January, For Me

Main Highlights 🚀

Online

• 📝 I posted three blog posts: my 2021 reflection, upgrading my webcam, and how I’ve been using my iPad mini as a second laptop
• 🎙 I posted an episode that I did with Darren about getting into Open Source.

Career, Learning & Community

• ⚡️ I got back to work! You can find details of things I got up to on my Polywork account, but here are some highlights:
  • 🎙 Shipped more episodes of DevXPod
  • 🍊 Asif joined my team to help work on community
  • 📺 My first live stream of the year was with the lovely Redis DevRel team
• 🎉 Became Polywork verified!
• 🎤 I have some exciting speaking gigs coming up!
• 😊 Made myself proud a few times this month, as well as suffered some bad imposter syndrome days 🥲
• ✨ Celebrated my first community management appreciation day (CMAD!)
• ☕️ Went to a co-working space for the first time!

Personal

• 🎂 I got to spend time with my family for my dad’s birthday, yay for flexibility!
• 💪🏼 I started CrossFit and have enjoyed every minute of it 😃
• ✨ I’ve got back to my love for working out and treated myself to purely health and fitness-related purchases 😂
• 🧘🏻‍♀️ I’m on a 50-day meditation streak with Calm!
• 📚 I’ve carved out more time on the weekends dedicated to reading. My favourite read this month has been “A Manual for Being Human” by Dr Sophie Mort.
• 🫂 I’ve taken myself on more solo dates
• 💜 Matt and I are watching Superstore together, this is my second rewatch of the show, but it brings me joy knowing Matt likes it now too!
• 🎶 I’m low key loving TikTok. I get it now.

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Things that made me happy 🙏🏼

After a pretty turbulent year, I wanted to take the time to look inward and get into the habit of meditation. The last time I felt so chaotic was in 2016 when I suffered from depression and severe anxiety. I turned to almost two years of daily meditation that helped me get through all the changes during that period.

Now that I’ve got myself into a better routine that consists of 10 minutes with Calm in a comfy seat in front of my SAD lamp (as part of light therapy), I’m already feeling lighter.

It’s so easy to get so into the nitty-gritty of our daily lives and end up sinking (and risk drowning!) Some of my days still feel like that. Meditation hasn’t fixed it all, but I know every morning I have calm before another busy day, and every night I have some quiet moments to reflect, relax and take a much-needed deep breath.

I hope that future me re-reads this and reminds me why meditation is so good for my well-being.

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January In Photos 🖼

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Quote of the Month 💬

Going inward. That’s the real work. The solutions are not outside of us. Get to know who you are because you inevitably become one as you search for the hero within.
– Emma Tiebens

✨ Have a great February everyone 👋