This is late because I was traveling.

Week 51: December 16 - 22, 2024

I started the week feeling SUPER exposed because I made a LinkedIn post and for a few days everyone was talking to me IRL and online about it. Hate it. (But I like that I've posted something that made people think.) The attention blew over within a few days thankfully.

If you only post on LinkedIn once a season then it’s bound to get attention from people who are craving to see something new. I am interested in building up a little bit of a writing collection there, very surface level topics without much exploration, though I never plan to EVER link from LinkedIn to another place (like my website) to expand on a topic.

I learned my lesson last time I applied for jobs and didn’t have any writing online anywhere. Next time I apply for a job, if I do, I will have words associated with my name. (Since I apply exclusively to writing jobs this is extremely important.)

Drum lesson was good this week - we are learning the intro to "Burning Down" by Hell on Fire and it's pretty fun to practice. We also recently started learning the song "Eternal" by Mallavora, which so far is really fun to play We went over what we've learned so far as a warmup which was fairly effective.

It was a really busy week at work again and I frankly don't remember much from that side of the week. I will try my best to pull out some highlights.

We did our (virtual) Art & Eat lunch event I mentioned in a previous post and I colored a Christmasy flower. It's always a refreshing hour and I was glad to spend some relaxed time with my team before the holiday break.

I worked every minute of my days and stayed late after long recovery lunches (where I both eat and take a nap and that's why they are long lunches), but I had goals and I wanted to knock them out for myself. Here's some of what I closed this week:

Since June 2023, I've been working a project to revise an internal stakeholder site that had some documentation scattered about. All the guides were created as-needed so it wasn't a comprehensive help guide, more like a FAQ. We want to move it in the direction of a self-help resource as well as the location where everybody gets news about the stuff my team works on, so I've been collaborating to make it a useful knowledge resource with relevant information. In addition to documentation, our platform release notes go up there and include details about bug fixes, new features, new technologies implemented in the classrooms, as well as operational updates and upcoming deadlines. I finally get to send a newsletter, my 8 year old heart is free!!! (I've always wanted an external reason to send a newsletter regularly.) Anyway, this week I worked on finalizing the revision, so going forward we're just building new content and sharing new knowledge and that's very exciting! I'm also excited to finally close something that had been open since June 2023.

I'm working on a few high visibility process documentations and improvements, one with a team of extremely smart technical people that I'm trying my best to keep up with, and the other solo-ish as I've had to interview people smarter than me and then write everything that they said in simpler terms. Both of them are processes that have been going for a while but were never documented.

I don't know if you know this about me, but I am working my dream job. I just wanted to write.

I feel like there was something else really big but I can't remember right now. Work has been incredibly busy since before Thanksgiving with these projects (and more) in this quarter but I conquered them all. I think at this point my imposter syndrome is almost completely eliminated.

I won an award! My department leads did an "innovation" contest where everyone submitted how they innovate in their work (we're a technology team, it's fun and we are ok with cheesy!). The team voted on each other's and mine got first place. I've never won a prize that was gained based on internal votes. As I was reading the entries and voting I thought to myself: "wow we've done a lot of amazing things," thinking it was obvious I wouldn't win but it's ok because all of these people are cool. And then I won! I am glowing just thinking about it. It's nice to feel like I have a sense of place on a team because I often feel like I am just trying my best to keep up.

Outer space background with the text: You are here paying rent

Penguin snow men screenshot of the Monster Hunter Now mobile game

White distorted text on a dark background: You wouldn't finish a creative project

Blurry photo of the road ahead with houses, streetlights, and intersections

Blurry photo of row homes and a large tree in front of them

On Thursday I went into the city (DC) and on the way home I was thinking about how I'll go into the city to pick up food or something in the middle of the week but I don't go to the city for shows or events in the middle of the week. Not that it's weird (it's super low stimulation to go out only to pick up something then go home) but just that it's interesting.

When I was younger I'd never go midweek for any reason, so it's actually an improvement. I'm actually more hip.

On Friday I logged off at 2pm and then flew to Phoenix, AZ, to spend a few fun filled days with family, which completely erased my memories of the early side of the week. (What you see here I took notes on, thankfully.)

I'm going to end this post by sharing some of the links I gathered over the week. I'll make a separate post about my travels.