A post about feedback

A couple of weeks ago, I attended a wonderful webinar organized by IT Matters. The speaker was Crystal Mbanefo, and you can watch the webinar here. It was heartwarming, fun and I'd watch it a thousand times. 

The webinar was about receiving feedback with resilience. I let the webinar sink in my brain for a while, and I realized I need to learn to receive my own feedback as well (that can be the hardest part sometimes). 

"I accept that I did what I could, acted as I could, with what I had at the time."

I am quite harsh on myself and I rarely cut myself some slack. I'm not sure if it's the anxiety dominating the body or the judgy brain I've always had (and a vital organ whose behavior I'm trying to correct) but sometimes I find it really hard to forgive myself for not having excelled at something...and I don't excel at anything (lol), so you can imagine how tortured (by myself *cough*) I can feel sometimes. 

I find it hard to forgive myself for not being as bright as I wish I was.
I find it hard not to compare myself to others and remember that all our paths are different. But I need to remind myself that at all times... "all paths are different because we are all different". If context matters so much to me, then I need to remind myself that in this situation, context matters too.

Fortunately, this webinar is on YouTube, which means I can watch it as many times as necessary. 

I had a great conversation with an amazing friend today and among other things, she reminded me that I am me and that I shouldn't feel bad for not being productive all the time. 

I wonder what I'd think of myself if I wasn't me. Maybe I'd even think I'm the bomb. 

Hi, how are you? For real, how ARE YOU?

I think that by now, my teammates know exactly which post-its are mine because of how personal they are. I don't know if this is right or wrong, but if it is true that we need to focus on individuals and interactions over processes and tools then I will...because I care. Deeply. 

Last week was a bit weird, not only because of the whole pandemic situation that is making a lot of us feel like we're riding an emotional rollercoaster, but also because my grampa broke his hip and he was taken to the hospital to the intensive care unit (He's alright and he's back at home now, thank you for asking telepathically). I was a bit mopey last week and feeling all sorts of guilt.

I felt guilty because I am the favorite grandchild (oh yes, yes I am) and I used to spend lots of time with my grandparents before I moved to Spain, but I can no longer spend time with them or teleport (now THAT would be the solution to my problem). I have been calling them every single Sunday at 5pm their time for five years though. They love it, I love it.

I felt guilty because I was executing a pretty long manual regression run and it was taking me forever to finish, and my mind wasn't helping much either. 

I felt guilty because our biggest consumer base is iOS, and I test our iOS apps. Did I want to mark a test case as passed but not test it well? Hell no, that's not me. I'd rather take my time than giving my word on something that I haven't checked properly. However, when I can't focus I don't remember what I did and so I need to do it again. Yes, I do take notes. Yes, I'm distracted anyway, especially when I get interrupted on Slack.

I felt guilty because I wasn't allowing myself to understand that it is OK if you're not giving your 100%. This situation is effing different from anything we've been through before. Some of us live in countries that are going through hell right now, while our families are in poorer countries whose hell would be ten times worse, did COVID-19 hit them. 

So there I was, feeling guilty when I saw a pair of eyes rolling whenever I said I wasn't done with our regression yet (I might be paranoid and maybe no eyes were rolled...maybe my guilt was playing tricks on me)...and I wanted to cry a bit, tell them that I felt under pressure, that I wanted to perform and out-do myself but that my heart was breaking because I was terrified that my 94-year-old grandpa would die and that I wouldn't even get to say goodbye on the phone because mobiles are not allowed in the intensive care unit (because phones are dirty and we know it).

We had our retro yesterday, and fortunately, I wasn't the retromaster* this time. I wrote that pink post-it note and deleted it. Wrote it again, deleted it. Wrote it again, deleted it. I finally was eggsy enough to do it.  I told my teammates that I wanted to explain why I was acting the way I was acting last week. I told them that I was embarrassed about telling them about my grandfather and how that was eating me from the inside out because I was afraid that they would think it was an excuse for being lazy. I just couldn't focus. I told them that we are transparent about each other's work every day at the daily stand-up but are we transparent about how we're feeling? I think we should because being agile means adapting, right? We don't see each other's faces all the time, we don't see each other's body language anymore...so we might as well ask each other how we're doing and mean it. Oh, and create a psychologically safe space so we can actually tell the truth if we want to and not just answer "Fine".

Who would have thought that a tiny post-it note could be so emotionally liberating?

*Retromaster: I have volunteered to facilitate our retros and I've been doing it for 7 months but I was running out of my creative juices so I asked for help last sprint and said I needed someone else to facilitate them for a sprint or two. A big shoutout to my buddy who volunteered as tribute. You rock. 

I confess...

I always try to go to meetups when I have a chance, even if meeting new people does make me nervous. I'm tempted to confess what is exactly what makes me nervous about meeting new people, especially in a business-like context, but I want to be mysterious so I won't. *evil laughter* 

Last year, I was diagnosed with anxiety. I thought I had depression too, but the doctor said I didn't and I quote her "You have lots of plans for your life and even if you say you're tired, you do all sorts of things. I think you have anxiety." I don't know if it was an accurate diagnosis or not, but I've been in treatment ever since and I am way less anxious (and happier), so maybe she was right. 

"You have lots of plans for your life and even if you say you're tired, you do all sorts of things."

Yes, all sorts of things. That I do. But should I? During "covid-tine" (that's so fetch, let's make it happen)... should I be doing all sorts of things or should I prioritize what sparks joy (yes, I'm quoting Marie Kondo) and not necessarily what triggers my brain activity work-wise? Sometimes they combine, but sometimes they don't and I might be pushing myself to enter a dark cave that I already know quite well. Doing too many things exhausts me.

I hereby confess that I have attended a lot of meetups.

So I tweeted something (with a grammar mistake that will haunt me forever...darn you Twitter for not allowing tweets to be edited). 

I think some people identified with it, but the tweet was for me, for future me to read and think about it before walking inside the dark cave of over-attending-meetups without a flashlight. I suppose this tweet was the flashlight.

A final thought, to myself, of course...is attending meetups almost compulsively like binge eating? 

"Do we even enjoy food when we binge eat?" - types while she chews the last bonbon that's left from a box of chocolates she bought three days ago.

Family recipes

I could have sworn that my mother told me this story, but when I asked her where she read it from, she told me that I was the one who told it to her...so, unfortunately, I won't be able to quote the source this time (I will do some research when I can and update this post if I find the source of the story). 

This post was inspired by a comment that Toyer M. made in the chat of TestBash Home's during the session "Panel: Leadership. With Shey Crompton, Nicola Sedgwick, Alessandra Moreira and the awesome host Jenna Charlton).

 I wanted to tell him this story, but I thought the chat wasn't the right place to do it.

The story

Once upon a time, there was a child who received an assignment at school. She had to find a family recipe and write it down, step by step. She didn't have to think too much about it, whenever she thought of a family recipe, "pan-fried fish" sprung to mind. 

She came home after school and asked her mom to write down the steps for her:

1. Buy fish

2. Clean it and cut it in half

3. Heat up a pan, drizzle some olive oil, place the fish in the pan and let it sizzle. 

Girl: Mom, why do you cut the fish in half?

Mother: I don't know, mom always made it that way. Ask her. 

The girl ran upstairs and asked grandma the same question.

Girl: Gran, you know our family pan-fried fish recipe? Why do you cut the fish in half?

Grandma: Hm...I don't know...ask Aunt Susan, it's her recipe. 

The girl called Aunt Susan on the phone. 

Girl: Auntie, I'm working on a school assignment and they asked me to write down a family recipe. I chose pan-fried fish! 

Aunt Susan: That's great!! So what do you want to know about it?

Girl: Well, my mom said I had to cut the fish in half...I asked grandma and she told me the same thing. But why?

Aunt Susan: When I got the recipe from my mom, I know she used to cut it in half, but only because her pan was so small! I got a bigger pan now and I no longer cut it in half. 

Asking questions is always a good exercise. The reasons why things are a certain way is purely based on the context.

TestBash Home

This event made me feel many things but I'm still processing them. In the meantime, this is what I did during #restBash to express what I felt and to summarize what my TestBash Home day was like.

Click here to see my video.

A sneak peak

 It's the third one I make in my life. It's a long time dream I've had, and the current situation re-ignited my dream.

Happy Sunday!