I started a video series earlier this year that I’ve actually kept going. It’s called #RuthReads, and it’s just me reading a short excerpt from one of my books or one of the books I’m reading.
Now I say, ‘actually,’ because I usually avoid the camera, but I’ve kept doing this because I love reading, love sharing the books I read with others and have actually learned a new skill.
My husband is a photojournalist and I’ve often watched him edit videos. Not that I ever thought, “Oh, that looks easy,” but when I started doing this, I did think, “I’m a graphics person. I can just take a video with my phone and marry the two on Adobe Premiere. I can make this work. This will be great!” And because I am the type of person who learns by doing, I downloaded the program and started mimicking what I saw him do.
They say, “Imitation is the highest form of flattery,” but I’m here to tell you it’s not always the most effective way learning. There’s a lot of trial and error (mostly error), but like I said, I made it work … mostly because I’m reading about the program now instead of pushing buttons until I get it to do what I need it to do <insert sheepish smile>. I’m not going to be switching careers any time soon, but it’s nice to be able to say I can do something new, even if it’s at the most very elementary level.
This is my latest video. You can catch the others on my social media feed. I try to post weekly.
#ruthreads #ruthegriffin #studiogriffin #reader #writer #bookstoread #readmore #bookstobetteryourself
I had to laugh when I read this: “I made it work … mostly because I’m reading about the program now instead of pushing buttons until I get it to do what I need it to do .” You see, for many years I was a tech writer in the software industry, and one of that occupation’s favorite abbreviations was RTFM (read the f***ing manual). Ironically, though, software tech writers are the worst at not RTFM. You get used to working with raw code that has no manual. If you’re lucky, a verbally coherent programmer will explain the program, but most of the time you learn the fine points just by “pushing buttons until I get it to do what I need it to do.”
That made me laugh out loud. RTFM — I’ll definitely remember that.