03 Feb Learn In Yo’ Old Age!

Okay, the timer’s clicking. See if I can do another post in 10 minutes. I did my outline in the shower, I’ve poured myself a cup of coffee. And I’ve got to be downtown in 30 minutes.

If you’ve got the luxury of being in the second half of your life, free of PTA meetings and lunchbox packing, you should really look into learning something new. We all have things we’ve put off, ideas we’ve shelved. Now is the time to do it.

Since my youngest left for college, I’ve found I have a voracious thirst for learning. My particular passion is learning the new tools of my trade, advertising. Social media, blogging, search engine optimization. I was one of those lucky ones whose hobby was their profession. Now that I have more time to spend on ‘me’ I choose to delve back into the career I put aside to raise my three children.

Wednesday night I went to a MeetUp to learn more about blogging. (See Wednesday’s post). Today I venture out to a WordCamp. This is my third ‘camp’, but my first in WordPress, the new, heralded website (and blogging) format.

This camp is for adults. For $40, we get to spend two entire days going from class to class, learning everything from how to make money blogging to how-to-trick-up your blog. They provide us a lunch and a snack, both days. How they can make the numbers work, I don’t know. Each hour of the day is filled with a choice of 4 classes . . . you choose.

The lunch breaks are just as important as the classes. The rooms are filled with fellow WordPress enthusiasts who love to share. They are a captivate audience – a great place to exchange business cards to drive each other’s blog traffic!

My class choices? Today will be “Monetizing your WordPress blog/How to Craft Blog Posts that Build Audiences, Traffic, and your Business/Implementing Facebook Registration/LUNCH/Best Practices and Tools for Using Images/Design Swoon: Visual Trends and WordPress.” Tomorrow my line-up will be “SEO & WordPress/HTMLS: Hell Yeah!/Font Swoon: Advanced WEb Typography/Scan It! Incorporating QR Codes into WordPress/Avoiding Blogger’s Block. { yep, I can hear you yawn }

I’m sure you’re not as enthralled with this social media/blogging stuff as I am, but your passion may be birding, traveling, learning Spanish. Maybe you yearn for a new job and your computer skills are nil. Baby, don’t wait. Don’t make excuses, make some phone calls and enroll in some classes. Hire a young person to teach you. Audit college classes. Do it today.

On that note, I must head downtown. Twelve minutes later, a post finished!

*Complete with typos, incomplete sentences and incorrect grammar, I’m sure!