It’s always a relief to get to the end of January, it always seems like the longest month of the year. The colder weather hasn’t helped ease the feeling either, so I’m pretty happy that we’re at the end and that I’m writing this post of course!
Main Highlights
Online
- 🎙 Spoke on BBC Radio Sheffield twice this month — on the breakfast show and Rony’s show.
- 🎤 Spoke on GameQuitter’s podcast about my gaming experience!
- 🛠 Finally built By Pawlean — a cultivated list of my current projects and a way for us to work together!
- 💜 Relaunched Inspiring Figures – this time on YouTube Live, kicking off with Penny Hindle.
- 📝 Wrote my New Year post, Gratitude CV, the stories behind my stickers and Inspiring Figures
Career
- 🚀 Continuing to try my best at work 💖
- ✂️ Invested a lot of time in career planning and preparation
- ✨ Visited London to meet BT Consumer’s new HR Director, Anna – super inspiring session!
Community
- 🙌🏻 Attended the You Got This Conference in Birmingham
- 🌼 Attended WILD (Women in Leeds Digital) event to start planning for the conference this year – I’m officially a board member
- 👑 Nominated for The Rising Star award from We Are Tech City
- 💜 Did a talk on Community!
Personal
- 💪🏼 Focus on health is sharper than ever!
- 👩🏻🍳 Fell in love with my slow cooker
- ⚔️ Hooked onto the Witcher and Mr Robot
- 💻 Fixed my MacBook Pro’s battery problem — DIY y’all
- 🎺 Saw Caravan Palace live in Leeds
3 Things that made me happy
1) Being prepared and organised
I’ve spent a lot of time this month focusing on getting organised. I do quite a bit during the day-to-day, but being “busy” shouldn’t be an excuse to not be organised and focused.
My parents gifted Matt and I a slow cooker for Christmas which has proved to be one of the most valuable item that we own! It’s helped us stick to eating our own meals, and to be honest, it’s the best thing to come home to after a long day.
I also re-organised my calendars, and set up a system for success in the mornings to get me to the gym. Overall, I’m feeling pretty good about how organised I’ve been this month! Less worry, more focus.
2) Pawlean stuff
One of my goals this year is to do more work on promoting my blog, and related projects. So far, I’ve had the opportunity to talk about my blog on the radio, re-launched Inspiring Figures and built “by Pawlean” – a place to clarify how we can all work together.
It’s been quite refreshing investing so much time in my blog again, I felt like although writing has become a great habit – it’s been nice to be open about why this space where I create is so important to me!
3) My career
I wrote a blog post about my Gratitude CV to kick start January. This inspired me to really think about all the people that have helped me in my career so far, in time for the year of focusing on building up to the next step in my career (after my graduate scheme.)
This month, I’ve also worked on my CV, my portfolio and organising chats with folks in areas of interest to really start driving that next step.
My visit to London this month was fantastic too because I had the opportunity to meet BT’s new HR Director, Anna, who shared some golden nuggets of wisdom from her own career journey. It was wildly inspiring ✨
Although thinking about the next few months is a little scary, I’m excited for what’s to come!
January in Photos
2020 in Progress
Quick snippets of how I think I’m doing with my year goals!
🚀 = excelling
👍🏻 = on track
😶 = OK
👎🏻 = need to improve on
- 👍🏻 Health — improvement point is to be mindful of what I’m eating, there have been moments I know what I’m about to eat makes me feel unwell afterwards but I do it anyway for the immediate rewards that aren’t really rewards. 🤦🏻♀️
- 😶 Wealth — doing OK. I’ve automated a lot of my money into savings pots and elsewhere! But I can still reduce impulses I sometimes get (especially when I’m bored or feeling stressed.)
- 👍🏻 Environment — taking the first steps to reducing plastics! Found a zero waste store close by which I’ll be a regular at.
- 👍🏻 Career — feeling pretty focused. But I have to remind myself to not put too much pressure on myself because it has caused me a lot of anxiety.
- 🚀 Online — continuing to be proud of what I create and contribute to!
January Favourites
- I made Matt watch The Witcher with me, after watching it myself for the first over Christmas and loving it! I’ve still got, “Toss A Coin To Your Witcher” in my head. 😂
- So then, Matt made me watch Mr Robot and I have to say — it’s got me hooked even though it is such a thriller!
- I bought some protein bars for the first time from MyProtein. I didn’t think that I would like them at first (but was willing to give them a try!) because I had tried ones from my dad before and didn’t enjoy them, but these ones are yummy. I highly recommend it.
- Caravan Palace’s albums. Because since watching them live, I’ve not been able to get their songs out of my head.
Quote of the month
Next month
- Celebrating another year with Matt 🥰
- A longer February!
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