Spending this weekend in Indie Web Camp in Berlin - and I got some indiewebcat and OAuth cat stickers 😻

Last Friday I had the fantastic opportunity to give a lightening talk at View Source 2018. However, I would only have 5 minutes and 20 slides in total, 15 seconds for each slide exactly. I decided to apply for it very last minute and to my shock and surprise, my talk proposal was accepted.

This was my first talk in four years and I was incredibly nervous. Since the slides would move on automatically, I knew that If I had a hiccup (and I did) it would be hard to recover and speed up. I was terrified of leaving things unsaid or not expressing myself correctly.

My talk was related to the indie web, and how I wish our community would blog more and about my fears that make me blog less. The whole morning I was dreading it like I dread waking up at 6am for the gym but in the end the feelings were quite similar. After I finished my talk I was overwhelmed by this sense of relief and of “glad I’ve done this” - similar to the gym.

But then I was so happy and thrilled when I had people coming to speak with me based on the content of my talk and the feedback I received. I tried to cover this in my talk but I am a very anxious person who expects the worst by default. When people were really nice to me and supportive my heart was/is so full. I didn’t even consider that could happen and it is giving me a lot more energy to do other things I want to do.

All the speakers were people I really admire and it was a joy to see their talks. They were amazing and everything I aspire to be. If you didn’t have the chance to attend the videos of the talks are already on youtube (including mine!).

The event was captured a lot in twitter using the hashtag #ViewSource and the photographer, Paul Clarke, has made lots of photos available in Flickr!

And since my talk brought up the indie web, I also had a kind mention in their newsletter!

This talk was also from me to me. It is a bit ironic that I tell people “embrace your fears and blog more!” when my blog isn’t the most active one. The response I’ve received and the people I’ve met because of it highlighted how I am not alone and I’m on the right path to surround myself with positive people.

And to all of you who responded to my message and sent in your blogs, I am humbled and so grateful. Thanks to this experience I discovered really nice blogs:

• Delicious Reverie
• Rick Butterfield's blog
• Danielle A. Vincent's blog

I’d like to thank everyone involved in View Source for this opportunity, everyone who supported me in the days leading up to it, everyone who told me on the day “you can do it”, everyone who took a little bit of their time to give me feedback afterwards. I really appreciate it.

Now, next stop: IndieWebCamp in Berlin and I will be giving a longer version of this talk at TODO London on the 7th of November!

Four months later I finally write the usual “new year post”. Unlike last year’s, this time I can finally say that sometimes when time flies it could be because you’re having fun!

I can happily say that 2017 was a great year. I moved house, finally adopted a cat and ended the year signing the contract for a new job!

Speaking of adopting a cat: Jessie is the word I said the most in 2017! We adopted her from Battersea Dogs & Cats Home and now my life (and my phone’s photo gallery) revolve around her and I actually think she loves me back!

In last year’s post I had listed a couple of goals and I was able to do some of them. I clearly missed the “post more in this blog” but I’m happy to say that I’ve significantly worked on reducing my social media usage, being more environmental friendly and work on being more thankful (although this one is still a work in progress).

During 2017 I’ve tried to adopt a form of minimalism. I read a couple of blog posts and books on the topic especially on decluttering. My wallet thanked me and so did charity shops and now I actually have space for everything I own. There is still a lot of room for improvement: I need to be more tidy and store things away in their places immediately after use. I’m sure that there are a lot wonderful other books and resources but I did enjoy reading Marie Kondo’s book on decluttering. In her book there were a lot of situations that I identified with and it did help me to do a big clothes declutter and give it away to charity.

It was also a year with lovely travels and breaks. I visited Iceland, Finland (again!), Cuba, Spain (again!) and some cities in England. I also gained more confidence, I started attending more meet ups and conferences.

For 2018 I have some goals:

• Actually go to the gym;
• Work on my wellbeing (especially mental wellbeing);
• Be a speaker in one meet up;
• Continue my declutter;

Time flies and it doesn't mean you're having fun. This post has been on my drafts for months now and it is a shame that I barely use my personal laptop after work, but here it is. Back in October, my partner and I took a day off and did a really cool tour that started in London and went to Stonehenge, had a lunch stop in the Cotswolds and then to Bath all in one day!! I know it sounds exhausting but believe me it was well worth it. I rarely go outside London and when I heard about this tour I knew it was my opportunity to cross some stuff off my checklist.

Stonehenge

The day started really early, as one would expect, and we arrived to Stonehenge as soon as it opened. It was quite empty at that time (lovely for photos) and it was really cold.

The tour includes access to the site and visit the museum and it was a great insight to a remarkable monument that everyone knows that exists but no one really knows much about it.

We took off from Stonehenge and because we made a good start and we were ahead of schedule our amazing tour guide took the liberty to make an unplanned stop in Lacock. This stop is not announced or offered in the tour and, like he explained, only when there is time for it, it might happen. I couldn't believe my luck!

Lacock

Lacock is a gorgeous village that looks like it has stopped in time (in a good way). One of the reasons why it is so popular it's because some scenes of Harry Potter were filmed there.

Did you spot the cat behind me? During this stop, our guide (his name was Guy) showed us where, many years ago, people would sleep if they were too drunk from the pub and kept sharing curiosities about the village.

Castle Combe

The next stop was Castle Combe, also known as 'The Prettiest Village in England'. This was only a lunch stop (the lunch is in a local pub and is included in the tour) and it was a nice chance to talk to the other people in the group. As expected, we were the only "tourists" that lived in the UK. The village has been used as film sets before. We didn't explore too much and we stayed around the pub. It is indeed gorgeous and I wish I had taken more photos.

Bath

We knew that Bath can't be visited in just a few hours but it was still worth to get a glimpse of it. When I went to Weston-super-mare, the train made a stop at Bath and I could tell from inside the train at the time that Bath was gorgeous. I wasn't wrong.

We did a walking tour around the city (with a bunch of history and curiosities being told by our tour guide, Guy) and we had time to have a Bath bun and afternoon tea in the Pump Rooms - and buy some Bath buns to take home from Sally Lunn's. By this time I was getting pretty tired so all photos were taken with my phone.

I'd like to go back to Bath and spend a weekend there. I don't think it will happen this year but we'll see. In total we spent 12 hours away and like it was really exhausting but it was really worth it. I want to do more days like this and I'll try to find more "one day" tours to cities like Oxford or Cambridge.

As promised, 2016 was the year I signed up to the gym. This is likely to be the biggest change in my life last year since it made me to start making more conscious decisions regarding the food I ate and my health. It had an huge impact in me.

Last year was shit. I moved to London in 2015 (because my partner is English) and last June was a proper kick in the stomach. Half of the population reduced me, an immigrant, to a sterotype that they themselves had built (the TV show about living on benefits is a great example) and all my contributions (taxes, donations etc) were nothing. Moving here was emotionally hard but I did settle. Unwanted here, yet staying.

Politics in 2016 turned me into quite an angry person. An angry person with no power to change anything. No tweet of mine, blog post or petition signature will change anything so I have just given up on all that. I've deleted Facebook from my phone and I've only been using Messenger, Whatsapp and Instagram. I do use Twitter for the sake of tech posts.

During the whole year I had anger, fear (of my future) and anxiety building up to a point that even sleeping became difficult and by the end of the year I resigned at my job to try to have a fresh start of 2017 somewhere else.

But not everything was bad. I keep bringing up my two trips to Finland (post 1 and post 2) as the best moments of 2016. Besides that, it is really hard to mention any highlight of 2016.

As for 2017, I have a couple of goals:

• Learning more about minimalism: my word for 2017 is declutter. Own the minimum I need and avoid buying stuff to the maximum possible;
• Reduce social media usage;
• Be more environmental friendly;
• Post more in this blog;
• Do volunteering;
• Continue to go to the gym;
• Be more thankful;

I wish everyone a happy and healthy 2017.