Well, for the first time since I started my bi-weekly notes in July, I missed an upload. I actually thought I was just one week behind. However, it’d appear I’m two weeks late! I’d say that very much summarises how hectic the last month has been🫠😅
I’m sure these will be some chunky weeknotes, lots has happened in the last 4 weeks, so let’s get into it! I’m going to mix up the order of themes this week, starting with achievements, as there were a lot!
Achievements
1 year at dxw
On Wednesday (6th), I celebrated 1 year at dxw! I cannot believe how quickly it has gone, but I’ve love every second and learnt so much! I wrote a little LinkedIn post about it, and my line manager gave me a little shout out at work celebrating the anniversary ❤ It’s so great working in such a supportive and encouraging team.
Beth is fast approaching her 1 year at dxw too, and we’re putting together a blog post talking about our experiences as dxw’s first associates in the design team. So stay tuned for that!👀
Service Assessment
I’ve talked about this in the run up, for a while now. But the moment finally came. Mid March we took our service into Service Assessment — my first time not only being part of a SA, but also first time actually seeing one in action. So it was a big day for my own personal development, and for the project!
It was a longgggg day, with the assessment running from 11am-3:30pm, and was really quite intense! But I feel proud and excited to have an assessment under my belt, so early in my career too! It’s a really valuable experience to have, and I’ve definitely learnt a huge amount from it! (Not sure I’d be rushing back for another any time soon though ahaha!😅)
Going solo with Samaritans
On a personal note, I have been officially signed off from my mentored shifts as a Samaritan, and next week I have my first solo shift. For the last 9 weeks, I’ve been on shift with my mentor, who listens into my calls and gives me guidance and tips where needed. But, it’s been decided I’m ready to fly solo! Which is both terrifying and exciting!
Last night I had a training session and our branch director joined and shared some really amazing stats about Samaritans as a charity, but also our Norwich branch. I thought I’d share some headlines from that:
- There are 201 branches country side, with more than 20,000 volunteers.
- We respond to a call for help, every six seconds, and spend over 1 million hours responding to calls.
- Our Norwich branch is 58 years old, and one of the longest standing in the country. We’re also one of the biggest single branches, with over 200 volunteers.
- We also do outreach work with local schools, Norfolk and Norwich hospital, our ambulance dispatch services, and with two local prisons. Our branch gives 25,000 hours of outreach work per year!
The outreach work is really interesting and valuable, and is something I’m looking to support further in the near future. Which is really exciting!
Good Things
Finishing Projects
It’s been a hectic few weeks with the run up to end of financial year project deadlines. I’ve been juggling two projects since January now, both due end of March(one has since had an extension), so it’s been full on. But, both projects were delivered on time and at such a high standard. I feel particularly proud of the work from one of those projects. It was a really challenging landscape to be working in and we produced so much really rich work. AND got through a 93 slide deck in our final show and tell! To top off the good feels, we received some amazing feedback from the client:
I was honestly blown away by all the amazing content at the show and tell today. There was so much rich content, that will be essential not just to our work but the department’s wider transformation work. It went way beyond even my best expectations. Your approach has truly helped to bring out the best of this work.
It has not been the easiest work to complete, we set you a difficult challenge, but you have more than delivered an outstanding package of work. A huge well done to everyone that has been involved across all the projects.
Doodles for OU
I had some free time this week, while SoW’s were organised for our project extension, so I dipped into another ongoing project to help do some illustrations for their final blueprint. It’s a super exciting piece of work with the Open University, so I was very keen to get involved, even just for a couple days!
And it was really nice to get the graphics tablet back out and get drawing again! Also, a much needed change of pace after March Madness!
Lauren Currie 7x7
This week I tuned into Lauren Curries 7x7 event. 7 women, 7 stories, in 7 minutes. It was inspiring, humbling, eye opening, emotional and empowering. I can’t begin to do any of the talks justice in such a short summary, so I’d really recommend just giving it a watch, you wont regret it! Rebbecca Hemmings shared a particularly powerful and emotive poem about micro-aggressions experienced by ethic minority women. I have since listened back to this twice! The recordings for all 7 talks are here!
From the good, to the difficult things
Heading towards burnout
In all honesty, this last month or so has been hard. I knew March would be crazy, but balancing two very full on and challenging projects, along with my internal working group commitments and my Samaritans shifts has been really tough.
At dxw we have dxw Fridays, where we’re encouraged (where possible) to take Fridays as a dxw day — for internal work, social time and time for learning and development. I’ve not had a dxw day since the first week back after Christmas! And I’ve really felt that. It’s just been 110mph for a good while now, and 145mph these last 3-4 weeks ahah. And it’s fair to say, I’ve definitely hit burnout.
But today, I am finally taking a dxw day and it feels great!! And thankfully, I predicated this would happen and have booked a week off work from Monday which will be amazing. So needed!
Learnt Things
Learnings from balancing multiple projects
Yes, balancing two complex and full on projects, both with the same deadline has been tough. But, I have learnt so much from the experience! I was always going to learn loads from these projects, first time on a beta, first service assessment, complex systems, different types of working etc. But also just working out how to balance the two has been a massive learning curve. I’ve got better at saying no to thing I don’t need to, or can’t attend. It’s required constant context switching, and forced me into being super organised with my work to stay on top of both bits of work. I’ve also had to make sure I keep in check with my Delivery Leads, Line Manager, and with myself, and make sure to ask for help when I’m struggling, which is something I’m not always too good at!
I actually feel super proud of how I’ve balanced the two, they’ve pushed me very much out of my safe/comfort zone and into challenging places, but I’ve really valued that experience.
Things WILL slip, that’s okay.
In our DCC group, we’d previously talked lots about making sure our work is self sustainable and can keep going, even when we’re busy. We thought we’d cracked that and set it up in such a way. We were wrong. When we all got busy, things slipped. We forgot Monday Motives and Wednesday Random Questions, we didn’t keep momentum and energy for catch ups, or planning sessions. But that is okay.
We had all the best intentions to keep things going, and thought we were set, but none of us had yet experienced March Madness. This has however, given us a really great opportunity to reflect back on what went “wrong”, and now we’ve had that experience first hand, we can think about what we can do differently. And importantly, how we can keep things running, while also support each others wellbeing throughout.
What I’m watching/reading — I am finally getting around to watching The Design Doing festival recordings.. which were released on February 18th😅. There is some really amazing content on there, and plan to write a separate post about what I learnt and enjoyed!
I’ve also been watching Euphoria(yes, very late to the party!). I’m really enjoying it. Cinematically it’s really beautiful, and has some really important and powerful narratives about gender identity, sexuality, drug misuse, social media and the general challenges of teenage and young adult life.
What I’m looking forward to — All I’m looking forward to right now, is my week off haha! I have 3 concerts next week, getting a new tattoo, have some lovely plans with friends and importantly, just some much needed down time!
How I’m looking after myself — These last two weeks, I’ve really struggled with switching off and stopping working. Struggles of working from home I suppose! So I’ve been making conscious efforts to make plans for after work, so I’m forced to stop and switch off at the right time!
Thought these would be long ones haha! So if you’ve made it this far, I’m impressed!! But also humbled, so thank you, as always for reading my brain dump about the last few weeks! See you in two weeks, for what will be much shorter notes, I’m sure!
Take care of yourself
