Weekend Roundup
"Above all, try something." Franklin D. Roosevelt
What I've been working on:
Last week I mentioned that it's been busy around RightNow. This week, I felt like I finally got my feet back under me — insert a massive sigh of relief here.
I'd been building out our planning runway for social to be a month, which in theory, was a great idea. After all, I'd have things written and scheduled a month in advance rather than just a week! In practice, though, I hit a few snags.
First of all, it turns out this doesn't really save me any time. Whether I'm planning next week or next month, I'm still spending the same amount of hours mapping out and writing content. Same for our design team, and they don't have the bandwidth to get ahead right now, anyway — one of our designers left right after Christmas, so they're tackling the same (or more) volume of work with less people, currently. (ANYONE KNOW A GRAPHIC DESIGNER? HIT US UP.) Third, a schedule change a couple weeks ago that would normally require some quick adjusting suddenly had an enormous domino effect — I'm still shuffling things around.
And so I made the decision to pull back to a two-week runway. Still a bit ahead, but not so much that we're not nimble. Trial and error, guys. It's the best teacher.
On top of that, another positive result of my (accidental?) experiment was that this week, thanks to the still-month-long runway I'd spent the last few weeks building, I was actually ahead. Used the extra time to work on some platforms I'm less familiar with and... jumped in to help with some design work, actually!
I'm always so tentative to do anything graphic design-related at RightNow, because the guys I work with are amazing, and my inner perfectionist doesn't want to suck in comparison. I managed to shut that down long enough to give it a shot, though, and I'm so glad — I learned a ton just from the little bit I worked on, was proud of my efforts by the end of the week, and was thankful all over again to work with a bunch of people who encourage (and help!) me to learn new things. They answered my questions, gave feedback, and funny enough, never made me feel bad for not instantaneously being great at something they've been doing for years. Amazing, right? Anyway, the takeaway is that I should be taking advantage of the opportunity to learn from my coworkers. Insecurity is the killer of curiosity.
Randoms for your weekend:
This mini-doc of runners doing an informal relay across Bear Ears and Grand Staircase is beautiful. (Check out the photography section, too!)
The Olympics are here and Red Gerard positively stomped the men's slopestyle final for 'Merica's first gold. I've watched this like thirty times now. Help.
I found out about Roads & Kingdoms via the Longform Podcast this past week. Why didn't anyone tell me about this sooner? Huh?
Coming up on the anniversary of sharing my story with disordered eating again. Still the scariest thing I've ever written and still vulnerable whenever I re-share, but I'm not sure anything has been a greater picture of and opportunity for grace in my adult life. Beauty for ashes. <3
