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April 30, 2017 • Life

April, For Me

The venue for the Empowering Women with Tech was beautiful 😍

MAIN HIGHLIGHTS

  • 💻 I fulfilled my childhood dream of buying paulinenarvas.com (yes, I’m still not over it)
  • ✈ Continuing on mine and Hamdah’s travels, we went to Amsterdam over the Easter weekend. It was an interesting experience.
  • 👩🏻‍💻 I attended another inspiring women-focused conference in Leeds as part of the Leeds International Festival.
  • 👩🏻‍🔬 I experienced my first Hackathon that focused on solving medical and healthcare problems.
  • 🍝 I ate a lot of Italian food throughout the month with the best company.
  • 💃🏻 Finally had an excuse to dress up in a red dress at my annual ball (that I always blog about each year!)
  • 💼 Work has been pretty busy as usual, but more so with the final few weeks before the end of another academic year.  My placement has flown by and although I am working over the summer until August, I am always shocked by how quickly the academic year flies by!
BMS Ball 2017
HackMed17 with Matt

Things I’m HAPPY about

Life lessons

  • Things didn’t always go right for me this month, there was a lot of stress and negative emotions triggered by the past but at times like these, I’m always supported by the kindest people around me. I’m grateful for everyone who has spent long hours on the phone with me or having lengthy conversations over lunch, calming me and reminding me of the great things in the present moment. My colleague, Bryony had said a few weeks ago (about a project but applicable to life in general), “If things are always easy, nobody would ever learn anything.” And she’s right – you have to go through some of the most difficult things to grow. Everything always has an important lesson.
  • Hamdah and I travelled to our final stop in Amsterdam as part of our EU trip. Although I’m sad it’s over, I have made the best memories and learnt a lot about travelling from the experience. I’m much more confident in flying, travelling and interacting with locals in the country. You can watch the video summary here:

Technology

  • My fellow CF:G organiser, lead instructor, role model (I could go on), Tejay invited me to the Empowering Women With Tech conference and exposed me to another bigger women in tech community in Leeds. I am so thankful for her introducing me to amazing women who are leading in their field. A more detailed post on the experience is in the works – so keep an eye out!
  • I was mentioned in GitHub’s newsletter, which was pretty rad. Thanks again, Joe!

Blogging

  • After work, I was stopped by a student at University who told me that he reads my blog. As you can imagine, I was really excited that he did and had to ask him for a selfie. Some of you may remember that this happened a few months ago on my way to work with a girl telling me about how I inspired her to get into meditation and that it’s helped reduce stress. I was ecstatic.

Next month

Goals

I have 3 main goals for the next month and although they don’t really change that much each month, I like setting them to keep myself accountable.

  1. Health and well-being – Continue pushing my physical limits, lift heavier and become stronger and fitter. Also under this is to continue my routine of waking up early, to meditate and practise gratitude to improve mental health. I believe that this has all helped me create a more positive mindset.
  2. Work grind – I have to admit, I’ve been a little stressed at work. With a lot of changes underway, I feel a little overwhelmed by the extra workload sometimes but it’s given me the chance to practice adapting better under pressure so it always has it’s positives! My goal is to complete all my projects at work to the best of my ability and really give it my all for the reminding few months.
  3. Online space – Going to the conferences recently and meeting a lot of people in the digital industry has inspired me to invest some time in my online space. In the past, people have complimented my online presence which has been great and I’m so thankful. I want to improve this further by spending a bit more time in my projects online and hopefully see growth from this!

Events

Next month I’ve been invited to an event I’ve always wanted to go to for the last two years but never had the chance to so I’m grateful ✨

MONTHLY FAVOURITES

✏ I’ve been using the Five Minute Journal every day for a month. It’s been my favourite activity to practice gratitude and thankfulness. Always an awesome start to my day.

📚 How to be a Bawse by Lilly Singh has been a favourite read – such a life motivator.

🎶 RAC – One House

QUOTE OF THE MONTH

PN in Greek

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