Jenelle asked for a post on Aurora. I’ll be right upfront in saying that I was always dismayed that no one ever really told me what happens at Aurora, but now I’ve been I see the reason. There’s actually two reasons, first that it’s very hard to describe Aurora coherently, and secondly, that to do so would make the experience much less enjoyable. Aurora really is best approached eyes open, feet first.

For me, Aurora wasn’t just about job or career, but about everything you do. This only became clearer to me as the week drew to a close. Apart from gaining valuable skills in strategic thinking, creating a vision, and communicating, I learnt to identify strengths and weaknesses that have a role in all parts of my life, and to see that pursuing creativity is vital. Aurora came along just at the right time. If you are thinking of attending next year, the articles from previous years help some in knowing what people have got out of attending.

In a similar vein, CW posts about priorities. Aurora gives you time to reflect and think about what you’re doing and why. For some, this means getting involved with the associations or writing, for me, because I was on six committees last year, this means doing less and consolidating. My first priority is to ‘graduate’ from the last newgrad group I’m involved with - NGPAG. It’s been a wonderful three years and I felt that I’ve been able to make a real contribution to the association, but now it’s time to do something else. I need to get better at leaving as well as joining. That doesn’t mean I won’t continue to work on projects that will benefit newgrads, just that it will be from a different perspective.

The first of those I hope to work on is research mentoring. This is something I’ve been thinking about for a while, and it became clearer at Aurora. This would aim to give new writers a support structure and resources.

Other stuff is more creative, and less work oriented: I’m spending time learning After Effects to work on VJ projects, building up my guitar callouses again, reading a lot, painting tables and working on my French skills.