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Positive (personal) news discussion?
I feel like the general air recently has been pretty down recently, and I feel like it's been downer after downer headlines and discussion.
What are some good things that have happened to you recently? Big or small, what have you been appreciating?
Just to start off, I recently got a promotion! After a couple of years of being at the company, and surviving a couple of rounds of layoffs, I've felt pretty undervalued for a bit, but I finally chatted with my manager and expressed that I was doing above and beyond work and was hoping to be recognized. Last week he came back to me with a promotion and raise!
To celebrate, I've been looking at some vacations I could take, our company gets a couple of days off for July 4th weekend so I might try and go to London then! (If anyone has better ideas please let me know :) )
Some of my close friends got married last weekend and it was so fun seeing friends that I haven't seen since college, and I had a great time there too.
Finally, I'm looking forwards to a couple of bachelor parties and weddings to go to in the next year, the anticipation has been getting to me, but I'm glad that I have a bunch of things to look forwards to!
Congratulations on the promotion! I don't have any good European vacation recommendations, but I will say that I went to Peru a few years ago and did the Inca Trail to see Machu Picchu and it was phenomenal.
Thanks! Oooh I have been wanting to go to South America, but I'm worried that in July it'll be hot af LOL. I'll take a look at flights and see what's feasible though!
Well, since it's Southern hemisphere it should be their winter. I would imagine Peru doesn't have intense winters since they are in the tropics, but certainly worth checking out. I went in December which is their summer and it felt fine to me.
That's true! I'll have to do some more quick research, but that's definitely a good idea!
I live in Scotland and I've been to a few cities across the UK. London is fantastic, I've been 4 or 5 times over the course of the past 12 years. There's tons of sightseeing to do, some unbelievable restaurants, lively markets and great shows to see in the West End, there's always something fun to do.
I love London! I've been there twice in the last year and a half or so, and I wanna do a full UK tour, but I'm not sure if I can do it in a week. Ideally I'd love to hit the major cities in the UK. I love just exploring all the food markets and stuff, Camden Market is really fun to me especially, since they have some cool clothing stores there haha.
Well, I can vouch for Glasgow (super exciting city with a fun nightlife and a great music scene. Some amazing restaurants here as well, Two Fat Ladies at the Buttery, Mother India's Cafe, The Ubiquitous Chip, Gamba, Opium, Cail Bruich and Six by Nico are some firm favourites that me and my partner have eaten at over the years) and Edinburgh (which is especially fun during the Fringe festival, loads of great comedians, shows and street performers to watch).
Oooh awesome! I was thinking of hitting London, Glasgow, Dublin, and Belfast, but I have to do my research first! Honestly maybe just London and Glasgow might be good enough because flying multiple times in a week might be a lot lol.
Have you thought about using trains?
A train from London to Glasgow is about 5 hours, a flight from London to Glasgow is an hour but by the time you get to the airport, go through security, fly, land, get your luggage, get out of the airport, in to a taxi and into the city it'd probably be pretty close to five hours.
Might also allow you to stop off somewhere in northern England for a couple days before heading onwards to Glasgow. Manchester, Birmingham, Leeds or York are all good shouts for various reasons, culture, history, music, nightlife etc.
The benefit of being a relatively small, straight island is that you don't have to shoot off left and right to get to most places.
Both Dublin and Belfast are great though (you'll definitely need a plane to get to those, no trains yet lol). I went to Dublin for a stag do a few years ago so my memories are a bit hazy and Belfast was great, went with my fiancee and ate great food, drank a lot, saw the sights, visited the Titanic museum and did the Game of Thrones tour (we had Andy as our tour guide, the extra from the show that was a huge fan favourite, he was a great laugh.)
I feel like a train would be quintessential experience in going to the northern part of the UK, for sure! I was mostly referring to Dublin and Belfast for the plane thing haha.
The Belfast titanic museum is fantastic if you go there.
York is beautiful, for the old architecture in the city and for the views and nature in Yorkshire
The willow tea rooms is also a lovely brunch spot with history. I've enjoyed both floors there.
I have finally found a way to exercise consistently. It only took me 40 years. Combine that with the fact that I have drastically reduced the amount of beer I drink and I haven't felt better physically in years than I do currently.
Is there anything in particular that worked for you in terms of getting into the routine of exercise, or was it sort of just a force of will? I can get it started and maintain it for a month or so but would love to get into the habit of it.
I had a similar problem and force of will never worked for me.
I had a good conversation with a colleague that just had something click for me.
Just start with something small, it doesn't matter how small, that you know you can do every day and just do it. Could be riding a stationary bike for 5 minutes, or if that's too big then just clipping into the bike every day. Nothing is too small, just do something every day. I started with a 5 minute walk on a treadmill and turned it into a habit. Then I just found myself doing more and more, but it's usually small bursts and regardless I walked on that treadmill at least once a day, although I go for longer than 5 minutes now. Some psychological thing that helped me get to that point.
I'm not Wafik, but what I found helped me a lot was 2 fold:
I tried my hardest to identify and then remove any points of friction keeping me from exercising. Not feasible for everyone of course, but I got a dog that basically forced me to walk every day, I got a rowing machine that basically let me do cardio at home without putting on pants, and my gym is only a 5 minute drive from me. I could go to further gyms that are cheaper, but that extra drive really puts a damper in my motivation.
The second week is always the hardest. The first week you're full of motivation, the second week you're sore but still want to continue. Pushing past that second week, and slowly starting to see results I found was the snowball effect that kept me going! I'm 30 pounds down now so I like to think it worked.
Hopefully it helps a bit, but also my motivation is super situational for me of course! I'm sure everyone else has their own reasons too.
Thanks, this is generally good advice for many things. I've been trying to reduce the friction of other tasks in my life, and just never thought to apply it to exercise. In particular this part resonated with me:
Next level thinking. I mean that truly, I hate putting on pants.
That's a big one! I started exercising consistently this year and feel so much more comfortable with my body, and it's actually done wonders for my mental health too. Keep it up :)
Definitely, congrats and same to you!
People prefer to celebrate the Big Wins, but I find that small victory after small victory helps.
The first thing is, my job has the potential to change every year based on contract conditions. To the best of my knowledge, I'll be keeping the same job for this year, and also finally getting to do some more stuff I've wanted to for years.
Also, I've been taken into the confidence of someone who finds out all the stuff happening behind the scenes of this company. Eventually news does filter down, but this guy has already said that he's willing to pass on the info he has direct access should I ask.
Oh, and while I still have more organization and cleaning to do, I finally have my apartment in a configuration (of furniture) that I've VERY happy with.
Congrats! I don't think I could do contract work, the uncertainty must be super stressful when your contract is up. (Though I guess in Tech recently that anxiety isn't absent either). But it must be such a great relief to not be worried about it for another year.
I feel like having a source at a job is always really relieving too, that's why I used Blind for a bit (even though my company is too small for it to be useful)
Feng shui is important too, hopefully you get to relax comfortably in your apartment configuration now :)
I have a job lined up after I defend my dissertation, and I have an interview for another position this week. I also found out yesterday that a third position I applied for wants to meet virtually today to discuss more details of the job. After questioning my self worth for so long it's super affirming to get all these people interested in my CV.
Congratulations on your (upcoming) dissertation defense! I know a couple of people in the PhD Path and everyone tells me about the milestones they have to hit and how relieving it is afterwards, I hope that your defense gives you the best relief ever. Good luck on your virtual meetings as well :)
I was finally able to have my residency research manuscript published to pubmed in the past week!
Turns out the popped filling I thought I had wasn't anything at all. They did find a chipped tooth that they shaved down, but other than that, in and out in 10 minutes and nothing but a handshake.
I got a promotion at my job at the end of last week. I work for the national auditor in performance audit and I love it, it's great work and I feel like I'm making a difference as our reports do receive national coverage. The promotion will see me move to the Correspondence Team on a two-year secondment interacting with members of the public, MP's, MSP's, Civil Servants, Public Bodies, Charities, and even whistleblowers.
It'll see a nice payrise initially and due to pay negotiations along with annual pay increases I could be looking at my wage having increased by £7000 total by this time next year which will absolutely help out me and my fiancee massively.
Me and my fiancée also decided on our wedding venue for 2025 and we've now booked it. It's a beautiful venue near a castle that used to be a high school hundreds of years ago which is a now a hotel. It still has its observatory and telescope which you can get wedding photographs at.
Other than that my daughters sleep cycle has settled a little, she goes down at 7:30 most nights and gets up around 5:30-6:00. It's not as great as it was but I'll take her not getting up 2-3 times a night and getting up between 4:00-5:00 for a bit.
A couple exciting things in the works:
Based on some discussions here on Tildes we've begun booking a two week trip to Japan for end of November. I've never actually planned a trip like this so it's been interesting. Definitely excited and a bit apprehensive.
A tentative job prospect has come my way. Long story short: friend from grad school hired me into my current company; after about a year he left, and I took over his position and have since grown our original team. He's done well replicating what we did in this business and is now tasked with growing out a new data science team. Approached me to see if I'd be interested and essentially what I'd cost so he can try to get it in budget.
I'm pretty excited at this prospect. It'd be a step out of management back into a scientist role (which I desperately want). It would also be out of HR and embedded into an IT dev team. WFH is also part of the job and they have a decent paternity leave policy. My previous partnership with this friend worked very well for the both of us. I also know another data scientist on the team, he was in a role within one of the subsidiary businesses I currently oversee, and that wa a good relationship as well.
Japan trip is so exciting! I was there last year for a solo trip, and I think I posted on that thread in question that you mentioned, feel free to go through my comment to get ideas too :) My very first post in Tildes was also about the trip so if you wanna dig through and find that feel free! (Also if you have any questions just ping me directly too if needed, not an expert, but I'm also lining up another trip there at the end of this year I think!)
Congrats on a job prospect! If I had a dream job it would be working with friends that I've worked well with before, and obviously I NEED work from home now too. Good luck on everything you need and I hope it goes well for you.
Best of luck for Japan. I really enjoyed it.
We finally had a couple of sunny days here in the dreary Pacific Northwest, and so I was able to get outside and plant some much needed privacy shrubs in my backyard and beat back the ivy. After months of being stuck inside with Minecraft being my only outlet for landscaping and gardening, it was nice to do something in the reals.
I wrote 1500 words of my novel last week. I know that's not a lot, but I have intense creative anxiety so that's a big win for me.
Congratulations Lou!.
I'm about to sign a new contract at work and was promoted from non-tenure-track Assistant Professor in the Clinical Title Series to tenure-track Associate Professor in the Regular Title Series. The new position is also an endowed Neurology Research Professor position, which is basically one of the crown jewels of academia.
The decade+ of grad & post-grad training is paying off! The job can get overwhelming at times, but overall I love what I do. It's hard to complain even about the most ridiculous workplace issues at this point.
Congrats!
By clinical title series to regular do you mean like going from Asst. Prof. in Pathology to the XXX Assoc. Prof. in Neuroscience?
Actually just Asst Prof in Neurology (non-tenure, lots of clinical work) to Assoc Prof in Neurology (tenure-track, research-heavy but still with clinic and training duties). It's an actually job change as opposed to a promotion within my current track, if that makes sense.
Thank you!! It's almost exhausting typing a comment about the road here, haha
Ahh, you had more medical responsibilities prior. I assumed you were just research based PhD.
Ah, gotcha. Yep, it's a clinical psychology PhD with a neuropsychology postdoc. I'm from a very research heavy PhD program, but the clinical training and load were still a big part of it. I really loved doing therapy and now love the clinical assessment work, so it is the best of both worlds.
I asked out my best friend of the last 3 years fully expecting her to tell me that she didn't roll that way or didn't feel the same way. She said yes. It's been a few months but I think I am still a bit shellshocked because any time I played out the confession in my head, it just never ended well.
I haven't told anyone but a few close friends because... idk, for some reason I don't mind telling random internet strangers, but I don't really like talking about personal life things, I guess. I don't expect much stigma from my family (grandmother who raised me will possibly throw a fit; she's been asking when I'm marrying one of those nice guy friends) but for now I'm content knowing that I am not in the alternate universe where I get shot down.
I finished a huge project.
I had decided late last year that I was going to two tournaments, one for a game called Bolt Action and another for Warhammer: Age of Sigmar. My intention was to build and paint new armies, so around December, I finally got started.
I finished the first army for Bolt Action at the very end of December and then proceeded to build and paint 115 models for Warhammer beginning January 6th. I basically cranked and did nothing but Warhammer, painting, studying and testing my army for the past 3 months, with the exception of the one day tournament fit Bolt Action in February.
This last weekend March 16th/17th was finally the Warhammer tourny and I managed to make it through, which is an exercise in stamina and fortitude, given you're on your feet for 12 hours and using your brain just as long. I didn't do amazing, only going 3:3, but I was the best of my friends and I'm happy that I finished my army, brought a competent list and was able to play somewhat successfully.
I'm extremely happy it's behind me at this point, because that means I can finally think about other things in my life. Warhammer is, unfortunately, a "lifestyle" game that seeks to utterly consume, which is not my style of choice. So finally I can start working on painting and playing other stuff, which I am extremely happy about.
Like several people in this thread, I also got promoted. I will still be an IC in a technical role in software development, but I will start preparing for the management track. This will come at first with a direct report, sometime in the short to medium term future.
It feels a bit weird, to be honest. And I am afraid that maybe I bit more than I can chew. I have several technical strong points, but I am aware of some weak ones too - time management & organization skills. I've been trying to work on those in the past year, but I don't feel like I have made meaningful progress.
And these two skills seem important to me in a leadership context, which in turn makes me feel unprepared. But at least the change is not taking place overnight, so I still have some time to work on it.