Heading towards more balance in my life and work

My blogging experience started with a post about my typical day. I am still not sure anyone read it besides me ;) (note from 2013: that post is now removed) I now realize how hectic my life then was, and all because I thought I could be both a full-time ESL teacher and a translator. I can't, and I'm glad I finally realized it last year. That's when I reevaluated my work and made a choice to give up teaching through Skype with a company I used to cooperate with and choose translation as my primary work. There were many reasons for that. This year I took only 2 students who could come to my place to study and I am glad I made this change. I feel not as tired and overwhelmed this year, and I am thinking about adding a couple Skype students next year, we'll see.

But that alone wasn't enough to bring my life to a balance. This week I came across another great blog about/for freelancers. I loved the post there called "Living a Balanced Freelance Life". Since I already knew that I needed more balance in my life, this article really helped me make a decision to change my life style. I'd like to share with you a couple things that need to be changed.

First of all, I really need more physical activity. I tend to either sit at the computer or cook in the kitchen, or do some other chores, but I don't exercise. I have to admit, I'm lazy. =( Need to change this attitude and include daily physical exercises into the list of my good habits. By the way, please feel free to ask me later if I stick to the changes I made a decision about. Being accountable to other people always brings positive results!

I really liked the part that talks about not letting your life pile up. I certainly need to learn to balance my freelancer and housewife roles. I need to learn to manage my time wisely. When I am not too busy I love trying new food recipes, clean the house etc. But that's not always the case. That's another area that needs improvement. I need to learn to start my day with a quick clean-up and THEN move on to my teaching preparation, translation etc. I am glad I don't get up at noon, so I can actually have quite a few things done in the morning and I am going to use this opportunity!

But the hardest thing for me is PATIENCE. I am not a patient person. As any other freelancer, I sometimes get overwhelmed when I see the volume of work and analyze whether I can make it till the deadline. But I feel a lot worse when I don't have enough work, so as you may know I've been learning to wait and not to worry. I've been a freelancer for only about 3 years, so I am sure there are lots of things for me to learn. I am grateful that freelancing helps to deal with personal issues like time management, patience (or lack of it) etc.

March also brought some marketing decisions. I am going to close my google website (it is hardly ever visited any way) and make my blog, FB and twitter my main marketing tools. I am also thinking about making a profile on LinkedIn. If you have a profile there, could you please share if it is useful to you or not? Many thanks in advance!

So, I guess that's all the news for now. Wishing you a wonderful, productive and BALANCED week!

10 interesting facts about the Russian language

In my previous post I promised to follow with the interesting info about some other languages. So here are 10 facts about the Russian language which might be of interest to those who are studying it. If you would like to have this list in Russian, please contact me and I will send it to you by email. So, what do I find interesting about my native language? 1. Russian has about 500,000 words, but only 2,000-2,500 of them are used frequently. 100 most frequently used words make 20% of all written and oral speech. A high school graduate's vocabulary usually has 1,500 to 4,000 words. Those who have graduated from a higher educational institution normally have a richer vocabulary consisting of approximately 8,000 words. 2. It's compulsory for all astronauts in the international space station to learn Russian, so we can call it an international language of space :)

15 interesting facts about the English language

I prepared this list for one of my English classes. And then it dawned on me that I can share it with you, too! So here are 15 facts about the English language that I find very interesting. Hope you do, too ;) Rudyard Kipling was fired as a reporter for the San Francisco Examiner. His dismissal letter said, "I'm sorry, Mr. Kipling, but you just don't know how to use the English language. This isn't a kindergarten for amateur writers." No language has more synonyms than English.

Clients vs translators: how do we show that we're honest?

This is a personal post, and I'd really like to hear the opinion of my colleagues about such situations and how to deal with them. My situation is kind of like the one described in Mox's blog . In December a new prospective client wrote to me asking about my availabiility for a new project. When I read the overall description of the project, I got really interested in it. But the client needed to know exactly how much time it would take and how much it would cost. No problem, just send me the text to look through or a part of it so I could get the gist of the style, level of complexity etc. In the reply that person just stated the wordcount, but there was no sample. I thought, maybe they didn't understand me. English is not my native language after all. In my reply, I stated the estimated time and cost based on the client's wordcount, but I repeated the request to see a part of the text. And then the person thanked me and ... disappeared.

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