Butterflies

This post will be really personal (as usual) and not about work. Also, I'll try to make it easy to read but I think it's best if we see this as a ball of yarn that we're unraveling together. 

COVID as a unit of time

COVID months aren't like normal months. A lot can happen in a COVID month and nothing can happen as well, making a month feel like half a year or like a week. However, my months have been blessed with a passion for the internet and what you can find in it (I've always had it but now even more so), zoom activities every day after work, YouTube videos and not having to commute to the office, which has probably allowed me to do stuff after work. 

A sensei along the way

I can't remember when I bought my iPad, it feels like forever but it must have been one or two months ago. No more than a month or two before that I created @therookiesketchnoter, my public Instagram account, which is where I post all the sketchnotes I make. The sketchnoting community is amazing and I got lots of recommendations regarding who to follow to improve this and that...which is how I came across Fran Salomon, author of "Mejor Dilo con Monos" and Dean of the prestigious University of Moníchigan. I don't know why I find her so mesmerizing... if it's her charisma and how funny she is or the fact that she is a person who has struggled and found a way to improve. She's an amazing communicator and her messages just go through me and set me in motion. I wish she could convince me to go to the gym and stop eating crap...maybe I'll ask her to motivate me to do that when I finally meet her (I'm on the waitlist for one of her courses). 

This pic is from www.canva.com

I started following her on YouTube, Instagram, etc. I started practicing every day as she suggested. I can't say I'm getting better because I honestly don't see it, but I can say people seem to be liking what I make...and this time, perhaps that's the opinion I should trust...theirs and not mine because mine is pretty mean and judgemental when it comes to my own crafts. Fran Salomon always says that "drawing is a path to personal growth". She says we have to practice every day and enjoy the ride, since it's not the final destination that matters, it's the journey. 

Invisible competitions

All these months have been a different kind of journey for me because for once, I stopped competing with others. You know when you're in a competition to see who achieves more things but the other person doesn't know you're competing with them? Yeah, just like that. Shame on me.

I had been so focused on doing what everyone else is doing (thinking that I was going to become successful that way) that I was completely neglecting what I really wanted to do. I've always wanted to make films (don't ask, that one is a bit on hold atm). I've always wished I could draw and paint. I've always wished I spoke at least 5 languages by the age of 30. I've always wished I could play music...but I thought that all those wishes were not my thing (except for languages, that one I actually did invest my whole life in) since I was so bad at all of them.

Practice 

Fran Salomon talks about it all the time. Vera Gehlen-Baum talked about it too in her masterclass "You have no talent (and neither do I)". There's even a super cliché quote that says "Practice makes perfect", but why have I never really paid attention to it? I've always thought that you had to have some talent prior to practicing until you reached perfection...but what if you develop your talent because you practice so much? 

Tools

This part will sound very frivolous and consumerist (and it is and it makes me feel guilty but I don't know why I'm telling you this). I bought an iPad because I was getting frustrated that real paper doesn't have an undo button and I thought that perhaps digital sketchnotes might be the way for me. I bought a camera to make stop motion films. I just bought a ukulele. 

Butterflies

Last night, my husband and I were in bed and I told him: "I can't wait for it to be tomorrow morning so I can go to the music shop to get a ukulele. I can't wait to start my lessons*. I know you might think I've lost it, with all the hobbies I've discovered since March and all...but these are things I've always wanted to do and I didn't know I deserved to give myself a chance to try. I'm so happy I have the rest of my life to learn and practice. This is crazy because I don't think I've ever felt this way, but I'm giving myself butterflies in my stomach because I'm really happy that I'm alive and finally living."

*I used Roomie Official's two-month free trial Skillshare link and it worked! I also found a discount code to enroll for the whole year with 40% discount!! Send me a message if you want it :) 

The retro that made everyone warm and fuzzy inside

As I have mentioned before, although I'm not the scrum master of our team, I have volunteered to facilitate our retros...and I've done it for almost 6 months, but then I felt a bit drained and I asked my teammates for help. I thought I needed a couple of sprints to recharge my creative batteries, but honestly, I feel like I still need some more time. 

Anyway, my dear friend Korcholis (probably my best friend at work, but don't tell him) volunteered to facilitate some retros and they were good. They made everyone in the team sigh and be all "aww I love you all", which was beautiful and felt great, but being the flawed person I am, I felt a bit jealous (and feeling jealous made me feel small). 

Jealous? Why? Well, because I've been trying to get the team to reach that climax for almost 6 months and I felt weird that someone else achieved it. Since Korcholis and I are the kinds of friends who can be honest with each other, I confessed my jealousy to him, and guess what he said? 

"First of all, all processes are long and sometimes they take time. The fact that they said that when I was facilitating it might only because I was "a new person" facilitating the retros, but the whole effect came from before.

Second, if you hadn't brought games and 'emotional things', I wouldn't have brought games and emotional things. To be honest, when I was officially responsible of facilitating the retro, every day before starting work I'd look for metaphors about how to split tasks in "good" and "bad" and that's it, but afterward, once I started looking for games, I realized that splitting positive and negative things of the sprint into two columns was not the most important part...the most important part was to see how we work as a team.

Third, I know you don't like to hear this, but you can't allow someone's words to affect you. [...] Fourth, don't say you feel small, imagine you teach someone how to ride a bike. Will you feel small because that person knows how to ride a bike now? Will you feel small when someone tells them "Wow! Well done! You ride your bike so well!"...of course not. You should feel proud of being such a good teacher."

I must admit that, after those words, I felt a bit emotionally manipulated to feel proud of my work and happy about what had happened... After all, he's really smart and he'd know how to cheer me up, but he made a good case.

We're finally riding the bike together (sometimes).