Às vezes acontece de eu ficar bloqueado em certos pensamentos, e lentamente eles se tornam obsessões. Isso sempre aconteceu, agora que reflito sobre o assunto, mas antes acontecia inconscientemente. Hoje em dia, não demoro a tomar conhecimento do que está acontecendo dentro da minha cabeça.
Embora assim seja, quando pensamentos e emoções se misturam de forma indissolúvel, é mais difícil pensar lucidamente e manter o controle das próprias reações.
Hoje em dia, somos muito bem informados sobre várias técnicas de relaxamento, como exercícios de respiração, meditação, etc. Mas tem uma técnica sobre a qual não leio muito e que poderia tornar todos nós calmos e únicos escritores: escrever histórias baseadas nos pensamentos que nos atormentam.
Sim, claro, escritores usam com muita frequência acontecimentos pessoais como inspiração para as próprias histórias, mas quem não é escritor não sabe disso. Tudo que acontece conosco é material criativo para futuros livros.
Escrever sobre nossos pensamentos, sobre nossas histórias, relações, etc., relaxa e nos ajuda a canalizar nossa vida de forma construtiva, suponho, ou pelo menos é assim para mim. Por isso, eu aconselharia: em vez de escrever seu próprio diário dos acontecimentos, escreva histórias inspiradas na própria vida. Obviamente, respeitando a privacidade das pessoas envolvidas na vida real, usando animais como personagens, outras épocas, nomes fictícios, etc.
É muito divertido e ajuda a processar o que mantém sua mente ocupada de forma desagradável.
Um exemplo concreto: se você tiver um problema com colegas de trabalho que te mantêm acordado e ansioso, escreva uma história. Seus colegas podem se tornar alienígenas com os quais você não consegue se comunicar, e daí você inventa um desafio, personagens, história, seguindo as bases da narrativa de forma simples.
Se você nunca tentou, tente e conte como foi sua experiência.
I want to keep this post brief and share the key insights without wasting anyone’s time with a story that isn’t necessary. I’ll just say that the tip I’m sharing is a prompt I created by feeding perplexity.ai some questions related to my CV, future career steps, closing learning gaps based on market trends, and my current skills.
At the moment, I have a stable position where I work mainly in German and French. I love languages, and especially German has been quite a barrier to get past for a long time, so it’s pretty dope that I get paid to keep speaking German and improving my skill daily! Also, after spending almost the whole of 2024 unemployed, I can only be grateful for my current professional situation.
Of course, I have ambitious plans for my future. As someone with insatiable curiosity who is always learning, I’m constantly considering my next steps. That’s why I asked Perplexity to analyze my CV and give me some tips on career advancement, learning new skills, and planning a shift in my professional life. I also believe this prompt could be useful to those aiming at getting back to work after a period of unemployment.
Anyway, enough introduction! I wrote much more than intended. Here are some of the most effective prompts for supporting career development when someone provides their CV, along with examples for planning next steps, recommending relevant courses, suggesting career transitions, and outlining practical steps.
1. Assessment & Goal Clarification
“Using my CV and current role as context, identify the responsibilities, skills, and behaviors where I consistently perform at a high level. Then highlight tasks, environments, or role expectations that appear misaligned with my strengths, energy, or long-term career goals, and explain why.”
2. Gap Analysis & Skill Mapping
“Based on my professional experience and the roles or industries I’m targeting (e.g., XYZ), map my existing technical and soft skills against common job requirements. Clearly identify skill gaps, emerging competencies, or experience areas I currently lack, and prioritize them by importance and market demand.”
“Taking into account my background, transferable skills, and target roles, recommend specific skills, certifications, or learning paths that would most improve my chances of securing interviews. For each recommendation, explain why it matters and whether it’s best suited for short-term impact or long-term career growth.”
4. Career Shift & Adjacent Role Discovery
“Review my past roles, cross-functional projects, and side responsibilities to identify patterns that suggest potential career pivots or adjacent roles (such as project management, training, content strategy, localization, or translation management). For each possible direction, explain which past experiences support the transition.”
5. Actionable Career Planning (90-Day Plan)
“Create a realistic 90-day career action plan tailored to my goals. The plan should include: • Specific résumé or LinkedIn improvements • Weekly or monthly networking objectives (with examples of who to contact and why) • Recommended courses or skill-building activities • Clear milestones to track progress and adjust strategy”
6. Industry & Role Exploration
“Based on current job market trends, identify roles closely aligned with my experience that show strong growth or resilience. For each role, outline typical entry requirements, key skills, salary range (if relevant), and realistic steps I would need to take to transition into it.”
7. Reflection, Motivation & Career Fit
“Analyze what appears to motivate me most professionally—such as problem-solving, helping others, creative work, autonomy, or working with technology—based on my career history and preferences. Then suggest career directions or role types that align strongly with these motivators and explain why they would be a good fit.”
Best Practices for Using These Prompts
Balance objective analysis with personal intent
Focus on actionable, short-term outcomes
Define measurable success criteria
Revisit and iterate regularly
Use prompts as decision support, not absolutes
These prompts create a structure that helps you assess your present position, recognize growth areas, and build a plan that includes upskilling and networking, ultimately increasing the likelihood of successful career transitions.
I would suggest printing your results and going with the flow, seeing how it works for you, and eventually make adjustments to align with your goals and current circumstances.
I started this blog a year ago, mainly as a way to rediscover a sense of purpose during a period of unemployment. I also wanted to build a writing portfolio to share with recruiters during interview processes and increase my chances of being hired in my field of interest: anything related to writing, researching, translating, content strategy, project management, and so on.
However, it soon became something more—not just a tool for job searching, but a personal space where I wanted to invest more time, experiment, and perhaps pursue long-held dreams, like publishing short stories and novels on my own platform. Since publishing a physical book still feels out of reach.
This blog didn’t start out the way it is now. In fact, it used to be a messy personal website with too many pages, scattered content, and little structure. So I slowly shaped it into what you can see today, which I hope comes acroos as a simple collection of blog posts.
I decided to invest a little in a Personal WordPress subscription. I would have gone for the Premium plan, but it’s literally twice the price, and there is no free trial to see if it’s actually worth it for the purpose of my website. That’s why I opened a donation page on Ko-fi, even though that is not really necessary at this stage. And if I ever build a larfer audience in the future, I would gladly invest my own money to bring better content—although I don’t know what “better content” would look like yet.
I don’t know if this makes sense, but I think I know what I am doing, while at the same time having no idea of what I’m doing.
At times, this whole blog thing feels like an extension of a personal diary—not because of the content itself, but because I’m writing primarly for myself, and maybe that’s the case. But what I actually mean is that building an audience is truly hard. Sure, I could have emailed every single person I know and told them, “Hey, I have this cool new blog, wanna take a look?”—but that idea terrifies me. I would rather let this blog exist among millions, probably billions of pages published every day and connect with those with which my content resonates. It feels more purposeful, less of an obligation to my friends, family, acquaintances, and so on. Maybe that’s just the lone wolf. But anyway, this is a bigger topic, one I may (or may not) come back to in the future.
Recently, following the example of some blogs I found out there, I decided to reorganize my posts into the categories: reflections, experiences, short stories, novels (still to come), and explorations. Then, in an attempt to broaden my audience, I also created new tags, long tags, and so on and so forth. I have to admit, I have zero patience for this SEO stuff. I would love to develop my marketing skills in a professional setting, but in my personal time, I just want to write. So, I ChatGPT the shit out of this SEO stuff!
Since I squeeze my free time to write consistently (combining long commutes, work, reading, training, relationship, and so on), I don’t overthink what I publish, and I don’t spend too much time editing. As I mentioned in previous posts, I use AI tools only to correct typos and grammatical mistakes—not to alter my style or rephrase things I’ve written. I have a personal prompt that keeps this as ethical and minimal as possible, since, as far as I understand, using AI too heavily could raise questions about ownership or originality under some copyright interpretations.
Concluding without a real conclusion, I am still very excited about this project—especially because I have endless ideas that I want to execute. But I am not in a rush, and I accept now more than before that sometimes it can take longer to write better content, especially when it comes to fiction, which is my favorite—but also the most demanding stuff.
More than ten years ago, I wrote a book. A novel. A draft of a novel. Actually, I’d say half of it is ready to publish, the other half is still a work in progress. I keep repeating to myself that sooner or later I’ll get it done, but until now, I haven’t managed it.
Achieving that, though, would finally set me free—and I’d be able to write my second novel, or at least start brainstorming about it. Until now, it has felt like being pregnant for ten years—wanting a second child but unable to have one until you give birth to the first. I’m not sure if this is the best analogy, considering I’m not a woman, but it seemed funny when I first wrote it down.
Last year, while I was unemployed, I dedicated some time to polishing my manuscript and sent it to an editor—a friend of a friend—who had kindly offered to read the first part of my draft. I knew it wasn’t ready. I knew I still had to work on it, probably over and over again. Not that I haven’t already, but self-editing can be a rabbit hole where one easily gets lost in lateral overthinking. I was afraid of sharing it with anybody at that stage—especially an editor. Besides, the experience of unemployment had left a scar on my ego. I was already so full of self-doubt that exposing myself in such an intimate way was the last thing I wanted. Yet, I did it—I shared the first part of the book with the editor. And guess what? I was right. The manuscript wasn’t ready—according to him, too. He suggested I set it aside, let it rest, and write short stories, articles, anything but touch that manuscript. He also asked me—perhaps testing my resolve—if I was sure I even wanted to keep writing. “Why would you want that?” he asked. It was a real setback, but it didn’t demotivate me. Not because I have a will of steel or anything like that. There are just some things I can’t live without. In other words, if I had to answer his question—“Why do I want to write?”—it’s not that I want to. It’s that I can’t do otherwise. I need it. But as I said, at the time it felt like a setback, also because I focused mostly on the negative part of his feedback. He had, in fact, shared valuable positive feedback. When I made an effort to develop a character with empathy and care—rather than rushing the story and piling up dialogue—he said he felt more connected to it. He also noted that he could sense when I was being honest and when I was hiding something. When I was free writing, he said he particularly liked my dark humor and sarcasm.
One always has to take feedback with a grain of salt, but this came from a professional in the industry who has analyzed hundreds of books, if not more, given his experience in the industry. Most of all, his opinion felt true to me; it resonated, and his tone was genuine.
Now, after following his advice for a while, I want to make the most of what I’ve learned and finally complete this first novel process. To proceed, I realized I needed three things:
1) Accountability 2) A clear goal 3) A good method
And I think this blog gave me all three. My goal, in fact, is to periodically review and publish a few paragraphs of my novel alongside what I’m already writing (spontaneous reflections, short stories, etc.). The people who enjoy reading my content will help keep me accountable. As for the method, I believe taking this slow-paced but consistent and rewarding approach—instead of trying to finish the whole thing all at once—will benefit my motivation and help me stay disciplined and loyal to my overall approach.
This whole plan or realisation is not an original idea of mine. In fact, I have to thank the WordPress community for sharing so much amazing content so openly and for inspiring me with their approaches and consistency. If you’re interested in embarking on a similar path, I highly recommend checking out the blogs Faded Houses, Great – Almost Meaningful, and Edge of Humanity. Read their content and take note of how they structure their pages—it’s really well done!
So, to conclude, I’m going to follow this strategy: alternating between short stories, spontaneous reflections, and—primarily—my novel, which is written in Italian. I intend to keep it that way, as translating it into English, even though beneficial in terms of broadening my audience, would only add another layer of challenge, and my objective is to keep this process as lean, uncomplicated, and enjoyable as possible.
If you’re Italian, or have Italian friends interested in following a novel as it evolves toward publication, I warmly invite you to stay tuned and share this blog. Your presence and feedback mean more than you know.
Two movies that, in my opinion, encapsulate one powerful aspect of our society in a masterful way: looks can get you far, but depending on them will destroy you—inside and out. In a world increasingly bombarded by an overwhelming storm of video content—much of it led by anyone with a phone who steps into the debatable role of “influencer”—our independent will and decision-making capacity seem to be vanishing. This leaves a dangerous vacuum where ethically grounded, far-sighted, and morally sound role models are missing.
Obviously, these movies are much more than that. As with any work of cinema, each viewer interprets the story and characters differently. Other themes stood out to me strongly: the comparison trap and the lack of contentment—even when one reaches personal goals. These were portrayed both implicitly and explicitly, reflecting the collective and individual psychosis we are experiencing today and the path toward oblivion we seem to be heading down.
Our capacity for monstrous actions is never pleasant to witness, nor something we enjoy indulging in for too long. Yet acknowledgment is always the first spoonful of medicine we must swallow to begin changing certain patterns, whether individually or collectively. It’s true, though, that there’s a time for acknowledgment—and perhaps we’re not there yet. I see more and more people around me choosing to ignore these realities and retreat into their own personal La La La Lands. I say this in the least judgmental way possible. As beings deeply connected to what happens around us, unless we cultivate a degree of detachment, objectivity, and realism, examining our problematic self too closely can easily overwhelm us. That’s why movies like The Substance and The Ugly Stepsister can be so powerful: they compel us to take a deep, unavoidable look at our collective insanity.
I realize I’m talking about these movies without really talking about them—but isn’t that often what happens after we leave the cinema? Whether we’re alone or in company, good films help us reflect on something deeper, and that reflection can linger for days, weeks, even months.
I usually sympathize with both the villains and the heroes in films—unless they’re mere propagandistic caricatures, created to implant prefabricated notions of good and evil. One major takeaway for me comes from the character of Agnes, portrayed by Thea Sofie Loch Næss in The Ugly Stepsister. Throughout the entire film, which spans several years, she resists her diabolically jealous stepsister Elvira’s (played by Lea Myren) attempts to undermine her beauty, intellect, maturity, and wisdom. Agnes knows who she is and stays true to her deepest values, no matter what. And it doesn’t matter whether she ends up triumphant or not—what matters is that she remains connected to her identity, even as the world around her falls apart.
Elvira’s arc is equally powerful. It shows that no matter how far we’ve fallen, how deep we are in the hole, or what atrocities we’ve committed, there is always a way out. There is always a path to redemption—even when nobody believes we deserve it, and even when the consequences of our actions may follow us for the rest of our lives. Again, it all starts from within: from putting our pieces back together and allowing ourselves to walk the path of self-forgiveness.
Works from others that we may utilize—like photos, quotes, videos, and so on—don’t become our own just because we repost them. Sounds obvious, but in today’s world… I don’t know, man, I think it’s always worth stating the obvious, even at the cost of sounding redundant.
So yes, this general copyright rule applies here as well: one should always quote someone else’s work—always!
Then there’s the AI topic, which complicates things a little. Without diving into specifics about jurisdictions and what different countries allow, I’ve gathered from some sources I’ve consulted that AI use is permitted as long as it’s not used for major modifications or to generate content from scratch. Which absolutely makes sense to me.
As long as we use tools like ChatGPT, Grammarly, and DeepL to correct grammar and improve clarity, it’s fine. It’s like having a personal proofreader at your disposal, which speeds up the process. And that’s the coolest part of these tools. Even though, to me, they’re the most diabolic invention ever; but I don’t want to unpack this topic. It’s just depressing, especially for us creatives… But hey, the proofreader part is pretty cool. I know this sounds inconsistent and opportunistic, but one has to adapt somehow.
So, to conclude: the original content we publish on our blogs—articles, essays, poetry, short stories, novels, photos, illustrations, videos, audio; in general, any creative piece of work originating exclusively from our own brain that doesn’t plagiarize existing material or wasn’t generated from scratch by a freaking AI tool—is ours. A bit like it would be if it were published by a traditional editor (for writers)—with the pro that there’s no transfer of rights, and the con that we make zero money from it. If you do (make money), please share some tips—hehe. The right to reproduce the work, distribute it, display it in public, create derivative works, and so on, belongs to us—the creators who published it on their own page.
Another thing to keep in mind is to display a copyright notice on your website, like I did on my homepage (BLOG). It’s an extra layer—a bit like a bulletproof vest working as a disclaimer—which could offer additional protection in case of a dispute.
There are endless sources on this topic out there, and it’s a complex one since international law is involved. If you’re an expert on this topic, please feel free to call out any bullshit I may have said—or share any useful tips or insights that could be helpful for the community.
