I see reflection as stopping on the side of the road, and reviewing:
- the path I’ve taken so far
- looking back at where I had set out to go, and looking back at where I actually went, and
- looking forward to the next legs of the journey
In my busy day-to-day life, I don’t often stop to reflect, recalibrate and re-chart the course where necessary. On some days, I technically have the time and means to do it, but most days are just simply back-to-back with making breakfast, dropping off Jacob in school, getting to work at 9, sometimes making lunch (most times Nhung cooks ), cleaning dishes, trying to sneak in a 10-min meditation or power nap (but often failing), getting back to work, picking up Jacob at 5, enjoying the journey home but often getting frustrated with power struggles/screaming/crying getting Jacob in (and then out) of the shower, making dinner, washing dishes, putting Jacob to sleep, coming out to pack up the mess, and then maybe have about 30–60 minutes to relax before going to sleep.
Not all days are like that, but 3 or 4 out of 5 weekdays are like that.
Nonetheless, it was a hard year for everyone, and I’m happy that Nhung and I survived and learned to be a little more resilient along the way.
I thought I’d share a lightly edited version of my personal reflection for no purpose other than putting it out there and seeing if any bit might speak to anyone. And also thanking the people/things that helped me through this tough year.
Celebrating myself
- I started seeing a therapist for my daddy anger issues (more on that below). (Yay for subsidised mental healthcare!)
- I learnt and taught Scratch to my niece in Vietnam (Yay to zoom, scratch and youtube!)
- We had a baby! (Yay to Nhung!!!)
- I started playing the bass guitar again (Yay to Travis Dykes!)
- I finally sat my ass down and finished the Coding Habits for Data Scientists, before Jonas arrived and before lockdown came into full swing. (Yay for beach time at ThoughtWorks!)
- I read a few chapters from Fundamentals of Software Architecture and applied some principles at my project (Yay to my tech lead and teammates who are open to discussions and ideas!)
- I spoke at a podcast on applying software engineering techniques to data science work with some luminaries at ThoughtWorks — link coming in a few weeks (Yay to colleagues who create opportunities for other voices to be heard!)
- I finally started using the dishwasher in December (apparently it comes up to 40 cents per wash. Shut up and take my money!!!)
- We started a new life in a new country/city/culture. I felt intense bouts of homesickness when the novelty of living in a new country wore off, and when I woke up every day to a phone with lots of notifications and none of them for me. Sometimes it felt like I was floating out in space, untethered to anything — slowly floating out and no one’s reaching out to pull me back into their orbit.
- I read a little more. Trevor Noah’s Born a Crime, Anh Do’s The Happiest Refugee and The Things You Can See Only When You Slow Down really helped me through my personal crisis of being a homesick Asian dude in a predominantly western culture. (Yay to all these people who helped me/us with their stories!)
Celebrating failures
I lost my cool at Jacob. Quite a lot. At its worst, I blew my top and yelled at him about once a week, sometimes 2–3 times. That’s where my therapist really helped me with my daddy rage issues. Chiefly what helped me was:
- Thinking about my capacity as a bucket. Things fill up my bucket — e.g. work stress, personal stress, social stress, irritation, fatigue, hunger, etc. and it’s full, it’s very easy for my bucket to boil over when Jacob doesn’t listen
- Noticing myself. Noticing irritation and doing something about it before it escalates into frustration and anger and rage — e.g. walk away, turn on some music, turn on TV for Jacob (if it’s not already on 😅)
- Practicing mindfulness in calm times helped me let go of dark gloomy thoughts a wee bit more easily when I get heated
- Acceptance. Fighting big feelings is like pressing mud down in a tank of water. Suffering = Pain x resistance. Accepting my feelings is the first step towards working through them.
- Some tips from How to Talk so Little Kids will Listen, which surprisingly worked! My favourite is repeating what Jacob said (“I WANT ICE CREAM (whine whine whine)” — “I know you want ice cream, I want ice cream too. We can’t have it because (some BS reason)”. He’ll whine and cry some more, but most times after having feel heard and expressing his feelings, he’ll somehow eventually move on to something else)
- It’s a journey that I’m still on, and I still lose my cool and feel down every now and again, and that’s okay.
Other failures
- I suggested some ideas to my clients which eventually didn’t get accepted, even though I felt I made a strong case for an option that was better for the client.
- I shamelessly tried to get famous people in ML to share my video series (which I mentioned above). I emailed and tweeted, but none of them responded. Maybe I was too blunt in my approach
- I wrote an article on How to Refactor a Jupyter Notebook, but it wasn’t read/shared as widely as I had hoped
- I didn’t reach out to people as much — professionally and socially. Partly because life was hectic, but really I think it was because of fear — my fear of rejection and invalidation
- I didn’t help others / the less fortunate this year. Except for a small donation to Everyday Refugees
Planning for 2021: Objective key results (OKRs) for Q1 2021
I half-read something somewhere about “manifesting” what you want by writing it down. So I wrote down some personal OKRs for the first quarter of 2021, but I feel some bits are too personal too share, so I removed it from this article. If you were to read it, you might feel like I walked into your zoom meeting with a bare belly and a beer in hand. (You’re welcome)
Thanks for reading this far :-) I hope some of this somehow speaks to you all in some way. I know all of you are going to do amazing things in the new year in your own way :-)
