Hi to all my Tarot Friends around the World,

So sorry I have been missing for the last while. A combination of a bad flu dose on top of a heavy exam schedule in college. It will all be over by June so I am just keeping my head down and trying to wade through all the work as best as I can. The annoying thing is that I signed up for this Digital Technology Course to learn the skills that would help me develop my new Truly Teach Me Tarot website which has been sitting waiting for me to finish configuring on WordPress.org. Part of the training involves developing a website and digital marketing campaign for a small to medium enterprise business. Before I signed up for the course I attended an open information day and made inquiries as to whether I could use my own project instead of being assigned one by the college. I explained to them that I could not neglect my own site in order to build one for another. They consulted with the Head of College and I was told that although it had never been done before, they could see no reason as to why I could not work on my own project. I was delighted by this news and duly signed up.

Unfortunately things have not worked out as expected. I have had to plough through module after module of non relevant subjects, many of which I have covered in previous courses. On top of that there have been non-stop tedious assignments which have taken up so much of my time. At the information day, some people asked about the workload and whether it would spill over into our weekends. Some people had weekend jobs or family commitments, and were worried about juggling it all. We were reassured that there would be sufficient time in the class day to complete all assignments. Of course it has not worked out like that. The college lectures are delivered mostly online and at a furious pace. We are introduced to new material before we have had a chance to digest previous stuff. It means information overload and not fully understanding what we are doing. Assignment deadlines are issued quite quickly after lectures and there is a terrible panic to complete them on time.

The result of all this is that my weekends have disappeared along with any other spare time during the weekdays.  It is a four-hour round bus trip to the college in Dublin, so I try to catch up on reading notes during this time. The core subjects I am interested in are only just beginning and I have already fallen behind in these as I have to attend to other subject assignments first. I will have to catch up with the rest at the weekend! Oh, and I have been told that I will only be allowed work on certain parts of my own project as I am still expected to build a website for someone else. To say I am frustrated would be putting it mildly. I have struggled to get some posts out on my own site and to attend to correspondence. My email in-boxes are overflowing but I just haven’t the time to sort it all out. My partner has suggested that I throw it all in and drop out of the course, but he knows that I won’t do that as it is not my style. I have come this far and June is just about within sight. There is a multitude of assignments to get through first however. I also have to build a personal portfolio WordPress site which is part of my grading. I asked if my current site would be sufficient as it is live and built by myself. I also have my new site that is close to completion that could be used too. Two full personally built WordPress sites, one on  .com and the other on .org. Sadly, no I can’t. I have to build a third one. That means even more time, time that I should be spending on my Truly Teach Me Tarot Site.

I have had a few melt downs recently, have dissolved into hysterical crying, wailing that I can’t cope anymore and that it is all too much.  I haven’t been much fun to be around either, and my fingers are twisted and stiff from typing Project Management Plans, Stake Holder Analysis documents, coding web pages and putting together endless Power Point Presentations. I have also discovered that I am useless at Adobe Illustrator and Photoshop. I certainly won’t make it as a graphic designer. It has pretty much been endless pulling of teeth and watching paint dry. I am so much better at creative writing and doing my own thing. I hate the formal and restricted approach to putting business documents together. It is often hard to know what they want and mainly I try to wing it through, throwing in a few industry buzz words here and there, in the hope that I sound like I know what I am talking about. Strangely enough I love medical and legal writing. I suppose they are more interesting.  Odd!

And so I have brought you my rant and feel better now that it is off my chest. I will be back soon, hopefully fired up with new knowledge, and skilled in SEO, Digital Marketing and WordPress Development.  The rest will fade into the past and become history. The pain will ease, my fingers will uncurl and my nightly teeth grinding cease. I might even stop snapping at my partner and boring everyone to death with the ins and outs of angle brackets and syntax errors in html coding. This time too will pass. Normal life will resume and I will notice the colours of summer all around me as I take time to stop and smell the roses. I might even buy myself a new book, something fictional of course.  I will look back fondly on those eight months of student life and declare that it was not too bad after all. Unfortunately I have a lot of work to do before I can put my ‘Happy Fond Reminiscing Hat’ on, so I best sign off now and get back on the treadmill.  See you all soon.

xxx

Vivien (your Tarot Teacher)