Maybe I'm resting

from giphy

One of the things I don't understand is why so many people don't "go out on a limb". I've always been quite adventurous, to the point of destruction, and it's terrifying. I've always felt the need to fail more. Lately though I've been saying "no". I haven't been able to get all the things in an order, a form, an art. Is it end of year exhaustion? Do I have a right to feel exhausted now? Because I do, but the voices in my brain tell me I need to pull my socks up and get on with it.

In an effort to quiet my brain for the rest of the year, I thought I would write down what I accomplished this year. So, here's some stuff that I did killing time between January 2019 and now:

At the beginning of the year, I provided guidance and feedback for the Unconscious Bias toolkit, though truth be told my meetings with Rowan were really just lovely chats wherein we talked about the brain and society and interpretations of behaviours. These conversations, as well as some reflections on organizational power dynamics, led me to write about Open Secrets and speak at Open Source Summit Europe about inclusivity in open source projects.

The beginning of the year meetup of We Are Open served as a catalyst and reminder that we are a very special collective. We set up Open Collective this year to help us fund projects like Badge.wiki and the Learning Fractal. Support this work, we'll need new sponsors and patrons to keep things like this going. I also worked with my co-op colleagues unraveling key issues for the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development and co-writing one of the most comprehensive and killer documents, I've ever worked on.

Speaking of writing, I penned a piece for a recovery website early this year, and I finished writing Maybe Zombies, a novel that you should have already read by now. For real, buy it for the holidays and then tell me how you spent a few hours lost in your ereader.

I celebrated Earth Day with a post on environmentally friendly FOSS projects, and I became a board member for Corteza, the Digital Work Platform for Humanity.

In 2019, I reduced the amount of time I was spending working with Greenpeace on Planet 4. Stepping out of the day to day, I became a member of the project's Steering Committee and an advisor to the project sponsor. Otherwise, I managed the budding collaboration with Red Hat, bringing Greenpeace folks and Red Hatters together in a design sprint. I orchestrated a series of multimedia posts about the project, and then a hackathon at the Red Hat Tech Exchange in Europe. I also keynoted the event and did a joint announcement of the collaboration we've been pushing forward for the last 1.5 years. Subsequently, I was nominated and then shortlisted for a Women in IT Award: Digital Leader of the Year.

Maybe I need help?

Just sleep. I need some of that.

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