I’ve been thinking about beginnings a lot lately. This time of year is usually a reflective time for me, and it’s a time I usually visit the idea of beginning the new year. What my wishes, dreams, hopes, ambitions are for the coming year, etc.
But, this year, I’ve had even more reason to think about beginnings since I just started a new role at work. What’s unusual about this beginning is that everyone else is in the “middle” and I am not.
When it comes to a new year, we’re all starting that at the same time. Or back when we were at school, our beginnings were lined up. But this particular beginning is individual to me. I get to be the new person on my team for a while. And as with most beginnings, there are some advantages and disadvantages to that.
On the plus side, I am enthusiastic and since I haven’t been burned on anything yet, I feel like there are endless possibilities. I feel audacious and willing to tackle big, scary (but useful) projects. I am optimistic. I feel energetic and like I have a lot of ideas. I am excited to learn something so new to me.I feel confident, excited, and competent. I feel like a sponge, absorbing more and more till I am soaked.
The downside is that sometimes I feel soaked. I feel like my brain is completely tapped out. I feel overwhelmed and not sure where to begin. I feel organized and completely disorganized at the same time. I feel alone, like I am trying to climb a new mountain all by myself with everyone watching to see if I can do it but not offering to help. Sometimes I feel tired just thinking about all I have to do. Sometimes I miss being the one who knows it all. Sometimes I feel like I will never actually learn anything. It will never stick. I feel lost.
Sometimes, I feel all of these things at the same time.
This is how my personal projects are to me, too. I tend to pick things I want to learn, not things I already know. So they are hard and fun and easy and frustrating all at the same time. Sometimes I just want to walk away. Some days I feel like I am never going to get it. Another day I am overflowing with ideas. And then I am just tired.
But here’s what I learned: I need to soldier on.
There’s a reason I picked these projects. There’s a reason I joined this team. There’s a reason I do what I do. I love learning, growing, stretching. And none of that is possible without discomfort. None of that is possible without beginnings.
So, we shall begin.
Before the year is out, I wanted to make sure to share some of my One Little Word assignments from this past year. Here is the one from all the way back to March. This assignment was to do a vision board. We had a similar one last year and I used Pinterest back then to create my own and I loved the results, so when we had it again this year, I decided to do it exactly the same way.
I just love the way these turn out and I print them out to glue them into my notebooks and I also make them the background of my computers. And then when the year turns over and I make a new one, the old one becomes a screen saver.
Remember This is a project for 2014. You can read more about it here.
David’s teachers sent us an email last week with recommended links related to math work. One of the links they sent us was to an online math class Stanford is offering. I decided we could take that one together so I registered us and we started this past weekend.
So far, a lot of the class is around Myths about Math, recent brain research on learning, and research on making mistakes and the importance (or not) of being fast. Even though I was aware of a lot of this research, hearing it again has been incredibly fascinating and informative.
I can write several blog posts on the things we’ve learned so far but one of the first thoughts that came to me as I was listening was about the difference between how we perceive learning as a kid vs as a grown up. When we’re young, we’re expected not to know much and to always be learning. We send our kids to school and we also try to introduce them to other activities like sports, arts, music, leadership, public speaking, community service, etc. We spend a lot of energy learning, growing, expanding as young people.
We don’t expect them to be brilliant, but we do expect them to keep trying, to keep learning, and to be open. And if they are lucky, our kids don’t get stereotyped as the kid who can do X but can’t do Y. Especially at the younger ages, we encourage them to cast their net wide, to explore, to try and give different things a chance.
But then we are done with official school and expectations around learning seems to change drastically.
By this point, we’re expected to “know” so much. We’re supposed to know what we want to do with our life, what we’re good at, what we’re not good at, what’s worth our time, and on and on. It’s as if up until that moment, our brain was growing, stretching, expanding, but then when we turn 21 and graduate, it’s all over. There’s no more room for growth. Stretching our brain is no longer a priority. And, to make matters worse, we often have very strong opinions on what’s no longer an option for us. “Oh I’m not a math person. It’s too late for me to learn a new language. I can’t draw to save my life. I’m just not talented.”
The Stanford class says there’s data that proves the human brain is very plastic even when we’re adults. We can create new connections and when we practice something new, we do strengthen those areas of the brain, even if we’re old.
So why do we stop learning? Why do we no longer try to grow?
Why isn’t learning encouraged just as much as an adult? Why is it no longer a part of the society’s norm? We encourage our teenagers to gain work experience but we don’t encourage adults to go to school and learn new things.
Maybe I am thinking about this all wrong or maybe I am missing something obvious. Either way, hearing about this research made me decide to embrace the growth mindset and the drive to learn even more strongly. I don’t ever want to be a person who says “it’s too late for me, i can’t learn this anymore.” I want to always keep learning and keep growing and keep stretching my brain.
And I am grateful to know that my brain will continue to respond to that.
Another way of listening kindly, for me, is obliging. Being willing to do what the other person wants. My kids often want to come talk to me and many times, i am in the middle of something and my instinct is to tell them to come back later. But this week is all about obliging them. Putting them first. Listening to them when they would like me to.
Here’s the pin where I got the lettering..
Listen with Intent is a project for 2014. You can read more about it here.
This week’s inspiration comes from this pin. I used watercolors only. It’s nowhere as magnificent as the original but i still like it. Paperfashion is one of my heros, her work is always always magnificent and dreamy.
prompt says: today i know that kindness from others feels.
Today I Know is a project for 2014. You can read more about it here.
I read, The Giver because I knew the movie was coming out and David had just recently read it so I wanted to make sure I read it, too.
It was a very, very quick read and I really found it fascinating. I thought it was well written and I loved the story even though it was disturbing, of course. I did wish the ending was better and it bugged me until I found out it is a quartet. So maybe if I invest in the other three, too, I might feel better.
The movie was quite good, too, in my opinion, though wildly different from the book in places.
I found two little incomplete circles in my desk this week. Here’s one of them.
Stitching Circles is a project for 2014. You can read more about it here.
This is one of the Week in the Life pages I made that will be going into my Savor album for 2014:
this first one is about the Whole Life Challenge.
Savor Project is a project for 2014. You can read more about it here.
When October rolled around this year, I kept thinking and thinking about December Daily. I kept thinking I wanted to do something more mixed media instead of the straight scrapbooking this year. I kept thinking and thinking but no ideas actually came to me.
For weeks.
And then as I was doing my morning sketch, I got an idea. What if I took another moleskine watercolor journal just like the one I was using for my daily sketches and turned it into a december daily album and sketched one holiday related sketch for every day.
Once I got the idea, I couldn’t stop thinking about it. So I spent the whole weekend coming up with ideas, sketching, painting, and then using stickles for shimmer, and then scrapbooking/collaging all around my pages.
I finished the whole book in one weekend and I love the way it turned out. I have no idea what’s going to happen once I have the photos + stories but we’ll cross that bridge when we get to it. Especially since I happen to be out of the country, alone, for the first 5 days of this December.
The cover, for now, is solid gold. I just put lots and lots of gold tape. I haven’t decided what else will go there yet and I think I will do it much later. That’s why you won’t see one today.
So with all that, here are my pre pages. Lots of photos to follow.
page one:
and here’s the sketch with the glitter:
page two:
and here’s the sketch with the glitter:
page three:
and here’s the sketch with the glitter:
page four:
and here’s the sketch with the glitter:
page five:
and here’s the sketch with the glitter:
page six:
and here’s the sketch with the glitter:
page seven:
and here’s the sketch with the glitter:
page eight:
and here’s the sketch with the glitter:
page nine:
and here’s the sketch with the glitter:
page ten:
and here’s the sketch with the glitter:
page eleven:
and here’s the sketch with the glitter:
page twelve:
and here’s the sketch with the glitter:
page thirteen:
and here’s the sketch with the glitter:
page fourteen:
and here’s the sketch with the glitter:
page fifteen:
and here’s the sketch with the glitter:
page sixteen:
and here’s the sketch with the glitter:
page seventeen:
and here’s the sketch with the glitter:
page eighteen:
and here’s the sketch with the glitter:
page nineteen:
and here’s the sketch with the glitter:
page twenty:
and here’s the sketch with the glitter:
page twenty-one:
and here’s the sketch with the glitter:
page twenty-two:
and here’s the sketch with the glitter:
page twenty-three:
and here’s the sketch with the glitter:
page twenty-four:
and here’s the sketch with the glitter:
page twenty-five:
and here’s the sketch with the glitter:
So there we are. Trying something new this year. Let’s see if it works.
I don’t usually talk about work on my blog, but I wanted to share that after more than six years, I’ve decided to move away from the Chrome team. A large amount of my time at Google has been with the Chrome team and it’s one of the products I love and feel proud to have worked on. I’ve loved the team even more than the product. They are wonderful, kind, generous and brilliant people. I am so lucky to have worked with them. Choosing to leave was a very tough decision but I knew that it was time to learn something new.
My new adventures take me to the Google Maps team. Another product I love and use regularly. I will be working with the Transit folks and I am looking forward to learning about public transportation all over the world and traveling to the Zurich office and working with and for some of the first teammates I had at Google. Some awesome people.
For the last few months, I’ve been working on moving boldly into unknown futures. This is not second-nature to me and it comes with a lot of fear. Fear of the unknown. Fear that I might be messing up something that works and finding myself neck deep in regret. Fear that I might fail. Fear that I might “ruin it all.” Fear that I am not going to be able to measure up to the expectations of others. And, most of all, fear that I will disappoint people I care about.
But I am doing it anyway.
I’ve updated my banner so you can get a sneak peek at my word for 2015. I think this move, and several others I’ve done in the last few months line up with my word. My goals for myself. My efforts to challenge myself and not let inertia take over. To grow. To expand. To learn.
So here’s a big, bold step in that direction.
Here’s to new beginnings.
For this week’s intention I decided to go with support. I believe a big part of being kind is being supportive, allowing others to be who they are and supporting them instead of listening with any agenda of my own. To me, this means asking questions, being positive, and genuinely listening.
Here’s the pin where I got the lettering..
Listen with Intent is a project for 2014. You can read more about it here.
It’s been over 4 months since I last posted photos of us. I have no excuse. It’s mostly due to laziness. I will probably eventually backfill but who knows when. I figured in the meantime I can at least start again.
Here are my boys in halloween gear.
David was Boba Fett.
my wonderful boy.
and Nathaniel was a storm trooper.
Nathaniel just got a new bed. It’s one of those beds that has a sliding ben under it so Halloween night David spent the night in his room. Here they are playing games with Daddy.
that Sunday morning, we ended up in the ER. Nathaniel had an ear infection.
Here he’s playing something really quietly.
Monday night my good friend Rebi whom I haven’t seen in years and years calls to tell me she’s in town so she came down to spend the day with me on Tuesday and it was awesome. We also didn’t forget to vote.
On Thursday I was invited to an all day event with several other moms from my kids’ school so I took the day off and it was quite lovely. And then Friday was my last day on the Chrome team. Coincidentally, we had an offsite at Great America. This is me with two of my coworkers.
On Saturday, David got his breaststroke ribbon which means he only has one more stroke to learn: butterfly.
Daddy and Nathaniel playing with magnets.
as David practices his guitar.
little boy coloring with watercolors.
and my three awesome men. The light has been awful so there’s a lot of noise.
but i don’t care.
because i cherish these photos no matter what.
we still have tickle time.
but we’ve recently begun making funny faces, too.
the kids really get into it.
and here we go. so grateful for my life. i hope your week was lovely, too.
Weekly Diary is a project for 2014. You can read more about it here.
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projects for twenty twenty-five
projects for twenty twenty-four
projects for twenty twenty-three
projects for twenty twenty-two
projects for twenty twenty-one
projects for twenty nineteen
projects for twenty eighteen
projects from twenty seventeen
monthly projects from previous years
some of my previous projects
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