Work Out Loud: December 14-20, 2020

[sparklingrobots]

Welcome to Work Out Loud , a weekly thread where we share what we’re working on, who we’re meeting with, and what we’re doing in our free time.

This is the last Work Out Loud thread for 2020! We’ll start back up in the new year.

Welcome!
Welcome to our newest community members: @DesignerElise, @dh301823, @hugovk, @edwardangert, @ryan_sears, @jessiem, @bdimaggio, @ariellaA, @jacobs, @apmsooner, @Rhett, @bramdriesen, @sd61kol2, @blakecodez, @NickDickinsonWilde and @poojasax! Thank you for joining our community! You’re cordially invited to participate in our Work Out Loud thread. Each week we share some of what we are working on, learning or otherwise dealing with.

This week, I am…
Tidying up for my last week in the office in 2020!

The Gift of Open Source continues to warm the cockles of my heart. We’ve still got plenty of room for contributors who want a t-shirt, so don’t be shy! We’re here to support you giving back with lots of options.

Motivated by
It’s that year-end sprint! Can I contribute to a WordPress bug before the month is over?!

Your turn! Here are a few questions to get you started:

• What are you working on this week?
• What is motivating (or demotivating) you this week?
• What are you learning?
• Any good videos/podcasts/articles you can recommend?
• What holiday plans do you have?

I nominate @dgorton, @amyjune, @McKennaR, @mmlc & @JohnRichardsII!

[McKennaR]

Welcome new community members!

And happy Monday everyone! Did anyone do anything fun this weekend?

This week I am…,

Meeting with our awesome vendors for the Gift of Open Source. I cannot believe how fast December has gone! Great news—there is still time to score a super cool t-shirt, so if you haven’t contributed definitely do so before Dec. 31st!

Working on my second contribution this morning!

On a personal note, I am starting a new workout this evening & I am excited! I have had issues with my lower back for some time now so I am hoping adopting a healthier lifestyle & daily stretching will help.

I am also excited to take my second day foster out this weekend! Ahhh does anyone else wish they lived on a farm so they could adopt ALL THE ANIMALS!

I nominate @hallienew & @hvanzile to share what they are working on this week with our community!

[JohnRichardsII]

Pantheon
Excited to be delivering a training on using Custom Upstreams for WordPress to a university dev team later today. It’s like all my life has been leading up to this moment

GOOS:
I’ve been working with the WP Training team the last few weeks. They are about to launch the new learn website. I’m excited because its an intersection of a lot of my favorite things like Training, Learning, Presentations, Coding, WordPress, and Community.

This is hopefully just the start, the training team is going places in 2021 .

Learning
The wife and I keep struggling to order gifts for each other in secret. I just learned about Amazon Households which allows you to share a prime account and keep gift purchases secret

[amyjune]

Happy Monday!!

** What are you working on this week?**
Continuing forward with the GOOS trainings - FOUR this week!!
At Kanopi I am auditing a few websites for digital accessibility and working on documentation for mobile testing processes.

** What holiday plans do you have?**
The Kanopi team has the week between Christmas and New Years off, so relaxing is on the docket. We are looking to move soon, so we may do some virtual house hunting. We currently live south of San Jose in Northern CA and are looking to move north of San Francisco.

[hallienew]

Hi @McKennaR! I think I’m going to need more details on that foster dog you mentioned. Most importantly, how does Chubs like her new foster sibling? Photos, please!

I’m working with a few of our Professional Services customers, getting their sites in tip top shape ahead of the holidays! I’m continually in awe of the amazing teamwork and collective power of the Pantheon team.

[fatima.khalid]

happy monday friends!

What are you working on this week?

The Gift of Open Source making contributions and running the Week 2 Office Hours on Automate & Collaborate tomorrow I wish I had more to prep for that ( ugh last minute DrupalConEU), but it’ll be awesome!

Decoupled Bridge Early Access team- supporting our effort and working on some exciting R&D with a client this week.

What is motivating (or demotivating) you this week?

I did a ton of deep cleaning this week and it makes me really happy to be in a clan space.

just trying to make it to next week which is a short week and then yaaaaay, finally some long time off. I really, really need that break!

What are you learning?

I’m learning to find joy in cooking/preparing food and repairing my relationship with nutrition and food after a long time! It’s a lot of reading and listening to things about mindful eating and preparing food that I can feel excited about.

Taking a Yaqeen Institute series on Quranic Gems

Any good videos/podcasts/articles you can recommend?

I recently asked for podcast recommendations on Twitter! - I’ve not been someone who’s listened to a lot of podcasts in the past. I have a list of news/political and Islamic (religious) byte sized podcasts that I listen to in the morning/evening to stay in touch with things. But with cooking and tasks like sewing, I’ve been looking for recommendations

What holiday plans do you have?

relaxing! playing games which I haven’t done in forever - gotto clean up my animal crossing island after leaving it mid construction (lolsob).

leftover projects around the house - like putting up the pegboards for the office, the shelving in the bathroom, paint touchups after moving things around, cable management, etc.

reading! I have a backlog of sci fi and fantasy and a lot of discounted tea to get through

it might not be the best time since everyone will be flocking outdoors - but at some point, I really want to go to the coast and reflect on 2020 and grief and plan my new year. ocean waves are my happy place.

Wishing you all a safe, healthy and productive week friends take care of yourselves!

[fatima.khalid]

Oh and I nominate @elishafeliciano and @Christy !

[McKennaR]

You’re going to do great tomorrow! I will be there & I am super excited to learn & chat!

And ahhh I wish COVID wasn’t a thing right now so I could put my HGTV skills to good use! I love home renovations! Also I think you should absolutely flock to the coast! The fresh air is good for the soul & it can definitely be done safely distanced I am also someone who spends time reflecting every year. I didn’t do it this year but I usually have a jar that I drop sticky notes in throughout the year with notes on it of things I have accomplished, learned, fought through, etc. And then on new years eve I flip the jar over & read them all. It’s one of my favorite things!

[steve.persch]

Thank you @JohnRichardsII for the tip on Amazon Households! I need to set that up for our house.

I wanted to share here that this month I’ve been color coding my Google calendar by assigning meaning to each of the color options and it has made my too-full calendar much easier to scan.

Of course I started thinking about ways to automate the color assignment. That led me to App Scripts, which I didn’t know existed but is something I hope to dig into further.

But for now I’ll stick with doing manual color coding because it allows me to start the week by looking at a bunch of events that are my default blue color and asking myself questions while I do the color clicking like

• Did I even register when I was invited to this meeting?
• Do I need to go to this meeting?
• What outcome do I need from this meeting?

I’m finding that that practice of doing the task at the beginning of the week is just as valuable (maybe more valuable) than the outcome of a color coded calendar.

I’ll update on a future Working Out Loud how it is going.

[McKennaR]

Ohhh I love that Steve, thank you for sharing! I truly do believe time is our most valuable resource. I am absolutely going to put this into practice myself–thanks for sharing!

[sparklingrobots]

This is a great idea – thank you for sharing!