liveness probe
After an initial burst of blogging energy January followed by a series of automated posts featuring good things I’d read recently, it fell off a cliff towards the end of March. I didn't get bored, I promise!
Life got extremely busy and reading through an ever-growing mountain of RSS feeds became too much of a chore. Eventually I declared bankruptcy and marked all as read, so if I’ve missed anything particularly excellent please do send it my way.
The main thing contributing to aforementioned busyness: we bought a house! It’s great, we love it, we each have our own office which has completely transformed working from home for me, and means my husband’s sacred work space is safe from the human clutter tornado he’s married to.
I’m now living out my gardening dreams, though those seem to involve more fighting shrubs than I’d anticipated.
My sad little wind-battered acer is now loving life in a sheltered corner of the garden, and I’m hoping to put it in the ground. James is going to build some raised beds for a vegetable patch. I love going out there first thing and doing a bit of weeding, and it’s amazing to be able to just sit back on a deckchair in your own green space.
We now have things we could only dream of when we were living a flat:
- a barbecue
- a fire pit
- outdoor furniture
- a dishwasher
- bifold doors
- room for a dog
- an endless wave of slugs and snails eating my plants
We do have a lot of parakeets in the area, and so far the only bird visitors I’ve had have been pigeons and magpies. I put up a feeder but I don’t think there’s enough shelter for little birds to feel safe, so hopefully when the SHED I BOUGHT (!!! so excited) arrives it’ll be a bit more welcoming to our little winged friends.
I can’t promise this won’t become a gardening blog.
Outside of house, I’ve been adjusting to new responsibilities at work. I’ve been tech lead of my team for quite a while now but it’s grown a lot, so I’m adjusting to that plus leading big producty projects (as opposed to the more platformy projects we were doing before). It’s uncharted territory for me and I’ve done a lot of flapping, ranting and introspection to come to the conclusion that above anything else, I’m stressing myself out with my chaotic ways of working. I’m trying to be a bit more focussed and prioritise my time better (and get the hell off Slack). Impostor syndrome is repeatedly striking me over the head at the moment as I feel like any day people are going to realise that despite the hard-earned respect and reputation I’ve amassed over the last five years, I’m actually three children in a trench coat repeating “what are the tradeoffs”. I know it’ll get easier – it always does – but that doesn’t mean it’s not painful and difficult.
I limited my conference speaking to four events again this year, finding that’s the magic number as long as I don’t have to spend half the year writing a load of different talks. I’ve been talking about technical migrations, and the lessons learned from the Typescript one we did at Monzo. I think it’s highly relatable, and the reception seems to be really good. I kicked off my conference year with All Day Hey in Leeds in May, followed by Pixel Pioneers in Bristol in June. Coming up I’m speaking at Smashing Freiburg in September, then Beyond Tellerrand Berlin in November. What an exciting list!
On a side note, I was really sad to hear that Front conference had to cancel their event this year. I spoke there last year and it was really fantastic, with a great organising team. Marc Thiele, who runs Beyond Tellerrand, wrote a great blog post about the challenges of running conferences these days.
What else can I tell you? The last few months have been a blur of meetings and soil under my fingernails and endless paint samples.
After four years’ service at Monzo I became eligible for a three-month paid sabbatical, and I’ve got the first month in September. I have a ridiculous electronics project lined up which you can be sure I’ll post about. I’m excited to have a bit of downtime!