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Writer's pictureIra Ketkin

Why I stopped blogging?

My 2018 was very eventful, to say the least. But this is when things started to change. Which is why I am going on a slight detour down memory lane.


At the end of 2017 I made a cardinal decision to leave my employer at the time. There were several reasons for it, but the biggest one was my education. You see, in 2016 I decided to complete a CIPD Level 5 Diploma in L&D. To this day I regret that decision but that's a topic for another post.


So, here we are, January 2018. I have just received word that I have successfully completed my CIPD. My fiancé and I spent the 2 weeks after Christmas in Southern Spain, Portugal and Gibraltar. But now I am back and I have to make an important decision - do I continue my career break or do I go back to work. After all, we were planning a wedding in September. So I reluctantly accepted on offer for which I interviewed not once or twice, but 6 times with 6 different people in the HR team. In hindsight, that probably should have raised a couple of red flags.


Fast forward to 5 months later and I am miserable. The company I work for has been awarded Employer of the Year several times, the turnover is within the normal ranges, the colleagues I work with are ok... yet, I decide to leave. Again, there were quite a few reasons, but the biggest ones was because of how different the culture of the company was to my own understanding of a good employer. They still remain one of the best employer in the country and I follow their development closely on social media. But I do not regret my decision.


While all of this was happening, a dear friend of mine and a former colleague contacted me about a few freelance pieces of work she needed help with. This is when I realised that instead of looking for another employer, I could try to make it on my own. I even found out that I can create courses on Udemy and this is how my first course came to be - Introduction to Learning and Development. (2 years later I now have 2 more course published - Instructional Design for Classroom Training and Learning and Development Methods)


And so, in June 2018, I officially registered my own company. I never in a million years thought I would ever do something like this. But from the perspective of the past 2 years, this is the second-best decision I ever made in my life (the first one - marrying my husband!).


The first few months things were very slow - I took the time to create a brand identity, make a footprint in the social media world, spreading word of mouth and so on. All of a sudden, I was overbooked with trainings, workshops, management programmes, coaching and many more.


In 2019 I focused almost exclusively on a year-long development programme for first-time managers. I will definitely write something about it in a separate post. For now, suffice it to say that I was super busy and looking forward to a great 2020 where I can expand my business and grow my sales.


Well, we all know what happened. But I am not complaining. The Covid-19 pandemic gave me the much needed R&R and time to be reflective of the past 2 years and the lessons I can extract from them. And to be honest, this is the short answer to why I stopped writing in my blog.


But "where a door closes, a window opens"... I think there are some great benefits to the COVID-19 and these will be some of the things I will think out loud about in my blog going forward.


Stay safe and stay healthy!


XOXO

Irina


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