Freelancing Week 1- Networking, Creativity and Self-reflection

This week I learnt about networking, creativity and self-reflection. Firstly, the importance of networking cannot be understated. We looked into the Porter Gale’s book ‘My network is my net worth‘ which explains that meeting people in your personal and professional life has a dramatic effect on your own happiness. Networking can open so many doors for you and will allow you to take opportunities you otherwise may have not got. We also talked about creativity and how to optimise your own creativity and Julia Cameron speaks about the 3-step creative optimisation tool. Firstly, in the morning you should clear your creative memories by writing or scribbling all your thoughts onto a piece of paper. Secondly, you should feed your creativity by doing something you love. Lastly, you should incubate and do this by shutting yourself off by taking a 20 minute walk every day. Lastly, in this session we took part in an exercise where we talked about our aspirations, which for me is radio, and then talked about them in terms of past present and future which were prompted by cards we choose at random which for me were Love (past), Forgiveness (present), Now (future). For me this exercise was very personal and at some points quite cryptic in that I had to find meaning from a word and picture and relate them to radio which was difficult. It did allow me to reflect on some events that have happened to me during my time in radio which maybe will inform my plans for the future.