On Thursday, I broke. I started to panic in the morning. I realized later that it was because I hadn’t had a second to myself since Monday, Feb. 20, because I went to BeMyApp, Angelhack, and PyCon on all the weekends, and had events and classes on all the evenings. I am also doing a lot, and learning a lot. Last week Curtis said, “you are in a growth phase. So much sun! So much water!” (He is a farmer.) And it’s true. But I also have to rest.
Yesterday, I volunteered at blackgirlscode (alice!), and I decided to walk home from the M stop. I walked through Stern Grove, and discovered that the dog park is absolutely ginormous, that there’s a duck pond at the end of it, and that if you come out the other side, you end up at wawona and 34th just north of lakeshore plaza. The duck pond had a lot of mallards, a few black ducks with a white bill that were smaller than mallards, and two bigger gorgeous white ducks with black feathers on their wings and tails.
It was good to walk around in semi-nature for a while. I took a thousand pictures of a banana slug, paths, some blossoms, and of a park bench in front of eucalyptus trees.
Then Elvin came over and we got milk tea, and a whole bunch of us programmed all night. Peterson worked on his graphics engine, Fritz worked on his iOS app idea, and Elvin and I got set him up with rvm, mysql, and rails on ubuntu. We’re starting our new project =) One of our prizes for winning BeMyApp was a free GitHub Bronze organization for a year, so I redeemed it last night, and had to think of an organization name. Judy And Friends seemed too … JudyCentric, but we kind of liked the acronym, so I came up with Just Another Flamingo. So that’s what we’re called on github now. I’m looking forward to working on our logo. Haha…
This morning I woke up panicking again. So Fritz took me to archery at golden gate park, where they have a public range. I haven’t gone to do archery with them for months… not since the last time I wrote about it here. They’ve gone a lot, and acquired new equipment. I think archery is really good for me, because I love form. haha.
I’m trying to relax, and get some perspective back. Also, I have to not fail at Iron Blogging. I almost couldn’t write this post because I have to write about BeMyApp, Angelhack, PyCon, Women Who Code, Sean’s CSS class, and so much more. But if I keep on operating that way (not writing posts because of all the other posts I haven’t written yet), I’ll just continue to never write posts, and that would be terrible, not to mention costly. Just write!
Just live! I’m not perfect. I feel really stressed about that. I need to be okay with being not perfect, and then I’d be able to do so much more.
Get some rest. ^_^
I know how that feels… There are constantly too many things to learn, too many projects I’m excited about doing, and too many opportunities that can’t be missed. For me at least, I was terrified by the thought that I’d ever feel like I didn’t do my best and somehow regret not “giving it my all”. Then I realized how dumb that was once I reached my limit too. I could tell I’d reached it because I’d get upset and start raging and/or bawling over the stupidest shit like spilling juice on my pants or finding out my roommate ate my leftover pizza. There’s only so much bandwidth we have. I still completely believe in pushing my limits in a way that challenges me, but I also realized that I have to be nice to myself. Not just for the sake of sanity, but for the sake of doing good work consistently. I decided that giving myself the latitude to do those non-“work” related, spontaneous things is important to get some restful perspective in a way that helps me be even more ON when I need to be. I don’t think getting burnt out or feeling overwhelmed is any sign of weakness, I think it’s our brain telling us that it needs those other experiences to stay balanced.
OMG, there is an archery range in Golden Gate Park? HOW did I never realize this. I must go! I haven’t arched for far too long. Do they have equipment you can use or rent?
Yeah! The one in Golden Gate Park is public, so there isn’t any equipment or staff or anything. But you can borrow Fritz’s when you come with us! He got extra stuff so we could bring people =)
The other places we go are http://redwoodbowmen.org/ and http://www.pacificaarchery.com/
Bummer! I used to go arch in So Cal, at a range in Long Beach where they held the 84 Olympics archery competition; it was a public range and they had equipment for public use.
Please, please, let me know next time you’re making a trip, I would love to come with.
By the way, I see the Redwood Archers used to be known as the White Company, after the Conan Doyle novel, which used to be one of my favorites as a kid. My edition had lovely color plates by N.C. Wyeth.