• Life
July, For Me
Main Highlights
Online
- 💜 For Inspiring Figures this month, I spoke to the amazing Bose Fayodeka who shared her story of creating Bose’s Kitchen, being a food blogger and using her marketing skills in her own personal projects. It was an inspiring session! Check out the full conversation here.
- 📝 On the blog, I wrote about Moving (third edition), using AWS S3 to offload WordPress media files and all about making our new apartment home.
- 🛠 Made some changes on the blog, including addition of categories on the landing page and within each blog post. Long time coming, I know.
- 💌 I posted some Pawlean stickers to folks in the UK, USA and India. It always makes me smile seeing people recieve it!
Nice little surprise in the post today. Thank you @paulienuh 💕💕💕 pic.twitter.com/xKW0z2k2kZ
— Sri Ray (@sricola) July 20, 2020
Personal
- 🏡 Settled well in our new apartment. I’m still not over how awesome our balcony is! We’ve got our own little garden going on and it just makes me feel super happy.
- 😷 Wore my face mask every time I left the apartment. It feels pretty normal now.
- 💪🏼 Since getting my new pull-up mate, I’ve been practising pull-ups again after a bit of a break caused by everything going on recently. I’m a little annoyed at myself for losing the strength that I built over the past year or so, but trying to be less harsh on myself. It’s only up from here 🙌🏻
- 💸 I got my new Monzo Plus card which I’m still raving about. 😂
- 🎨 I treated myself with a new iPad Air (2019) with an Apple Pencil. It’s been nice spending time creating digital artwork! I’ve also been using it a lot at work for random notes and sharing diagrams I created 😁
- ❤️ My parents visited me this month after months of not seeing each other.
Community
- 🎙 I was featured on Michael Jolley’s Twitch stream, “The Late Night Build!” Check it out here.
Work
- 💻 I officially secured my first post-grad-scheme role as a Site Reliability Engineer 🥳
- 🏆 I made it as a Finalist in the Computing Rising Star Awards 2020
3 Things that made me happy
1) Writing technical blog posts
I realised throughout the years of reading technical docs, a lot of them were just awfully confusing for no real reason. 🤦🏻♀️ Whenever I’ve been writing docs at work, I’ve tried to really be as explicit and for it to be written simple as possible.
This inspired me to write more blog posts on my own blog on some of the technical stuff I’ve done in the past. I’ve set myself a goal of at least some technical post every month or so, but I’m not going to be too precious over it. Afterall, there’s more to me than tech. 😉
With that said, I’m so happy with how well the technical posts that I’ve written has been recieved. I’m glad that I’ve been able to spark some ideas to others to try something new!
Recomendado para reducir el peso en la carga de sus imágenes en blogs de #WordPress https://t.co/p32reBHbME
— Rafael Echeverría (@rafaecheve) July 19, 2020
2) Nomination for the Rising Star Award
Some of my colleagues had nominated me for this Rising Star Award. 😊
It was a pleasant surprise seeing it in my inbox! I always feel a mixture of emotions whenever someone nominates me for some award or recognition. Mostly overwhelming emotions that make me want to cry 😂
The winners of the awards will be announced in November, so fingers crossed for then! But I’m thrilled to have even been nominated and being selected as a finalist. ✨
We’re so proud of Pauline! During her grad scheme she has been instrumental in the teams she rotated in. https://t.co/Z2dWTSD0dV
— BT EarlyCareers (@BTEarlyCareers) July 16, 2020
3) Getting a full-time permenant role
For those that don’t know, I’ve been on a graduate scheme with BT over the past two years and was in my final 6 months of the programme. With everything going on with COVID-19, I wasn’t sure if there would be jobs internally for me to apply to. But after a few interviews and a lot of stress over the uncertainty, I’ve finally secured a full-time position at BT as a Site Reliability Engineer.
To complete my blog posts on my learnings over the past two years, I’ll save everything I have to say until then but overall, I’m thankful and excited for the future 😄
July in Photos
July Favourites
- 🎬 We finished watching the MCU for the second time! We also went down memory lane and re-watched Peter Pan (2003) After sharing it on social media, it looks like everyone had a crush on Peter growing up 😂
- 📺 I’ve been watching Friends again from the top. If a TV show could hug you, it would be this one for me.
- 📚 Follow me on Goodreads for updates on what I’ve been reading this month! I’m currently reading “Stretch: Unlock the Power of Less -and Achieve More Than You Ever Imagined” by Scott Sonenshein. So far, so good!
- 🎨 I’ve loved using the app Procreate on my iPad Air for relaxing evenings of drawing 😊
- 🌱 I bought a Lipstick plant this month to add to the collection, she’s so pretty.
Quote of the month
Next month
- ❤️ I’m spending a week back in Sheffield with my family. I’ve missed them a lot!
- 💻 Heads down learning again for me, I’m excited for the future in this career path that I’ve taken.
- ✨ It’s my #PawGainz anniversary in August. 4 years since I began!
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