Summer ‘23 musings config, authenticity, and kardashians

How is your Sunday? From my last update in June, I had an intense month of May and decided to take a break from posting weekly. I'm happy I slowed things down. I went to physical therapy and found out I have a frozen shoulder! 🥶 I have a 6-week plan to improve my range of motion and strength, and "chilling out" helped a lot.

In June, I want to highlight 3 pieces of content that made me reflect on my life. This is not a typical post where I'll share a bit more about my personal life vs shop talk

1. Figma had their Config Conference and I was really surprised they rolled out token functionality and ability to create themes. It reminded me of the custom iOS theme builder we built when I worked at MartianCraft, 2 years ago. I'm proud of the innovative, future thinking, and validation by the industry with Figma trying to make these advancements.

What really stood out is this talk by Halli about the challenges he faced in the past, present, and future. He had the courage to talk about his loss, grief, and vulnerabilities and reminded us what empathy means.

When I listened to his story, an immense wave of emotions came over me. It brought me back to early last year when I found out I had Thyroid cancer on top of full hysterectomy, and complications I faced after. I'm constantly faced with mixed emotions between staying silent and strong vs vulnerable and uplifting. One thing I know, resiliency doesn't get created overnight. :)

2. At night, when I am trying to wind down the day, I find myself watching a lot of career and corporate content on Tiktok. One influencer I follow, Kendall, has an episode talking about bringing your true self to work and not settling for "it's fine."

I have been reading leadership books and realize that Senior people have less opportunities to learn and make mistakes, because of the expectations to set examples for others.

During my mentorship sessions, mentees asked about working at a company where Seniors help them grow professionally, so they can climb the ladder at a faster speed. Once they are promoted to Senior, there isn't anybody to develop you except yourself. The core fundamentals is that we're responsible for developing ourselves through coaching and learning in our own careers. We are our own Coach.

3. I was watching Season 3 of Keeping Up with Kardashians. In this season, Khloe talked about having melanoma removed from her face, dealing with her ex-husband, and welcoming her 2nd child through surrogacy. She found herself shocked when the baby arrived, making everything real. I found a sense of comfort in being able to relate to what that feels like. I have been looking at profiles and have narrowed down a small set of egg donors. This process has been personal and filled with mixed emotions.

June was filled with a lot of mixed emotions and reflection. Life is an infinite game of learning and unlearning and gaining diverse perspectives.