An Exercise in Gratitude

🌱 - A collection of sprouting thoughts.

It’s the end of the year (no shit) and as usual I’ve been feeling a lot of things.. fatigue from one roller-coaster of a year, excitement for an even crazier year to come and fear for the unknown.

One thing I haven’t felt in a while or rather intentionally exercised was gratitude.

Sooo let’s do that!

Gratitude comes up a lot in my life... as gentle nudges from my therapist, or full on attacks from random motivational Instagram posts, and sometimes covert themes in conversations with friends.

I recall talking to a friend as we had brunch late last year and telling her about someone I’d met. They were so excited to give their first public talk about something they enjoy a lot.

“It was beautiful to see”, I told her.. “I do that so much that I’ve normalized the sensation.. I should be more grateful.” I didn’t say the last part but I felt it!

A few hours later I’m back in my apartment in full introspection mode. “I should like this”, “I do a lot of really cool things” and a bunch of intrusive thoughts pop up.

I’m clearly trying to convince myself of something I’m not even sure of.

Actions I hear are the best way to combat uncertainty. So I’m writing this as an “anti-year in review”... an exercise in gratitude.

Let’s do a TL;DR

Mixes uploaded: 4
Podcasts done: 6
Conference Talks: 4
Workshops conducted: 4
Songs produced: 0
Tutorial videos made: 16
Blog posts done: 3
Streams/webinars hosted: 10
Kilometers ran: 86
Cities visited: 11

I’ve taken the liberty of dividing these into three parts.. my health, my craft, and my hobbies.

My health

This year has been a turbulent year.. a lesser known fact about me is my health battles! I had a couple things not go right and in the middle of a pandemic, that is not great. To add to that, I moved cities which (they never tell you this) destabilized a lot for me mental health wise. So understandably I took several steps back from everything!

I did start seriously running though. That helped me out so much mentally and physically. I’m grateful to be in the space I am in now; putting my needs first and showing up for myself. It’s a constant journey and I’m happy to be on it now.

Here’s my humble flex...

My craft

I do developer relations and over the past couple of months, that has changed in a couple ways. I went from a one person team, to getting a teammate, to managing a team and now I'm growing a team. Again, all this in the space of a year! Honestly, I’m so happy for the growth and wealth of experience that all this has brought and the value that my team adds to developers around the world (this alone probably deserves a separate post). Like seriously, technically, strategically 🤯 so so much goodness

Here a non-exhaustive list of things i’m proud of 🤷

Podcasts

Conference Talks

Workshops

⚡ Building Modern CMS Driven Web Application - 🗣️ Daniel Phiri - 🐿️ Hack This Fall 2.0

Tutorial videos

Blog posts

Streams/Webinars

I don’t share a lot of what I do because I’m super self conscious about everything I do and feel like it’s not that great (I know, sounds counter productive but tell that to my brain). I feel like I should probably share more and not think about it too much.

The career part of this post means so much to me because three years ago, this is sort of everything I wanted (cue the Billie Eillish). Like, past me would be in awe of all the cool things I get to do (I miss not caring and focusing on the fun and value). More of that going forward.

My hobbies

I feel like this is my favorite part.. I’m very coy about it but I DJ and really really enjoy it! I like music and it’s a big part of my life! I love the culture and subcultures, I love the form, I love the expression - it’s so beautiful! I love that I dedicated time to curating music into mixes that resonate with whatever genres I'm vibing with at any particular moment in time. This year, I also got to play for a few people in public so there goes my bedroom DJ moniker :(

I also love to travel and immerse myself in people, their stories.. cultures and cuisines, cities and what makes them tick and. I feel like “peak me” was spending my end of year in a tiny city in southern Italy surrounded by a bunch of lovely strangers drinking a Peroni, listening to drum and bass and talking about art. I had a lot of moments like this sprinkled out through the year and it was very fulfilling - again, grateful to be able to do all this given everything going on.

I also started making music, nothing shared of course lol but I’ll embrace incremental gains and lean into searching for more happy accidents. So watch out for something if for any reason you’re actually paying attention.

Also, I learned how to make cookies and wut! My oatmeal choc chip cookies are literally the best!

Mixes uploaded: 4
Songs produced: 0
Cities visited: 11
Cookies made: countless

All that said, I’m super grateful for everything I’ve experienced and learned. I'm mostly writing this to look back and cherish, but i'm also writing this for the bad days so i can read this and think "heyy, you do things sometimes, look at you!."

On that note, I’m very excited to create more going forward.

An Exercise in Gratitude

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