The Fold

I have gone mostly quiet. I’m focusing. I’m doing the job. I come in and at 9 I start working and I work solidly on my engineering tickets. I work til about 5:30 at which point I force myself to stop. Sometimes that becomes 5:45 and that’s okay. I write a to do list every morning even when I’m too tired to think. I write a reflective journal after work every day.

I focus on three main points plus a secret bonus point:

• Just keep remembering: code is the only focus point
• It’s by doing more code that I will get there
• I need to be able to say: “look at all the things I’ve done! The code’s there.”
• And then there’s a quote from my old manager. Fine I’ll say it: “now just keep on going at it.”

I’m enjoying having my life again. 

I have my evenings and weekends back. I am getting loads and loads of code done. I am solving loads of mypy issues. On Thursday mornings I do my Python course. Now I look forward to every single Thursday morning. I can’t wait for the next one wow. I am going on retreat in November and I can’t wait. My mum told me I can’t afford to get too spaced out on the next retreat. A shame because I like to go to the next dimension but I have to come back and solidly write code so I will be mindful of that. I have two weeks off at Christmas. I can’t wait. It will be good to see my family and rest. What else works?

• I have a slack status deterring people from messaging me. I love my friends and I love being messaged but I was getting more than I could handle (I know countless people in the company due to having worked for a company my employer acquired back in the day and so on).
• I write two async slack standup updates a week for my team, the AI/ML team and data/analytics.
• These really really help me. 
• Can’t you see that writing things down helps me so much?
• I also do a weekly thing on an internal channel for women and non binary folks: it helps me out to bo end (we list our achievements) and it helps me see my progress
• Look out for my weekly Python post as this is a massive highlight!

A few other things I did for work:

• Due to upcoming leave I was asked to write a working with me doc regarding neurodiversity. I did that. I had them at my last company. Can’t believe how much my needs have changed. It used to be about being mad and hyper but now it is much more about following instructions and being slow and processing stuff. I think it might make sense for my colleague to write one as well. From his perspective. Thanks
• I did a self assessment. My neurodiversity mentor asked me to do it and so I sent it to him and to my manager as well. Plus an old HR friend. Thanks🩶

I am pretty happy with the results. There’s been a massive breakthrough recently. Other than that I’m in bed drinking bubble tea so yep this is exactly where I wanted to be at 30 and 1/4

P.s. why the fold? Idk it’s a song by wickerbird that just came up on my Spotify

PPS the biggest help of all is my new mantra 🕉️ I want to tell you it… I really do… “I can fly with you, build AI with you…” directed at the wind farms. Should I keep these secret? Perhaps. But years from now I might read my blog and want to remember these things and then I’ll curse my secrecy.

Although I highly doubt that I will ever ever forget the above.

I thought I had to go quiet a bit but maybe I don’t. Just tone it down as even this feels like work. But these blogs obviously help me so maybe one or two of these a week is okay please or whatever or max three… like just these reflection ones

PPps it can’t be a coincidence that Yosemite is my software engineering song and that I listened to it hundreds of times while learning to code and while applying for this job and while walking to the office for my current jobs open day and there is now a mural of Yosemite next to the office