Hi, I’m Amy
I’m Amy Rhoda Brown, and I work with words. I work with the written word as a writer and copyeditor, and with the spoken word as a professional coach.
On this site you’ll find information about my coaching, writing, copyediting and document preparation services. There’s also Live Your Own Life, a blog where I write about motivation, organization, systems, and other things that interest me.
Every month I send Connections, a newletter where I share links to interesting things I’ve been reading, watching, and writing.
"I have twenty years of cross-sector experience in technology and communications as an employee and as an entrepreneur."
That's the LinkedIn version — doesn't it sound great? Twenty years! Cross-sector! Shiny!
But the reality is, my path didn't seem so clear when I was living through it. Like most of us, I just tried to make the best choices with the resources available to me.
Looking back, I wouldn't change any of the decisions I made, but I don't want to sit here, right on my own website, and try to tell you that it's been a smooth, logical road from there to here. It has not. It's been rocky, it's been weird, occasionally I have ended up in places I did not want to be.
I started with a degree in Math from the University of Waterloo. After working in software development for eight years, my life took a hard turn into full-time parenting for a few years. When my kids got a little older, I worked for a while with an organization which taught scientists the computing skills they need to work with big data.
Next, I taught myself how to copyedit and created a freelance copyediting business. I did that for several years, brushing up my skills by taking seminars and volunteering with Editors Canada. I established a steady business with solid repeat clients, but eventually I realized I wanted more. I enjoy the company of other people, and copyediting is solitary work. It also requires many hours of focus to be viable as a source of income.
So by 2018 I felt that something had to change — I just didn't know what. In the spirit of experimentation I signed up for a bunch of things: workshops, conferences, events, meetups. Through all that I discovered that I loved talking to people about their stories and challenges, and helping them figure out what to do next. I started training as a coach that fall.
Over the next few years, I worked hard at the craft of coaching, and at making coaching work as a full-time freelance business, but some combination of the pandemic, the cost-of-living crisis, the collapse of discoverability on social media, my personality, and a host of other factors meant the business didn’t take off the way I hoped it would.
I still coach, but I’ve let it be a side thing instead of the main thing. In the ultimate application of “both, and”, I now combine coaching with freelance writing, copyediting, and document preparation services. I get human contact from the coaching, I get to engage with words and ideas with copyediting and writing, and I never get bored!
Systems and Humanity
The one idea that underpins almost everything I’m interested in is the question of how people interact with the created systems around them. I’m interested in how we’re influenced by design, and how we can in turn use design to influence ourselves, deliberately changing our own environment to effect specific outcomes.
In writing and copyediting, this shows up in the language we use: is someone afflicted by disease, or affected by it? It also shows up in the order ideas are presented in, the vocabulary and grammar used, the transitions between ideas, and more.
In typography and document design, this shows up in choices about layout — how the ideas flow across the page, and which ideas are given importance and weight while others are hidden. It shows up in decisions about headers and paragraph breaks, typeface, infographics, bolding and type size, and more.
Systems in Personal Change
In personal change, which is what coaching is all about, systems can work with you or against you.
We’re all living within a web of systems which affect how we see ourselves and the world. These systems include capitalism, patriarchy, white supremacy on the more sinister side, but also democracy, communities, families, and other systems which can be constructive and supportive.
It’s necessary to understand the systems you live within and how they affect you in order to decide how you want to live, and understand how to change your life in the context of those systems.
Systems — or maybe more accurately structures — can help you change your life. Routines, rituals, habits, lists, guardrails, community, and more can be applied intentionally to lesson the need for willpower and self-discipline, and allow you to spend your energy on creativity or relationships or whatever is important to you.
Our Place in Systems
How systems and structures affect the way we think and behave is, I guess, my most consistent obsession. It unites my work with the written word, my interests in design and typography and architecture and urban planning, and even my coaching. It’s a recurring theme in my blog posts and newsletters, so if you share this interest or you’re curious about it, stick around and read more.