Accidentally in Code

Tag: life

  • Powerful Questions

    Powerful Questions

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    Credit: Pexels / Tookapic

    There’s a question in my coaching prep that I can never seem to answer.

    Debrief of last week’s inquiry. (a designated powerful question for the week – the power is in the asking of the question – getting curious and inquiring into its meaning for you.)

    Before each coaching session, I go through and answer the questions and reflect on what has happened in the time between. It’s so useful, and then I get to this question – the second to last – and I’m just like… what.

    2017 was an intense year for me personally and professionally, and of course set against the backdrop of the world ending. I moved to a new country, and like properly-no-longer-nomad moved – after three years of roaming the world. I ended a project that had been a big part of those three years. I committed to posting a photo a day. I travelled a lot and worked a lot more. I learned how to manage managers, worked on getting better at product and strategy, dealt with and helped others through challenges. I was a good friend to some people and a less than great one to others. I embraced some people in my life and let others fade out of it.

    I explored the extent of my capacity – taking a ~20 hour a week course on top of my rather more than 40 hour a week job in the middle of the year. But I never quite managed to recharge from that – I went straight from that into a bout of tonsillitis (whilst on vacation in the Galapagos, oh my god) that I recovered maybe 80% from but not completely – until a second round of antibiotics that I took over the new year. I felt like I was drowning in shoulds, lacking the strength or resilience to every really make progress out of the pool.

    What does this have to do with powerful questions? When it was clear to me that I was building on a shaky foundation, I embraced the idea – and need – to consolidate first. To go back to and nail the basics – where I live, how I feel, what I do. To take the things that were line items in last year’s list of forty goals and break them out into all the pieces that are required to actually cross them off this time.

    And I started looking at things and saying, “is this nailing the basics?” — the flattering invitation, the CfP that I could submit to, the new talk I could prepare. Decisions became easier, and finally…

    …finally, I understood the power of the inquiry.

     

  • Happy New Year!

    Happy New Year!

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    I’m on my third New Year’s adventure. Last year I went to Montevideo, and the year before to Paris. I’m not big on the holidays, or on New Year’s resolutions, but I like this time of year to escape. The day to day slows down, and for all the markers of time are arbitrary, I find it worthwhile to spend some time chilling out and winding down, going for long walks and trying to find some clarity about the year that’s (nearly!) passed, and think about what I want in the one to come.

    2017 has been super tough. I feel like I’ve barely stopped all year, except when I’ve been sick – which has been more than normal. There’s been a lot professionally, and personally – and against a backdrop of the world ending it’s been a lot.

    I think I’ve achieved a lot too, but that’s hard to remember right now. I’m hoping the next few days roaming my favourite European city will help me remember what – and come up with some better hopes for 2018 than “less exhausting and terrible”.

    Happy New Year, y’all! Thanks for reading 💕

  • Habits that Helped in 2017

    Habits that Helped in 2017

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    Credit: pxhere

    My coach had been taking me through some things reflecting on the past year, which has been brutal on a number of levels. The word I set for the year was “thrive” but it felt a lot more like “survive” most of the time. One of the things I did at the end of last year was write a letter like I was sending it from the end of this year – it was like Past Cate saw exactly what this year would be like… but thought I would handle it better than I did.

    However there have been some things that helped this year. Some of them things that I kept up, and some of them things I returned to.

    Coaching. Really this has been key to taking on more and surviving all of it. It’s really helpful to have the consistency and someone pushing me to be the best Cate with nothing invested in what that is.

    Disconnecting. Not having work Slack on my phone when I’m home. Going on an adventure and leaving my work laptop behind. I really like my job and there’s a lot to do, so it’s easy to get pulled back into it… but it’s important to get away sometimes.

    Exercise. This is a foundation habit for me. It’s what I always go back to and start with when things get off the rails – which they have, multiple times this year. But having it as a strong part of my identity helps me be confident that I’ll get back into it, even when travel and being sick has kept me away from it longer than I would like.

    Exploring. I love to have adventures. Making a point to get out into the world and experience it is really important for me. I went to some new places this year, but I also try and make a point to experience the places I spend more time – it makes me happier.

    Reading. I always know I’m really overwhelmed when I stop reading 1-2 books a week (and start watching TV instead…). The internet is great, but I like reading books, too. Novels to disconnect and relax, and then non fiction books go into a depth that you don’t find in online articles – I find it really valuable.

    Sleeping. Tied into this – waking up relatively naturally (I use this instead of an alarm clock – Amazon). Sleep is so important and I really don’t cope well without it. I get 8 hours (or more) very consistently and I make sure I prioritize sleeping. Now that I have a home (finally), I bought the nicest sheets and pillows and everything else I could to make for a cosy and comfortable night.

    Supporting. I do look for ways to support others, which I find personally rewarding. It also means people are usually willing to support me when I need it, too.

    Tracking. I write an internal notes post each week where I document what I did. I sent my coach a weekly “prep” outlining where I’m at – which turned into a daily one when I was super overwhelmed last week. I always refer back to the last one when I write the new one, and it’s a way to see things getting better or why things are the way they are. She’s also had me to monthly “commitment journals” which I’ve not been as reliable at… but have definitely been helpful when I do them.

    Writing. I really value the clarity this brings, whether I’m documenting things internally or for my blog. It’s helpful for me to refer back to, and sometimes useful for others, too.

    What about you?

  • The Goals Spreadsheet

    The Goals Spreadsheet

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    Credit: Flickr / SaraYeomans

    At the end of the year, my coach had me make a list of 40 goals for 2017. They range from the very professional to the very personal. From the serious to the purely for fun. Of course, I broke them into sections and put them in a spreadsheet. At the start of each month I do a “commitment journal”, where I think about what I hope the next month will bring. As part of that I’ve taken to going through the list and updating it. Marking the completed ones green, the in progress ones orange, and the at risk ones red.

    As of the last update, 10 goals have been marked green. 13 are orange. 6 are red. But to look at it that way misses the point – I’ve been finding it a powerful and interesting exercise to return each month to the things that I found important at the start of the year – even if many of them would not make the list if I wrote it again today. Even if it doesn’t capture many things that I have achieved – because I had no idea they were coming.

    I’ve generally been much more into the process than the goal. I think it’s easy to have some big ideas, but if you can’t break things down and somewhat enjoy what it will take to get there it will never happen. So this is the kind of thing that I would find pointless without someone else being involved in some way. I wouldn’t make the list for myself, I wouldn’t do the monthly journal without someone to send it to. But it’s surprising to me how often I return to it the following month and how much of what I wrote down has actually happened.

    Have I got more done because of these processes? Probably not. But I have a better record of what that looked like, and I feel a better sense of progress – and that’s something.

     

  • Item: One Passport

    Item: One Passport

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    I keep my passport in a case that says “without this I’m nothing”. I love this case, because I love the friend who gave it to me, and because that is exactly how I feel about my passport. I’m sure in German there’s a word for the adventurer’s fear of being separated from their passport.

    I lost a passport once. Returning to Sydney from a ski trip to NZ. I’d wiped out and banged my head, so I was walking through the airport slightly dazed. The case survived. In North Korea I got into an argument because they take your passport away from you. I lost that argument. They are pretty rigid about things in North Korea.

    So much anxiety about the physical thing. It turns out, the biggest risk to my passport was the quasi-democratic process that has led us to Brexit. I say quasi-democratic, because the leave campaign was so full of misinformation they actually took the website down days after they “won”. I say quasi-democratic because I don’t understand how something of that level of importance gets decided at less than 52% (surely a 2/3 majority is standard). I say quasi-democratic because it’s not at all clear what people were voting for (which is probably why so many of people who voted to leave regret it).

    So many Americans have told me that they feel the same about El Cheeto. But what they don’t seem to understand is that with El Cheeto there’s hope. He could die. Be impeached. Or at least, not re-elected. What’s the best case scenario with Brexit? That 10 years from now, once the financial industry has left London, the NHS has faltered (because it depends on EU workers), and the economy has collapsed… Britain begs to rejoin and goes through the process to qualify again?

    There was a point, sometime around the illegal war in Iraq, that I was so ashamed to be British that when people asked me where I was from I would say “Europe”. Last year I would dodge the question and respond “I live in Colombia” (to which people would reply, “oh your english is so good!”).

    I hate beer, and football. I speak conversational French and functional Spanish. I’ve spent years roaming, but I always planned to come “home” to Europe, which probably didn’t mean the UK. Brexit put a ticking clock on that, and I thought, well, maybe it’s time anyway. I’ll just go and claim residency somewhere, and it’ll be OK. And then at every point it’s been so much worse than I thought it could go. This thing that is so clearly – look at the plummeting value of the pound (down 15% against the dollar, and 10% against the euro) – a terrible idea. I hear politicians tell this story about how they are respecting the democratic process, the popular vote. I think they’re all just playing chicken. They didn’t stand up for Europe before the referendum, and they won’t stand up for Europe now. They won’t stand up for the younger generation – who overwhelmingly voted against Brexit, and our future. They’re too busy pandering to old racists.

    It’s a disconcerting and horrible thing to discover that you can be stripped of a core part of your identity. That the premise on which I’ve built my life – of free movement within the EU – could collapse. It’s become this thing, that hasn’t quite overtaken my life, but that I think about every day.

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  • One of Those Days

    One of Those Days

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    I had one of those days last week. I woke up later than I wanted to, and it took me a while to get moving. Then just as I was getting started, I realized that I had to deal with some insurance thing, which was – of course – a complete pain.

    Eventually, I was out on the mountain on my skis, but the crowds were out in force by then. But I made my way to this part of the mountain I hadn’t been to before, and found this beautiful red run and a chair lift without much of a queue, and skied it again, and again, and again. I went all the way to the other side of Grandvalira, ate lunch, and came back. It ended up being a really good – albeit exhausting – day.

    I like to think that I am some kind of Super Cate. That I bounce out of bed every morning and Achieve All The Things. This is true… maybe 60% of the time. Long haul flights, my cycle, getting sick… all derail it regularly. As do things that are well within my control such as, dehydration, forgetting to eat, exercising a lot, not exercising enough (and then not sleeping).

    So a lot of the time, I can’t live up to my own expectations, and my own idea of myself… and I spend too much of that time beating myself up. For not being able to just shake off whatever it is, for not having done a better job at Life the previous day.

    I feel like I’ve been confronting the difference between Super Cate and Cate a lot since I came to live up this mountain and ski. I used to be a ski instructor – something I was proud of, because (amongst other reasons) I didn’t learn to ski until I was 20. But I last skiied properly in New Zealand, because a couple of hours at the world’s longest indoor ski slope in Dubai doesn’t count. So when I arrived I was super anxious, and out of practise. I’ve been getting better (deliberate practise and a great instructor) but I’m just not as much of a daredevil as I was at 22. I’ve had about six concussions since then (most of them skiing, although there was that time a TV fell on my head), not to mention badly injuring my shoulder and my knee. I’ve been hit, badly, whilst skiing, twice. When I’m on the slopes (and there aren’t too many people around), I feel like I’m flying again, but the act of getting geared up for it is a complete PITA. I know two-three runs in I’ll be super happy, but that can take an hour to get to. It’s not a very immediate reward.

    My most bitter breakup was over an argument about where to go on vacation. Of course it wasn’t really about that, or so I concluded once the hurt (and frankly, amusement) faded. It was about his need to be seen a certain way, and my inability to bolster that self image.

    I think that the gap between who you like to think you are, and who you actually are, is a hard place to be. It’s not something you can ask other people to do for you, or fix for you – you have to do the work yourself. When I’m not being Super Cate, the way it highlights my inadequacies… I hate it. But those days are also when I see most clearly what I need to do to be the kind of human I aspire to be. If I can stop beating myself up, I might just make progress instead.

    The days when Super Cate bounces out of bed and goes hurtling around the mountain and then Achieves All The Digital Things are awesome, and energizing, and invigorating. But the days when Human Cate is not feeling it, does it anyway, and ends up having a good time before collapsing on a heap on the sofa… well Human Cate worked harder for it. I’m prouder of her.

  • This Week

    This Week

    Life

    Getting random beauty treatments here in BA. This week I tried this thing that my roommate and I call “Electrocution” (they name it something less terrifying at the salon). And also got a massage, which was good. Finally found good sushi! And hung out with people a lot more than has been normal lately. Checked myself into a nice hotel to better ignore the holiday this weekend. It’s nice. They have a pool, and food.

    Media

    Really appreciated Leave Me, and then read Three Amazing Things About You which was – appropriately – amazing, starting on The Expatriates. Still re-watching Drop Dead Diva – love that show, and Keeping Up with the Kardashians. Finished Thinking Fast and Slow, which I didn’t super enjoy, and starting on a preview copy of a friend’s new book (it’s awesome!)

    Published

    A new edition of Technically Speaking is out.

    On the Internet

  • This Week

    This Week

    Life

    Went to the spa for a random beauty treatment involving being frozen, and a facial, and laser. Also got a massage, which was great – needed! Worked out, read books, did a little exploring of the botanical gardens, and found some new places to eat.

    Work

    Busy – catching up with people before they leave for the holidays, and figuring out what projects are happening and where they are at. But really enjoying it.

    Media

    Finished re-reading Georgette Heyer, returning to modernity with Leave Me, which I’m really enjoying. Still re-watching Drop Dead Diva – love that show. Still plodding through Thinking Fast and Slow which is interesting but irritatingly self-satisfied.

    Product links Amazon.

    Published

    A new edition of Technically Speaking is out.

    On the Internet

  • This Week

    This Week

    Life

    Saw a little bit (well: one art gallery) of Philly, and then came “home” to BA. Trying to rehydrate and get back to normal life – had a really good workout, and went exploring. I went to the National Museum of Fine Arts and watched the sun set at the Floralis Genérica. It was lovely!

    Work

    Intense! Finished doing 1:1s with everyone on the team and getting started on what’s next.

    Media

    Still reading Georgette Heyer, still re-watching Drop Dead Diva – love that show. Still plodding through Thinking Fast and Slow which is interesting but irritatingly self-satisfied.

    Product links Amazon.

    Published

    A new edition of Technically Speaking is out.

    I sent a WTHIC from PHL.

    On the Internet