powerful
 tool. Be careful with it. Try to focus on the things that you'd like
 to see, because people do tend to find what they're looking for. I
 like to focus on the really really good stuff, and I'm surrounded by
 it, surprisingly enough.

*HT:* Very true. We actually had a speaker last week talking about the
 "law of attraction" and she basically says the same thing. From a
 spiritual, metaphysical perspective, what you focus on, you attract
 into your life. You're a great example of someone who's very
 positive, and you're surrounded by positive influences

*SC:* I wouldn't go so far to call it the "law of attraction", which I
 don't quite subscribe to. I'd say that you get better at seeing the
 things you're looking for. For example, if you're writing about the
 things that you're grateful for--which is a great practice, by the
 way, if you need cheering up or if you want to make your life extra
 happy--if you're writing about the things that you appreciate and are
 grateful for, then you get better at recognizing and appreciating
 those things. If you write about how you want to improve things, then
 day by day, you'll find more opportunities to improve your life. It's
 amazing when you build that habit of asking yourself these questions,
 or looking for the bright side of things... You do get better and
 better at it. And why, yes, I do have a blog post about this too. I
 think I called it the martial art of happy-do.

*HT:* We have another question here from Charles. He's asking, "Can
 you comment on the benefit you've made by preparing yearly digests of
 your blog in PDF format and printing out your blog?" He says he
 always enjoys reading your annual review of your life.

*SC:* Awww... So I started keeping a paper backup of my blog after my
 mom inspired me, because she started printing out my stuff too. Also,
 it's kinda fun to flip through what you've actually written. We don't
 have any visuals now, but I've got this thick binder that's maybe
 3-4" thick, double-sided printed paper with two columns printed on
 it, and all of that stuff... I've been writing for a while. You don't
 have to write that much. It's okay. But it is fun being able to look
 at it. Every year -- sometimes twice a year, since I tend to do one
 around my birthday and I tend to do one around the Christmas/New Year
 holidays too -- I look back at what I've done over the past 12
 months, where I wanted to be by the time I would've done my review,
 and I match things up. What did I learn?

 When I was doing my most recent review -- when I turned 28 -- I
 flipped back through my blog posts in August 2010, and I started just
 reading forward. As I went through things, I was, like, "Oh yeah,
 this was the year that we disassembled the washing machine and
 managed to successfully put it back together!" Yes. We had to do that
 to get the 27" machine down a 26" hallway or something like that.
 Anyway. It was quite an adventure, and the blog post is on my blog,
 of course. Little things like that, that I might otherwise be really
 fuzzy about remembering ("Oh yeah, we did this some time ago, but I
 don't really know when")... It was there, in my blog, and it reminded
 me about other things. Reading about all these things reminded me
 about things I hadn't written down, but which has happened anyway.
 It's like being able to take a step back and bring up all those
 different feelings and ideas and memories. It's a fantastic thing,
 and I would never have thought that I'd enjoy writing that much.

 Yearly digests. Even if you really just stop, look at what you've
 done, celebrate all these memories... See what you've learned that
 you can share with other people. Then think, okay, what do I want the
 next year to look like? What are some of the ideas here that I want
 to build on?

 I've actually moved away from having bucket list sorts of goals. You
 know how people make lists: I want to climb Mount Everest, I want to
 dive in the Great Barrier Reef, I want to eat at a 5-star
 restaurant... I started feeling like that was like how people collect
 stuff, except this is collecting experiences. It's cool for people
 who do that, but after lots of reflection (also on my blog), I
 decided it wasn't really for me at this stage. In terms of saying,
 "What are the things I'd like to learn next year?" "What are the
 ideas I want to focus on?" Next year, I want to focus on slowing down
 and doing things deeply. Doing things well. Writing more. (If that's
 even possible...) But writing, and polishing... I've gotten good at
 building things quickly, trying things out quickly... What can I do
 to make it easier for people to learn from it or make use of it?

 Being able to sketch out this idea for myself, and then over the next
 few months, being able to go back and track how I'm doing with that
 -- whether my goals still call to me or whether I want to shift to
 something else... Having that written down gives me the ability to do
 that, whereas doing some hand-waving or letting the months and the
 days just flow past without any kind of record... This is why people
 wake up and ask, "Where did my life go?" Well, when I wake up, I know
 where my life's going, and I know where my life went, and it'll be
 fun figuring out how much more I can do in the years ahead.

 *HT:* I actually wanted to ask you, speaking of looking forward and
 looking backwards, since this is a telesummit about Asian women
 owning your voices and sharing their voices with the world... Where
 were you born and what is your ethnicity?

 *SC:* I grew up in Manila. My mom and my dad and my middle sister are
 still there. It was actually very difficult to move to Canada in the
 first place. Coming from a tropical country from the Philippines...
 Oookay, winter is really scary. Anyway, I grew up in the Philippines.
 I love love love all sorts of things that I miss from there. Mangoes,
 and my friends, and all of that stuff... And of course, family and
 relatives... anyway, so. The Philippines! And Canada! Now I have two
 homes. I'm definitely Filipino. I will still cook with bagoong and
 patis and try to get by with... In Toronto, it's fantastic. You're
 surrounded by all the different ethnicities. I always hear Filipino
 accents around. It's like being home except it occasionally gets
 cold. Anyway, that's my story. I moved to Canada in 2005 to pursue my
 master's because I was offered a scholarship, and hey, why not... And
 then I fell in love, which is rather inconvenient when you're
 planning to move back home. So that kinda helped me tough it out
 until I discovered the trick to dealing with winter.

 The trick to dealing with winter, by the way, is to call it baking
 season, and then to bake.

*HT:* Yeah, I'm originally from Toronto, I know how cold winter can be up
 there. I'm in California now, so I've turned into a softie now.

*SC:* You get no sympathy from me whatsoever if you complain about the
 weather. Anyway, that's another the blog has really helped me. I've
 been writing about all these stories. I can tell how I grew out of
 most of my homesickness. Still hits every so often, but I can see
 those shifts. I can use these stories to keep in touch with my
 friends back home, and to make new friends here as well. It's been
 really, really helpful for me. Even with Facebook and Twitter and
 Google Plus and all these other social networks, there's still that
 need for a place to tell your own stories, share your pictures, and
 have these conversations without it being fragmented over all these
 different places.

 I was glad that I'd gotten into writing, especially during those
 difficult times. I'm sure that whatever challenges come in the
 future, I will try best to write my way through them.

*HT:* This is a question that probably is worth asking again, because
 Charles has sent another question about your recommendation if you
 should write every day, or every week, or just write when the fancy
 takes us. He says, "I know that having a regular deadline or writing
 quota has a positive benifit." Do you use any deadlines or quotas
 when you're writing your blog?

*SC:* In terms of choosing a quota for my blog -- and I have a blog
 post about this called "One post a day" -- my quota is actually in
 the reverse direction. I found myself so excited that I was writing
 so much... I thought, well, all these people are getting e-mails, and
 they're subscribed to all this stuff... Maybe I should throttle it
 down to one blog post a day. If you stop and you think about it, you
 learn so much each day. You experience so much each day. If you don't
 have at least one thing worth writing about each day, there's more in
 your life that you can hack and improve. There's so much going on
 each day. For me, blogging has become such a useful tool that I like
 writing every day.

 Some days are a little slower than others. Maybe I have a hard time
 grasping for the right thing to say. I've posted my thoughts on
 grocery shopping, for example. For the most part, I just sit down and
 I think, "What did I learn today that somebody else might want to
 learn?" "What do I want to do to make things better the next day?"
 There's always an opportunity to do this.

 It all depends on your comfort level. You can write every week, every
 month, sporadically if you want to... On the other hand, if you
 flipped it around and you stopped thinking, "I'm going to have to
 blog; what do I blog today?" and you think, "Well, there's so much
 happening in life; what do I want to write about most? What do I most
 want to remember? What do I most want to share?" You're surrounded by
 stories. You're surrounded by ideas. Then you just have to deal with
 the frustration of not being able to get it all out and into other
 people's heads as easily as you want to do so! There's just so much
 to write about. Write as often as you can. Write because it helps
 you, not just because you need to. Write as a way to have fun, and
 learn more about yourself and life and everything.

*HT:* Good answer. Basically, whatever works for you.

*SC:* Whatever works for you, but you know, this writing daily thing
 is actually really really awesome. Of course, I'm going to be nice.
 I'm not going to stand over you with a whip and say, "Back to work!
 You haven't written your blog post for the day." But life is just
 full of awesome amazing things. Even though it seems like sitting
 down and writing for fifteen minutes or thirty minutes is an
 interruption that takes you away from your day, if you flip it
 around--if you write in the process of doing something...

 For example, if I'm working with a particularly knotty programming
 problem or I'm trying to figure out a difficult decision, I'm not
 waiting until the end, when I'm busy and other things demand my time;
 I'm writing in the process of figuring things out. Then, afterwards,
 it's just: Can I tidy these notes up and share them with other
 people? Which parts am I saving in my private notes, and which parts
 am I sharing on my blog? That takes five minutes, ten minutes to
 clean things up for other people after I've been writing in the
 process of learning.

 Something I'd recommend too: don't just sit down and think, "I've got
 to write a blog post; what am I going to write about?" Use it to
 learn. Use it in the process of living. Then decide: Is this
 something I can share with other people? What can I do to this so
 that I can share it with other people? Then you'll find that your
 life is full of material.

*HT:* You also mentioned you're writing to share with other people,
 but you're also writing for yourself. What's the kind of balance
 there...

*SC:* In terms of the stuff I post, a lot of it is for me. A lot of
 the things I publish on my blog are there because I want to look back
 at this forty, fifty, sixty years from now, and I want to be able to
 remember bits and pieces and build on the ideas I had before. A lot
 of this is me. Some of it is answering other people's questions, or
 putting things out there just in case it will help somebody searching
 sometime later.

 There's some public stuff on my blog, but there are also bits and
 pieces that are a bit rough right now, or that need some filling in,
 or that are incomplete and need some thinking about, or that are
 simply private because I haven't figured out a way... Even if you've
 got a publicly okay version of the story, there are all these
 interesting bits and pieces that nobody would quite figure out, and
 there are all these stories I wanted to tell first. So I have these
 private notes too. I don't have quotas for any of them. I write in
 the process of figuring things out, and then I figure out what's the
 widest group I can share this with.

 In fact, my mom used to tell me to e-mail her more often, and I was
 thinking, well, most of the stories that I'd probably e-mail in a
 family update are things I feel comfortable sharing on my blog.
 Again, that push towards sharing things as widely as possible... You
 never know what kinds of ripples they'll trigger, what kinds of
 things you'll learn from other people. Don't worry too much about
 balance. Write. Post as much as you feel comfortable with. Feel free
 to keep private notes. That works too, especially if that helps you
 remember and understand things. Have fun.

*HT:* You must get a quite a number of comments on your blog. Do you
 answer all the comments? What's your opinion on comment etiquette?

*SC:* I do try to answer most of my comments, but what I really really
 like is when people start answering each other in comments. That's
 where I get to learn something extra new. When people comment with a
 question, one of the great things about that... If people e-mail me,
 I'm the only one who gets to see that, unless I post it to my blog
 afterwards. When people leave a comment on my blog--maybe they're
 asking a question or sharing an insight, and sometimes that doesn't
 require a response, such as when they're sharing a story--and it
 prompts somebody else to respond to them, then we all win. That's
 something I would never have thought of, it's outside my experience,
 and yet I get to learn from it because I'm listening in on this
 conversation, and other people are too. I really like comments.

 I would love it if people kept commenting--and people do. They
 comment about the most surprising things, even. I'd write about
 something like burning my pancakes, and I'd get all these comments,
 including lots of tips on how not to burn pancakes. It's surprising
 to see what people resonate with and what people leave comments on.
 I'm so glad that facility is there. If it were just me talking _at_
 people, broadcasting, I'd be limited to what I know. If it's just me
 replying to people's questions, then they're just limited to what I
 know. When the conversation is in comments, then everybody can see
 everybody else. Even better when it's on other people's blog posts
 that link to mine... The conversation does get a little bit harder to
 track, but it's so awesome. Then you get to see people's thoughts in
 depth.

 For example, I'm going to post notes of this on my blog. After the
 teleconference, you can go to livinganawesomelife.com. If you search
 for lotus blossoming summit or if you look in my blogging category,
 you'll find notes like this, and you can go through what other people
 have said. Or, ideally, if you're going to write your own stuff, you
 can link to it. Then I can find your blog post or you can tell me,
 and I can respond to that too. There are all sorts of conversations
 going on at all sorts of levels.

*HT:* So that's livinganawesomelife.com.

*SC:* That's an easier to remember domain name. My name is harder to
 spell for most people. If you want to go to that too - sachachua.com.

*HT:* sachachua.com . It's also on the Lotus Blossoming telesummit site.

*SC:* You can follow me on Twitter, too.

*HT:* We probably have under three minutes left. We've got one more
 question here from Carla, and it seems like the most appropriate
 question to end this. She's asking, "What recommendations would you
 give on which blogging tools to get started easily?"

*SC:* Whichever you find easiest. For most people, that's either
 wordpress.com or blogger.com, or something like that. Wordpress.com
 or blogger.com. The tools don't really matter as much as the attitude
 and the ideas you bring to it. Some tools make it easier to post than
 others. Things like Tumblr or Posterous are also gaining in
 popularity. But what you really want to do is get into the habit of
 thinking, "What do I want to share? What do I want to learn?" Then
 you almost can't help finding tools that fit the way that you work.
 That's the main thing.

*HT:* Wordpress or Blogger, but really, whatever works. Whatever works for you.

*SC:* I think the much more important thing there is the habit of
 saying, "Well, what do I want to learn? What can I share? What's
 different about today? What do I want to remember?" That's probably
 the best tool recommendation I can make - that mental tool of asking
 yourself those questions. Then writing--even if it's boring, even if
 you feel awkward and gangly like a high school student trying to
 figure out what to put in an essay--write for yourself, and you'll
 gradually figure things out.

*HT:* Yes. Very good. It's not just about the technology. It's about
 why you are blogging.

*SC:* It's almost never about the technology. If there's anything I
 can do to help you get started with that, get in touch with me. I'm
 @sachac on Twitter. You can follow the link from there to get to my
 blog if you want to, and you can leave comments on that too.

*HT:* Thank you very much for joining us this evening. I want to say
 to everyone who is listening to us or catching the audio replay
 (which is available for 48 hours after the broadcast), Sacha's so
 enthusiastic about blogging, she convinced me to start blogging
 again, so... Yay! Congratulations Sacha!

*SC:* And this is where you repeat your blog URL so that everyone can check it out.

*HT:* Yes, so it's hollytse.com - I have to spell it out, I have one
 of those names too - hollytse.com.

*SC:* I look forward to finding out about all these wonderful blogs...
 The blogs that you, dear listeners, are going to start or continue...
 I'd love to learn from you and your experiences too. We're all
 figuring things out. No one's a real expert, and we're all going to
 learn from each other's stories.

*HT:* Okay, great! Thank you so much! I hope everyone has a good
 evening and we'll connect in the blogspace.

*SC:* Have fun!

*HT:* Thank you. Good night!