Oliebollen van at the Neude, town center. Picture by KK.
Oliebollen: balls of dough the size of meatballs, fried and served hot with icing sugar. Traditionally a New Years dish
You know the year is drawing to a close in Holland when oliebollen vans arrive, all over the country.
Well, they have arrived.
Made me think about accountability and good intentions.
It is time I told you what I have been up to, now that I am not making new artworks for a few weeks:
I installed my old Dragon Speech programme.
Dragon Naturally Speaking is a miracle, but not quite miraculous enough.
Dragon only works on Windows machines, whereas I use a Mac. So I installed my old version 9 on my Mac, using a programme that fools other programmes into thinking they are running on a pc. This actually caused so many problems on my hitherto perfect Mac that I have thrown it out again, got myself the cheapest possible netbook and ordered a new Dragon version. Number 11. I am going to install it over the weekend and let’s hope this will work better. Next I will have to ask a programmer to restore my sadly suffering Mac.
Here is a video by one of Copyblogger’s copywriters, Jon Morrow, who does all his computering on Dragon. He explains all about it.
I made a new website: Wetenschapsjournalistiek.nu
Recently I have spent more time writing. As you may know I was a journalist up until 2000, and I have been teaching writing before that and since. Some of my students at the Boswell Institute asked me to develop a follow up course for the journalism course I teach over there. I am also developing workshops and a course on blogging with Karim Moumen at Profielstylers. So I decided to make a new website and put all my writing activities in one place:
I am blogging in Dutch, over there, about writing and social media and online marketing.. the stuff many of us are involved in.
I am still looking for a good tagline for the blog. It needs to be short and clear. You may shoot any ideas by me, I am always grateful for creative input! If there is anything you would like a post on, do tell me.
And I am enjoying writing more
For a few years I did not enjoy writing. May be, as a journalist, I did a type of writing that was not the best match for me. As a journalist you have to be analytical and rational. I was a newsgetter, too, which is a stressful job. Me and stress do not get along well.
But of late the joy of creativity in writing has returned to me.
It started over the summer when I decided to be more open and frank on my blog.
Studying art marketing and blogging has also deepened my interest for how copywriting and online marketing work.
And all of this is coming together in the new blog and the new courses.
I did a guest post on Papaver Communicatie and have been asked to do some more. I am also taking a guest blogging course and loving it.
My mind is full of ideas. Don’t know if any of them will work, but thinking them up makes me happy.
I am so grateful to be alive today.
How about you?
Hi, always nice to hear what you are up to. Sad you had so many troubles with Dragon Speech. There is a recent version for Mac but I don’t know if it understands Dutch. What‘s the problem with your Mac? If you use Time Machine maybe you can restore to a state before the PC emulator or Wine was installed. There is also a free version of Dragon for the iPhone. It does understand Dutch. In the end maybe you’ll be happy life threw you a curveball. Forced change is not something you wish for but good things can result from it. Send me an email if you think I can help you with your Mac.
Thanks Marc!
To answer your questions: the Mac version does only understand English and it is full of bugs, so I read.
Yes, I might restore it to two weeks ago. May be not such a bad idea. The simplest at least! I would have to make a few extra updates.. hm..
Grateful to be alive too. What is it with fried dough. You can find some sort all over the world. Thanks for sharing, at least a picture of yours the Oliebollen.
In Ottawa we have Beavertails. Big slabs of fried dough with many diff toppings.
I have a confession… I don’t like them!!
I don’t like oliebollen either.
But the vans look good!
Very exciting progression! Looking forward to seeing more of your witty writing … and already missing the art!
This is all such good news Kitty. You are a natural writer, and it delights me that you have remembered that, and more so, just enjoy it. Go girl go. Jenny
Thanks Jen! And em.. I will still be doing art, Kathryn! I was reading this the other day and it somehow reverbarated.. http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/LivingACreativeLife/~3/m_8FX4cQKRs/