now: october 2025
This is my now page - it's what I'd tell my friends if they asked me, "What are you up to right now?"
If you have your own site, you should have one too!
volleyball obsessed #
I’m up to five straight days a week of volleyball/sports right now, with leagues on Sunday and Monday, training on Thursday (OSSC) and Saturday (Lima Sports Club), and still doing Friday sports. It’s definitely a lot, but I’m loving it and not feeling overly trash by Sunday/Monday to boot. I’m enjoying the level of play on Sat/Sun a lot and hope that continues! In November I think the Saturday training moves to Friday evenings so I’ll have to decide whether to stick with Friday sports or switch to the volleyball training instead (definitely still going to the pub either way!).
positconf atlanta #
Had the pleasure of going to PositConf in Atlanta in mid September. It was a great time, despite my general discomfort with the principle of travelling to the US right now. Was thrilled Lydia could come too - had some great team bonding convos - and also glad to have reunited with Arielle to have the OG Soccer Engineering Musketeers back together again!
For me, PositConf has become 80% meeting up with old & new R friends and 20% exposure to new ideas and new work in the space, which is probably just fine relative to where I am careerwise right now. I’m glad I didn’t have to deal with the stress of speaking - I’m perfectly happy paying to attend rather than feeling the pressure to speak at the conference to either afford to attend or build my personal reputation. I’m extremely grateful to have the reputation and friends that I do now, and I keep wanting to pay that forward as much as I can.
I also had a great time at Tidy Dev Day - I managed to tackle five PRs and ring the gong each time (although I really only count two of them as real contributions, the remainder were mostly doc fixes).
No travel in October but I do have a short trip to London planned in November!
work #
Coming back from PositConf into layoff announcements was a cold dose of reality. The soccer engineering group (ie my direct reports) had already shrunken by two after the departures of Danny and Yagmur in August, and we were lucky to not have to deal with any new cuts (or maybe Soccer is doing well enough to continue to avoid unwanted cuts) but other sports definitely noticed the impacts. I keep reflecting on the importance of things like protecting the team from external pressure, building psychological safety, and ultimately helping them continue to grow and thrive. It’s an ongoing struggle.
On the bright side, I’m getting more IC time with the 40% reduction in number of reports, and feel like we continue to get better at planning and identifying the right next projects to tackle. Feeling like we’re in control of our own sphere is nice.