Over a year ago, I started to put together an online class about Nutrition.
I told Udemy it could be ready in 6 weeks. I was a seasoned college professor and thought I could quickly put together the syllabus and start filling in the “lecture” content and do the videos. HA!
My first setback was when I discovered that my old Sony camcorder was not “good enough” anymore as it didn’t do HD recording.
So I had to figure how else was I going to do the video since the courses have to be video. I tried different things and kind of just gave up for a while because nothing was working.
Then I got a new [and much needed] computer with a good camera and microphone. But first I had to learn the new operating system as I went from a very old Mac to the newest one.
After fiddling with lights, etc. my decision was to do an “easy” PowerPoint presentation with voice over. Alas, it turns out there’s a glitch in the newest version of PowerPoint for Mac so that when you record a voice over on PowerPoint it won’t save the narration.
Having already bought Keynote – I decided – “okay I guess it’s time to learn Keynote” [but I didn’t really want to do that.] Luckily, someone teaching on Udemy did a course on Keynote and I learned how to use it and started back to work on the Nutrition course.
In the middle of all of this – and teaching an online course for a local college – I finally found the Lab puppy I had been looking for. Which, if you have ever done puppy things, meant house training, taking care of, and all those other puppy events.
[I look back now and wonder how did I ever manage to do the puppy stuff again. It had been many years since I had a puppy as the last dog I had was adopted when he was three.]
Working away at the course and other life stuff, my hard drive crashed. Yes it was a relatively new computer, only a few months old, and all was under warranty. It is a laptop – but getting it fixed meant having to keep going back to the Apple Store because there were constant glitches that prevented my being able to get online. And I really needed to be online because I had to download my storage from the cloud backup.
Finally, the entire operating system had to be re-downloaded and re-installed.
And in the midst of all of this, it turns out I had a puppy who did not like being left home alone – so each time I had to run down to the Apple Store I had to get a puppy sitter. Luckily my neighbors could keep her a few times, and a good friend of mine was in town visiting her son and she had the time to come over and puppy sit. I am so thankful for good friends…
During this time, the course on Nutrition kept growing because I realized I had more to say than I originally planned. And honestly, by then I got sick of the whole process because that course reminded me of the problems with the puppy and the computer.
And, because it was again nearing that time of year, I had to get ready to teach my other online class for the local college. I decided instead to do a very short Udemy course on stress. [Gee – I wonder where that topic came from.]
Even though it was to be a short course and it basically is, I do not have a linear brain and it’s very hard for me to follow a template or a pattern so formatting the course sections took longer then it would for most others.
And middle of all of this, I upgraded to the Mavericks operating system. And that meant there were updates to most everything on my computer including Keynote. ARGHHHHHHHHH
I’m not even getting into weather related issues, my ability to procrastinate, or the death of a friend….
To make this rather long story much shorter, I basically decided I was just going to finish this thing, publish it, and see what happens!
I was literally getting sick and tired of working with Keynote, fiddling with having to make things kind of similar from lecture to lecture, and all of that – so I recorded stopped fiddling, recorded the slides with voiceover, exported into QuickTime, uploaded the files to Udemy, finished all the other little thingies like descriptions and all that and hit publish – basically without really reviewing the whole thing because I was that sick of it.
But it’s done…and I feel a sense of relief….
I had taken my own advice to Stop Stressing About Stress
And maybe, just maybe, I can get back to the 1st course, the one on Nutrition…..
