🎒 I got a new backpack. The Tropicfeel Shell 30L backpack. I used to have a PeakDesign Everyday Backpack 20L in grey, but it was too small and the straps were oddly creaky.

👨‍💻 I contributed some more to Homebrew – particularly Sorbet stuff. This PR reduced the size of the repo by slimming down the RuboCop RBI, and this PR adds a new RuboCop rule. A combination of developer experience stuff with Sorbet and RuboCop – the things I enjoy a lot!

💪 I joined a gym. And a few days later I got COVID. But I joined a gym! Because since I turned 30 the metabolism isn’t what it once was. I’ve got strength in my legs from walking and cycling, but my upper body is just mush. I signed up for personal training for a few weeks – the first one this coming week – to teach me what to do and when and try to solidify my fitness goals. Gyms are intimidating as someone who has never before “needed” to do exercise.

📚 I read Be Patient by Tilly Rose, a terrifying and fascinating memoir into the patient experience in the UK’s NHS. And in fiction I’m a third of the way through Under the Eye of the Big Bird by Hiromi Kawakami.

☕ Owing to having to drastically cut down the amount of full sugar Coke I drink due to the risk of type two diabetes, a few months ago I got a Nespresso machine. I’ve been through all of the pods over the past months, and landed on these Illy pods that actually tastes pleasant, as well as these pods from my local coffee roaster. It’s not too bad an adjustment. I allow myself one Coke a week now as a “treat” before or after my weekly therapy appointment!

I was assigned a large, difficult, project that’d had many Staff engineers working on it since 2022. Well then. If we’re doing promotion-driven development, what better way to cement myself as having “impact”! I was going to try my hardest to understand everything and get it done.

The person who was leading on the project was about to leave, so they braindumped everything they could to me on day two of the team. It was intimidating, but I tried to break it down into smaller pieces.

A month or so passes, and things are going slowly but OK. Then my manager leaves, which is a shock even though it’s all on good terms. Now we’re a team of three, in very disparate timezones - I’m the only one in Europe. It’s quite lonely as I’m quite a social person.

I try to keep up, but I spend increasing amounts of time doing “snack projects” that align with my interests - not this big blob of “changing the JSON library that GitHub uses”. Oh, did I not say that that was the project? Yeah, that’s the project. It’s a big deal, with lots of moving parts, an extreme number of test failures, and lots of brokenness very visible to users if it goes wrong!

A Staff engineer joins the team. We have a 1:1. They ask me what I’m working on and, importantly, “how are you doing?”. I try to explain the project, but my emotions are so unexpectedly close to the surface that I start crying instead. Not the best introduction! They liken it to “being alone floating in the middle of an ocean”.

I realised that I was so overwhelmed with trying to do a good job and prove I’m “deserving” of being on the team, especially as the only Senior engineer in a team full of Staff engineers. But what does that even mean? Impact? Cementing myself? But people already thought I could do a job on the team, else they wouldn’t have moved me over. I just put too much pressure on myself. It was just the wrong project for me at this time.

I’d spent some more time breaking off little chunks of it to pave the way for tackling the bigger problems. The bigger problems are mostly character encoding in areas of the application that would have involved a number of other teams weighing in on their areas of expertise, which they don’t have time to do alongside their other competing priorities for something that’s ultimately a “nice to have”. That’s a lot! “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” comes to mind.

On that note, we decided as a team to put the project back on the shelf. I didn’t even know that was an option until someone said “yeah I would have put this on the shelf and said no if I’d been handed this”. So, massive amounts of relief!

I had some help shaping the thoughts of projects I actually want to do - DX, monolith, Ruby stuff - into plans that are “epic”-shaped and maybe even good for promo if I want to go for it. So, people are on my side. And I can do anything I put my mind to if I just relax a bit. It has been a good thing that I tried to do it, because I’ve learned a lot, but it’s not sustainable for a single person to do it all.

So, here goes formalizing my next project! Some DX work - where my passions really lie - moving towards making the GitHub Rails monolith more of a standard Rails app.

(With heartfelt thanks to jhawthorn for attempting to dump his years of knowledge about JSON over two hours of Zoom, joelhawksley for asking the right questions at the right time, composerinteralia for his help in shaping my “snack task” thoughts and ideas into something that leadership might like (rather than just the whims of someone with ADHD and a desire to do good work), and to bensheldon for bringing me onto the team even though we only overlapped for a few weeks.)

This time it’s with the Open University (OU). I will be studying BSc (Hons) Combined STEM, starting in October with the module S111 – “Questions in Science”.

Why? Because I’ve got the career achievements part done, but the academic achievement part has always been something I’ve yearned for. Doing this won’t materially improve my job prospects – instead it’s a personal goal to prove something to myself.

This isn’t my first attempt at a degree. In 2015, alongside working full-time, I signed up for a part-time BA (Hons) French Studies degree at Birkbeck, University of London. It was in the evenings, after work, three times a week. The campus was only 10 minutes walk from the office. I remember doing pretty well, but I only stuck at it for two out of the four years before withdrawing. The student loan was too much of a burden and I wasn’t really learning anything. I suppose I should have seen that coming since it was a UK course in French as a foreign language. Anyway, I digress…

Here I am in 2023, finally registered for BSc (Hons) Combined STEM. I’ve been debating for years whether or not to study with the OU, and I finally stopped talking about it and hit the button.

It’ll take me six years. That’s a long time. I’ll be 35 by the time I complete it. Of course, that’s if I do complete it. But I hope not to drop out again. I have hobbies and friends and a fully-remote job, so even if distance learning gets a bit dry I still have stimulation. No student loan this time. I am privileged enough to have paid off my part-time student loan from the previous study, and I don’t want that hanging around my neck again. Maybe the fact that I’m spending real money on it – and studying new and interesting things – will make me more likely to finish?

I have studied with the OU before. In 2012 I took L211, a now discontinued module called “upper intermediate French”, at the same time as I did my A Levels. Given that I grew up in France and that I am fluent in French, it wasn’t particularly taxing. I used it to help decide if university study was for me. It wasn’t. I got a tech job and, in the last ten years, progressed to the professional heights I’m at now.

My plan is to study absolutely no French. I have learned my lesson. I could have transferred credits from previous study – the OU’s credit transfer seems generous – but that would have restricted the number of credits I could do purely to save money and time. But I’m not short on time. Let’s not forget that I’m doing this for fun. There’s no career goals, no student loan to pay back, just personal achievement and learning. I’ve always enjoyed learning.

I have a mortgage, pets, a partner and a full-time job. I can’t go to a traditional brick university because they wouldn’t accept me without A Levels, plus I don’t have the luxury of being able to quit my job for three years. In my research I did look for part-time, in-person bachelors degrees, but they were in awkward parts of the country that I couldn’t easily get to, not to mention that I’d have to take full days off work.

It’s true that I was hesitant to register because of the distance learning aspect. There was a fear of social isolation. However, I’ve discovered lots of Facebook groups and, even better, some Discord communities now that my ou.ac.uk email address is active again. The one for STEM students seems active even over the summer. There are even reports of occasional in-person meet-ups.

In future blog posts I’ll go into my provisional module plans for the next six years. There’s 90 days to go until my first module starts. I’m very excited! But before all that, I’ve got a tech conference to organize.

Last week I was in Berlin and Amsterdam. It was really good to see lots of friends, eat lots of nice food, and do standard tourist things like visit museums. I wish I’d had time to go to Berlin Zoo – but there will be other opportunities to visit!

The best salad I’ve eaten in some time: a roasted corn, tomato, jalapeño, feta, pickled onion, lettuce and avocado salad from Box Sociaal in Amsterdam.

The hotel I stayed in in Amsterdam was unnecessarily loud – right above the train tracks at Centraal station, where the trains and announcements run all night. I won’t be making that mistake again.

It was a great week apart from the four hours I spent in A&E in Berlin with suspected appendicitis. I am thankful that it wasn’t appendicitis and so I didn’t have to have emergency surgery. 😬

I got further through the ‘Solve for Happy’ audiobook on the two flights and the Eurostar, walked a lot of steps around the various cities, enjoyed the very cheap public transport (Berlin’s 9 euro ticket was excellent), and only did the tiniest bit of thinking about work one day when my other plans fell through and that combined with a delayed flight meaning that I was really bored. Progress!

I bought some more LEGO at Berlin airport, so now I’m home I’ve been building the succulents kit. Quite cute, plus these won’t die. Yes, I did once upon a time kill a cactus by overwatering it.

Finally, I hit a 31 day streak of Duolingo Ukrainian with my practice tonight. I’m starting to get the hang of the basics, and I think this is the longest I’ve ever stuck at Duolingo in any language. Though maybe starting off with French and being bored out of my mind was not a good thing a few years ago. Challenges are good!

I had a day off work today! Midweek days off are nice when they have purpose, it turns out. Some family visited briefly, which was lovely. Their visit to my house for the first time since buying it caused me to reflect on how far I’ve come and how well I’ve done, in a very positive way. I don’t write that for bragging, it’s just important to resurface occasionally from all the negatives currently in the world and the ensuing mental spiral. It’s almost as if I need to stop reading the news.

📚 This week I started reading ‘This is How You Lose the Time War’. No real opinions yet, but it’s nice to start on a book again.

🎧 I’ve started listening to Mo Gawdat’s ‘Solve for Happy’ on Audible when I go out for walks. In terms of podcasts, while I was in town visiting a supermarket I had an interesting episode of 99% Invisible about “world foods” aisles in supermarkets in my ears.

🎥 On YouTube, I found the Vincenzo’s Plate channel which has some hilarious reactions to TikTokers ruining (or, more kindly, reinterpreting or reinventing) pasta dishes. I feel good about continuing to get my TikTok filtered through Instagram re-posts, YouTubers reacting to things, or friends sending me links, rather than mindlessly scrolling myself.

🦉 I’m on a 19 day streak of learning Ukrainian on Duolingo! Why Ukrainian? I felt like it was (sadly) topical, so maybe it will come in useful someday. Also, I’ve never tried learning a language with a non-Latin script – so far it’s really interesting.

The two book and audiobook categories above got me thinking if it was reasonable to differentiate them. I’m never sure if Audible counts as reading a book these days, or if people are still precious about paper or Kindle books. It’s still words going into a person’s brain, with no visual stimulus, and the original source was a book?

Next week I’m heading on a European trip – three countries’ capital cities in seven days. Seeing some friends, meeting some new ones, and generally relaxing and being a tourist. Looking forward to it!

Today I turned 27. As a result, even though it wasn’t a really significant birthday, I’ve been contemplating my life and its goals, including what I want to achieve in the future. This is an attempt to write the public portions, in order to have something to look back on and compare and contrast later years – provided I still have the attention span to write a follow-up in April 2022.

Things I did last year

• Spent April and May (and pretty much all of the rest of the summer, it felt like) doing some super impactful work on the UK Government’s coronavirus response, helping people get food parcels and generally understand what was happening.
• Switched jobs in September, to what was my dream job. It was not easy. Third time lucky, as they say.
• At the beginning of April 2021 I passed probation at the previously mentioned new job, and received a bonus for what my manager called “an outstanding onboarding”. Clearly I made the right choice at the right time. It’s not been entirely plain-sailing (going back to doing a fully “individual contributor” coding role after so long in some kind of “lots of meetings, planning, tech lead and occasionally code” space was and still is an adjustment), but I’ve learnt from the things I’ve not done so well at.
• Got an Xbox and got into building LEGO models, which forced me to learn how to relax. That’s been really fun! On the Xbox side I’ve played a lot of Forza Horizon, Steep and Cloudpunk. LEGO-wise I’ve built the International Space Station, some mini dinosaurs, and the treehouse which was a bigger undertaking than I expected.
• On the topic of games, I’ve been playing this really ad-filled phone game called Water Sort Puzzle. I’m on level 331. I’m not going to try to estimate how many 30 second ads that I’ve watched to get to level 331 (with ads between levels, and ads to get extra moves, and ads to undo more than 5 moves per level when I really mess up) – it would be horrifying – but I refuse in-app purchases for games! I just know that it’s been good to wind down at night sorting colours into tubes – and some of the ads are so bad they’re good. Maybe something for this coming year is investigating iOS adblockers, if such things are allowed, or re-enabling PiHole.
• Drastically cut down the amount of full-sugar Coca-Cola I consume, from three cans a day to one can a day only on weekends. Combined with more exercise and better food, I feel a lot better.

Things I want to do this year

• Figure out what’s next in my life. I’ve been trying to do that today, but there’s too much. My manager at work asked me last week “what are your goals for the next six months?” and I replied “meeting you and the rest of the team”. I didn’t realise it would be so weird starting an entirely remote job with colleagues across a few timezones, in a pandemic where my usual social activities with “old” friends are unavailable. Should probably think of some more things.
• As above, get vaccinated, stay safe from COVID and make it at least to the north of England and mainland Europe to see friends and meet new colleagues. If we’re really lucky, maybe to the US for the first time ever. But at this point I’ll settle for anything but another lockdown!
• Build more LEGO models. I’ve got a Technic helicopter and a Technic Volvo truck. I’ve definitely bitten off more than I can chew with that last one! I’ll continue work up to it with some smaller kits, I think.
• Learn some new skills. Starting to write blog posts like this one might be a good creative outlet. Maybe some other longer-form writing? Somewhere to empty my brain of things it worries about, anyway. Not all of it will be public.
• I’ve recently become a little obsessed with “productivity YouTube”. Hence this blog and trying to articulate my thoughts more and find somewhere to make a “knowledge base” so that things aren’t scattered around and I can keep track of everything I do. No idea how long this will last, but anything I can do to get myself out of the slump of “open Twitter, scroll Twitter, close Twitter, open Twitter…” will be a good thing. While I am well aware that I wouldn’t be where I am today without Twitter and all the good it has done me over the years and all the connections I’ve made, doomscrolling is unhelpful.
• Learn to speak better? I appear to have developed a stutter in the last few years. At least it has become more obvious to me recently. I can’t seem to say a sentence without “um, um, er, um”. Like my brain moves too fast for my mouth to keep up, or something, and formulating spoken thoughts is hard. I find it more annoying than anyone else finds it, or so they tell me. Maybe it’s also exacerbated by all the video calls – there aren’t very many social cues about preparing to speak, and when I’m excited and/or anxious about something it’s worse. I base that on the fact that when I’m completely relaxed and having fun it’s usually better.
• Teach myself more maths. After I resat my GCSE a couple of years ago, I swore never to do any exams again. But now I keep flicking through books (A Level, OU MST124) and I’m on chapter three of the first module of A Level. I’m taking it slow, but I’ve just gotta keep at it and not lose enthusiasm.
• Read (or listen to) more books. I recently discovered Audible, so I’m hoping I’ll finally get through the “Sapiens” series. I’ve increasingly found that the only time I pick up my Kindle is when I’m going to bed, then I fall asleep too soon to really get into a book. I should fix that. Maybe the books I’m reading aren’t the right type of engaging for that time of night?

Things I’m grateful for

• My family and friends – even though I’ve not been able to see you as much as usual – thanks for all the birthday wishes, and, for some of you, listening to me have an existential crisis every few months!
• Ted the ginger cat, the neighbour’s cat, for scratching at the door and meowing on the fence at all hours of the day to be let in for cuddles. We love him as much as he loves us!
• The weekly audio chat games nights with old housemates, plus the “pub” video chats with some old work colleagues. They’re nice and familiar and make Tuesdays and Thursdays the best days of the week. Hopefully soon I can get back to meeting up with people in person!
• StepBet, the walking challenge app I’ve been using. I’ve generally been walking 6-10km a day every week for the last 12 weeks, up from basically zero in 2020 once I stopped commuting. It’s done me the world of good. During lockdown I have appreciated the fact that we live in the countryside – there are plenty of hills, lots of greenery and not very many people!

Things that will have to wait a bit

• My favourite singer (Delta Goodrem) is touring Australia in September. While I now have the financial means and the confidence to go, it would be impossible and irresponsible to fly all the way across the world given the current state of the pandemic, so I’ll just have to wait for the future. There will always be another tour, I hope!
• Buying a house. Maybe by the time I write 2022’s Year in Review we’ll have done it – or at least started looking.