Weeknotes 17/2022

A week that’s been frosty and sunny, quiet and hectic.

Photo by Adeolu Eletu on Unsplash. Not my desk or view.

A week that’s been frosty and sunny, quiet and hectic.

I ran a small community meetup for designers in my two direct teams and it went well although I felt like I came across as so wooden and awkward. But oh well, I’m glad I was able to bring people together and we had some nice chats.
I’m continuing to sit in on user research interviews, which are really interesting and enlightening.
I continued to blog like a fiend. Seriously though, I can’t stop, every meeting I have I’m like, “this would be a good blog post” and before you know it I have two queued for publishing and three more half formed thoughts in my drafts. I’m genuinely starting to worry that I might have to cut myself off from #NaBloPoMo because it’s distracting me from my actual day job and leading to me starting dinner later than usual.
Our little family has booked flights to New Zealand in the new year. My partner hasn’t seen his family since 2018 and in that time his family has gained two new little members and lost one. It’s so overdue.
I moved my desk. Such a boring line item but it’s made a massive difference. I used to be in the direct path of the sun, so would spend the day with curtains closed and it was so dark and depressing. Now I get to keep the curtains open all day! It’s glorious. So this is your reminder that small things can sometimes have a really big impact.

I continued to blog like a fiend. Which is a good thing, but also comes with it waves of guilt and shame and anxiety and thoughts like, “who am am I to put my thoughts into the world? I am nobody, I’m not smart and people are probably getting sick of me blabbering on.” Whenever I talk too much, I get sick of myself talking and convinced everyone else must be sick of me too, and the same goes with writing. I wonder if mediocre white men ever feel this way.
One actual downside of writing so much that I worry about is: maybe I am not listening as much because I am spending most of my energy on my own thoughts? Which is what I assume most mediocre white men do, and the opposite of the kind of person I want to be. Something to keep an eye on.
Because I am sitting in on user research and not doing it, I’m feeling a bit unproductive and unhelpful lately. I’m watching the work rather than doing the work. I’ve talk to my manager about this and he’s told me I’m doing the right thing — I should be getting acclimated before I dig in. But it’s a weird feeling, to sit back.