It has been a whirlwind of a year so far! Only three months in and I have:
- applied for my visa extension (if you don't have to do it you really have no idea how tedious the process is)
- interviewed for and joined 8th Light (the highlight of the year!)
- found a new place to call home (what a relief...)
- officially started coaching at Codebar (I did it before but I was still registered as student) and became one of the organisers too!
- attended my first conference, and even had my one minute on a stage talking about Codebar in front of about 500 people (nerve-racking!)
- been really getting out there and attending a lot of meetups
- oh, and sold a lot of my Jimmy Choo's on eBay (#decluttering)
Been really busy basically. So, if I am honest, I have been a bit out of balance, something I didn't really want to admit to myself.
Interesting how things spiral out and spill from one area of life to another. I am not trying to find excuses, quite the opposite, trying to take responsibility and admit to myself that I took on too much and/or haven't managed my time well, and as a result haven't been at the top of my game because of it.
Everyone at the mothership (our office) takes lunch at the same time, we would usually go out to the Leather Lane market, the best weekday foodmarket in central London, by far. After the trip we would sit down at the big table together and enjoy the food and the banter.
The only problem is that you wouldn't have seen me around that table. I have been sorting out other stuff during lunch. And, thinking about it now, I would like to make sure I make the most of these lunches going forward. I read and intro to this book, haven't yet started it as I have a pretty long reading list that I am working through, but one thing that struck me is what it said about conversations and relationships, something along the lines of:
Conversations are the relationships.
This blew my mind. This makes me want to make the most of every conversation I have and makes me want to have more conversations. Especially, with close to me people, like work colleagues. During lunch, when they are together at the table they are more important than some email that needs replying to, etc.
The morale of the story: to get back in balance, to manage my priorities and time better and to always make time for my team.