Now, 23 April 2016

Thinking aboutWays to do my job that accommodate being a practitioner as well as a manager. I slid into a part-time gig on my old team, working under the guidance of my former apprentice and that feels fantastic. It took a couple of weeks of being there to feel back in the swing of things, but I now have a team home, I have things I can accomplish, life is good. I love the mentoring part of my job, and the interviewing is fun too, but I need to be useful on a team.

Thinking about honesty in communications, and speaking simply. When I write test code, I try to make it simple and use variable names that make it obvious what I'm doing. When I talk, I usually go for the small words, unless I want to explain what idempotence or skeuomorph means, and they're useful and relevant to the conversation. No using big words without explaining them!

Stimuli and inputFinished some long outstanding books this month, Meditations by Marcus Aurelius, and Art for Breakfast by Danny Gregory. I started Creative License, also by Danny Gregory.

I chewed through The Jesuit Guide to (Almost) Everything by James Martin, SJ,  and Mindset by Carol Dweck. Started The Servant Leader by James Autry, and Smarter Faster Better by Charles Duhigg, I'm seeing common themes across several recent reads.

I believe strongly in the growth mindset, that your attributes, thinking process, intelligence, and skill are all malleable and improve with effort. I will give people who are learning a lot of help, but for people who will not or choose not to learn, I have little patience for them.

Craft and unnecessary creatingMy sketching-every-day habit continues, over 150 days straight since I started in November 2015. I picked up some watercolour paints and I'm experimenting with painting, colour, watercolour pencils, and a water brush. I've started sketching real things in my craft room, not just cartoons, and I got myself a life-size skull model to work from. I named it Skulliver. It makes a good model for knitted hats.

Knitting is back in rotation, the tendinitis pain is almost gone now and the gift box is filling up.

Exercise and healthMy body fat percentage is down by 2% since last June, which feels good. I've also lost 10 pounds. I can bench press 50 pounds now, not the 40 when I started, and deadlift 60 pounds for 10 reps.

I have a date for my karate black belt test in May! That's both exciting and terrifying.