Weeknotes 18/2022

Happy day of recieving a hundred of “deals” from brands you didn’t even realized you were subscribed to! I don’t believe in B***k Friday so will call this Grey Friday, because the outside is a grey as my tshirt and I feel a bit over it all right now.

What went well

• Yesterday I joined an early morning (for me) call on making a business case for community, organized by James and Imran and attended by many wonderful people like Beth, Derek, Rob and others, plus my BC gov colleagues Harry, Ari and Rumon.
• I organized a BC Gov design community meetup on Accessibility and it was so, so good. The recording is available to anyone here.
• I had many good, productive meetings with my new teams, and attended a potluck with my old team.
• I kept blogging. My momentum is slowing a bit. I am looking forward to the end of #NaBloPoMo now.
• This happened — it was such a pleasant surprise, and something I’ve not knowingly experienced before. Please can this be more normalized?

What didn’t go as well

• Something that is always apparent but was more so this week is that there is an incredible amount of duplication of effort and ideas and strategy in this (and all) governments. We are all solving the same problems in silos and not talking about it and then being surprised when we find out from meetings that someone else is doing this, too. How do we fix this? It’s a mind boggling problem.
• Not work related but I donated blood for the first time on Monday evening and I almost passed out and got very violently ill. I still feel like I am recovering on Friday. But please don’t let this discourage you from donating blood, it’s so important and I think my experience is very, very rare. I’m so sad that this feels off the table for me now.
• I was swamped with meetings this week, and felt like I was falling behind in everything. Next week is going to be even worse. I hope this isn’t the new normal and I’m just experiencing this because everyone is trying to get things done before the holiday pause.
• I wrote something that I felt really nervous about publishing, mainly because I’ve had a lot of men dismiss me over my opinions on it. So I didn’t really share it anywhere and have considered taking it down but I don’t think it’s wrong so I shall leave it up. For now. It really isn’t that controversial, I am just tired of being told I’m wrong I guess.

Inspired by:

Didn’t get a chance to read much this week but these caught my eye:

• Organizing People, Power, Change — by Marshall Ganz
• Building conscious design systems by Amy Hupe
• Pia Andrews’ FWD50 Takeaways

Reading, watching, listening

• I just finished Last Summer on State Street by Toya Wolfe — and wow! It’s a really powerful read about growing up black in a world of poverty and violence in Chicago. Definitely worth a read.
• I started watching Fleishman is in Trouble. I loved the book and the show is really good as well but I’m having a hard time taking Jesse Eisenberg seriously as a divorced grown up with two kids even though logically I know he is old enough.
• This episode of Heavyweight — Another Roadside Attraction — is heartbreaking and beautiful (strong suicide warning though.)