So we’re half way through the year!
Well, kind of. I’m a bit late with this but I still wanted a moment to properly reflect on where I am.
It’s been just over six months since I wrote my last retrospective and today feels like a good time check in with myself. How am I doing? Am I meeting my intentions for 2025? And what would I need to do in the second half of the year to keep this up?
Social
In 2025 I have definitely been more social. I have gone to more meetups, given some talks, and met many wonderful people. I’m writing this not long after I spoke at Front End North which was amazing. I’ve not spoken to that many people at once before, and it’s given me a taste of why some people become career presenters. I definitely want to do more of these through the rest of 2025.
We’ve hosted more Notion-related meetups this year in London. This community has grown a lot this year - in fact it’s almost overwhelming how much it’s scaled! - and I love that we can keep doing them. The energy is a bit different since I slowed down my Notion work, I feel like I can just enjoy the community as a fan and ambassador rather than someone doing it for work, which has made me appreciate it more. I also got to attend and talk at SXSW London because of Notion which I am very grateful for.
I’ve travelled across the country to spend time with friends and family multiple times this year. Each time has been restorative and lovely and I feel glad that I earmarked the time to do it properly. I think I’ve hit a time in my life where I appreciate just being around people, without the pressure to do anything big with it. Like just cooking and drinking and catching up, it’s the respite I need in a world that doesn’t make it easy to take things slowly.
But I do get overwhelmed more easily than I realised. As much as I’m having fun I also have to be more careful not to get swept up in everything that’s happening and to take care of myself.
Health
I’ve blogged a couple of times about keto already, but this has really been a big theme for me in 2025. Since I started in January I’ve lost more than 11kg and I really want to keep it up, because it’s had such a positive impact on me. You can read more on the things I’ve already noticed in this post.
It’s silly but I had a bit of a moment the other day in TK Maxx, I tried on a dress three sizes down from what I used to wear and it fit. I haven’t worn something that small since I was a teenager. Little moments of joy like that make all the shit parts worth it.
I still go to the gym weekly, and I do feel like I want to go more. It’s a time in the week where I can shut my brain off and just focus on myself, which feels like it doesn’t happen much at the moment!
Overall though I am the healthiest I’ve been in a long time. I can move around well and I feel more mentally alert than before. I’ll check in with myself again in a few months but the process is definitely working.
Work
Oh wow, where do I even begin with this!
At the start of 2025 I was having a bit of a career crisis. I’d committed to moving out of product design, but I’d seen others really struggle to change careers and I was about to put myself through that same thing. I was thinking of ways I could announce my pivot and get moving, so of course I made a meme…
At the time I was working a short-term contract with Vouchsafe but still thinking about my future. Once my time with them ended, what next? How would I balance my career pivot without too much of a salary sacrifice? Who would hire someone with so little dev experience and no portfolio work?
Not even a month after committing to this career pivot I got a job offer from Vouchsafe to join their team permanently as their Lead Design Engineer. I absolutely did not expect this and I’m pleased that they’ve taken a chance on me. Since I joined I’ve become a lot more confident in my programming skills and I’m learning so many things. React was released in 2013 so I never learned it during my undergrad, but picking it up through practice has felt very rewarding.
And I’m having so much fun. It feels like this is the work I’ve missed doing the whole time, getting into the frontend code and just making stuff. Yes it’s been stressful at times: bug fixing can be really unpleasant and crunching to meet deadlines is stressful. But I feel so proud of us and our team and I’m so excited to get going with everything this job is throwing at me!
Fun
This has admittedly been a pretty rubbish time for fun. I feel like I’ve done fun things but they get squashed between all the other things I spoke about before. Fun for me has been an hour of Balatro on a Saturday morning, or an evening of The Witcher when I have a rare night to myself.
I did get a Switch 2, but it’s not been a huge jump up for me from the Switch! The games I play don’t need that much power to run. Maybe by the end of the year there will be more to play?
I’ve also done a lot of crochet. I made a cool jumper which I only got to wear one before it got too hot. I’ve also been working on something big, but it’s a secret present so I guess I won’t post that until the new year. I started crochetting on my commutes, and it’s been lovely to get my yarn and needle out on the train instead of my phone or laptop.
For the rest of the year I’m going to keep trying to have some fun, but also not put pressure on myself to do it more, because I know it’s going to be tricky to balance between all my other goings on.
Wrapping it up 🎁
Overall I’m happy with the first half of this year. My new job, my weight loss, plenty of events and socials. So much has happened and I hadn’t really processed it until I started writing; no wonder I’m a bit frazzled!
I think for the next six months I want to level out a bit. Shift my focus and narrow down so I can better appreciate where I am and what I already have.