2024 Week 48: Planned Happenstance

It's been an exciting week. Jon celebrated his 41st birthday and we spent a day at Sentosa sleeping, reading and drinking a Slurpee.

On the Clara front, I went for 2 job interviews, started a new freelance project for a nonprofit, and got photographed in a wig.

photo by Serene Millicent

This week I spent quite a lot of time on the new freelance project. It was yet another referral from Beyond. Gerard linked me up with a regular donor couple, who run a charity programme of their own helping disadvantaged students in Malaysia. 

Historically the couple has done almost all of the work themselves, in addition to providing the funding. But as they enter their 80s, they're starting to look at ways to keep the programme going without them. That means making it public for awareness. So I was drafted in to help write a prospectus for potential donors, interested schools/students, and programme administrators.

So far it sounds like any other nonprofit writing project, but the twist is that all of us want to use AI as much as possible. Before the initial meeting, I fed the donors' emails into ChatGPT and asked for the content to be written as a report. We were all pleased with the results and the donor offered to sponsor some subscriptions to these tools. After some research, we (Gerard and I) decided on (1) ChatGPT Premium, (2) Otter.ai for transcription, (3) Canva Pro for graphics. 

A fourth subscription is (4) SquareSpace for the website. I wanted an easy-to-use site builder and host, ideally AI-powered, and it was between Wix, SquareSpace and GoDaddy. None of the AI-generated sites turned out nice. In the end, I chose SquareSpace because its site templates yielded the best results.

Reflecting on my "professional growth" this year, a lot of it seems to be linked back to my stint at Beyond and my quasi-mentor, Gerard. 

1. Community work internship (Apr-May)

This was the ice bath plunge after spending 2.5 years soaking in the warm waters of unemployment. So many new things at once: a boss, an office and colleagues, nonprofit culture, and most significantly community work, which is like nothing I've ever known in my life.

2. Volunteer management internship (May-Jun)

The gentler second half of my internship, where I explored the admin and support side of social services. I worked from home, did mostly admin and Zoom calls. Nothing too out-there, mostly. But I also got the chance to learn about crisis management.

3. Another Week Beyond physical book (Jul-present)

Got roped into this book project with Gerard, editor Braema, and Ethos publisher Hoe Fang. Wah! I was starry-eyed working with all these greats. It is humble work, assisting with research and content selection, but I learnt a great deal about editing a book and also about the freelance life from Braema.

4. Another Week Beyond e-books (Jul-Oct)

Researched best practices for publishing e-books. Learnt to lay out chapters using Vellum, editing them and exporting into epub format.

5. Be Cooperative (Oct-present)

Joined the team of founding members of Be Coop, a cooperative for workers and microbusinesses drawn largely from Beyond's community. We didn't start with any roles, but as the conversation progressed I found myself sliding into branding and PR. Which is already turning out to be interesting and challenging...

6. Malaysia programme prospectus (Nov-present)

As above! This is my first project where I'm seriously using AI, and I'm excited about that.

Candy from SUTD sent me a paper on planned happenstance: the idea that much of one's career comes down to chance events. Resonates. There's also been some character development out all this exploration. My interest in books, publishing and writing has waned. While, unbelievable, I'm now interested in artificial intelligence, branding/PR, community building and people-centred work. The ideas of Who I Am and What I Do are shattered.