What I've been listening @ Masterclass.com

  I've been putting away buying master class for a while.

I kept telling myself 'Let me complete some courses that are relevant to my current life, the money-making life and then... I can reward myself with masterclass'.

Thankfully one day, my heart decided to show the middle finger to my brain and said 'Just go ahead, spend and take the class'

It's three days and I finished 2.5 courses. For a while, I've been wanting to do things like a 18 year old, where you learn things without thinking too much about how it applies to your life. 

And I'm so glad I gave myself the chance to spend my money and time on something and not feel guilty about it. I feel engaged. I am listening to people talk about what they excelled at in their life and the whole story of starting and discovering themself.

How often do you get to have that conversation with someone?

 And none of these topics are what you would call 'solid skills'. You listen , you understand and then you have the freedom in life to go try and see what comes out of it. You also have the freedom of not trying. It does not matter. How often in your life do you give yourself the chance to delve into topics about art without thinking about how involved you are or how likely are you to try it or how you are going to benefit from it? I take some courses, some I do halfway and stop so I can come back to it with respectful attention. Some I start, do research outside about it only to find I don't want to continue. Some , I just can't stop.

Listening to people talk is something. The notes are also available afterwards.

1. Art of Negotiation by Chris Voss

The first course I took was art of negotiation and it comes from a Hostage negotiator who turned into a business negotiator. 

It was engaging. It was eye-opening. It will need practice and familiarity.

2. Creative Writing by Margaret Wood

I have not completed this course. She has a lot of references and lot of techniques. it's hard to keep track at the pace I initially went at. So I stopped and went to another one. 

What was fascinating to me is how writing feels almost deceiving. Where someone is putting in energy into darkness and characters and creating an illusion that we want to think is real. There's ghosts and aliens and real-like stories. There's Gulliiver's travel where a man starts the whole story with so many 'facts', so many numbers, and sets the tone to a story about giants and flying things by first setting us to believe he is a fact based man. A man we willingly want to believe even though he will later tell us about flying horses.

This part was an a-ha moment. I would like to go back to this course.

3. Ron Finley's Gardening

This one. I could not stop watching. I started it and the next day I woke up wanting to complete it. It's beautiful how there's so much more than just gardening there. There's the love and gentle care someone puts into gardening and you learn so much more about the person than just the gardening he does. And then there's the deeper concept of 'Planting a revolution' and 'Taking your power back'. He talks about 'Beauty in beauty out' about how communities that behave different look different. When everything looks beautiful, thoughts align with it. 

I learnt a whole lot about gardening too. About soil, compost, the pots you can use, the tools, the way you plant, prune. It was informative. This man is not just a gardener, he's a naturally engaging communicator , one who talks from the heart.

4. Alice Water's Art of Home Cooking

She is from New Jersey and you don't realize that because her soul is French/Italian. Here's a woman who freezes every moment. Nothing existed before this. Nothing exists beyond this. The only thing that is important is this next meal that is to be served. Her philosophy is that if you pick the right ingredients you don't have to cook. So the efforts go into the gardening, the sourcing of ingredients, the knowledge of what's in season and in whether you'd cook or steam or grill it based on it's from a fresh season or a ripe one. She goes into the details of the herbs, the spices and even the place it comes from. Thyme from middle east is different from thyme from France for example. She made brine, and vinaigrette and introduced us to suribachi - a japanese pestle with grooves that make for fine grinding. She spoke about champagne and red wine. Oh and she made a simple dessert with ricotta goat cheese, honey and roasted almonds. 

We visited the farmer's market influenced by this course, and bought some garlic chipotle, and some goat milk yogurt with ping goa. It was sooooo good. 

5. Sex and communication

I took this course mainly because I thought I came from a conservative mindset with a closed misguided unhealthy identity to sex and it might be helpful to hear a sexually healthy and wise woman talk about it. After the first few lessons what I realized was that I was not as bad as I thought I was. Rat and I started at very different places in our physical intimacy journey but we had one thing she said was important, already. Communication. And so we are able to be at a much better place than when we started. She asked us to be more curious about our bodies and explained the biology of pleasure. I do want to understand myself and also how shame has been associated with my body and unravel that. I am not sure if that is discussed in this course but for now, I'm gonna take a pause and come back to it another day.

6. Brandon McMillan Dog Training.

We've been thinking of a dog for a while now. Our costs will increase slightly but we also feel there will be a tendency for the feeling of love and care. Beyond that the dog is going to need a responsible owner that gives him/her trust, care, food and exercise. This course made me want to test these concepts on humans because it felt very much like human life. Dogs need to earn your trust before they can be trained. You need to understand their history, their breed in order to give them space to be themselves. You also need to understand their age. Some of their inbuilt traits show up when they are adolescents and so they need training and understanding as teenagers just like they needed as puppies. Just like you evaluate the dog, the dog is also trying to evaluate you and trying how to get away without obeying you, so along with training there needs to be conditioning. Control. Train. Treat.

7. Paul Krugman 

By understanding economics, you can be an economist, or a business man or just a better satisfied citizen. 

Economics is not about money, it's about people and what they do. Often unfortunately people are reduced to math. Each item we use or consume goes through a whole lifecycle that is global. People have individual choice yet complex systems are what makes an invisible impact to people's choices: like the food you want to eat next meal. it's not because of your choice, it's because of a complex system based on money that is at work. Economics is the study of this complex system which unequally and amoraly distributes money and hopefully you will use it for good.

2 principles: Opportunities and incentives will be grabbed. 

your sale is my purchase, so economy is still the same.

Ricardian model Land rent: what you get is what you add to the economy. but is actually amoral.

trade deficit: 

babysitter and coupons: you just need more coupons. recession. 

Panic of 1983 similar to 2008. understand smart people and history before you.

Wealth of country depends on productivity and cooperation. Wealth is about what you can do.

how do depressions happen? not something replacing something. but unemployment, suddenly, people not buying,

Says law; If you build, they will come. - when this assumption breaks down, a depression happens,

8. Tan France's style

1. Know your proportions

2. Know yourself

Tan's got me thinking about basics , the neutrals - the ones I might have thought I should part away from.

The jeans, the suit, the tee, the sweater, a button-up shirt. even a simple dress

I also might consider a heel. and a white converse.

it made me think about a coat style sweater i had which was awesome on anything. it tore so ii threw it away and i have never found one again. my cognac jacket, a good pair of jeans.

experiment with other's looks and make a mood board

fashion can be used as inspiration but not as style. fashion is art. style is not.

same color shades - different pieces

mix colors, mix neutrals with each other

canadian tuxedo

pattern over pattern. texture over texture.

window shop in malls for inspiration. go home and buy online.

don't go with the trend

i felt good wearing dresses at home during covid times and it felt like finding a sense of who I am.

Nancy Cartwright's voice Acting.

I first took 1 lesson of this course and then spent hours seeing how one can apply to be a voice actor. I saw all the profiles and audition tapes out there and realized this is not my thing and if it is , it's going to be competitive.  A month went by and guess what, smack out of the blue, at work, there was a call for voice actors. I felt this would be a smaller pool to compete with and am back with this course again.

In the first few lessons she spoke about how she called a great voice actor and how she broke into the industry, about using mics. now she's talking about identity. She said you can't be all voices , so know what you are. 

I did one tiktok voice over the 1 month I was on the app and it was pretty peppy. It's a narrative non-native accent. For this audition I'm going to understand the intent and sound professional and paced. not fast, not child like.