February went by so fast, I didn’t even realise I hadn’t done a monthly review until it was March! Oops. And I have been so busy that I’m still catching up reading everyone’s blog posts, and didn’t realise everyone else was doing their monthly round-up type posts either. 😦 But yes, to address that “busyness”, I’ve decided with the help of some friends (namely those in the Fenders group) to block out time in my calendar specifically for my tasks, so I dedicate time to these tasks, I know where the time is going, I can allocate breaks, and I can allocate time to not be disturbed (and I thank Nancy for that idea).

I wouldn’t really call myself an organised person. I feel a sense of shame when I say I am organised, because the to-do lists and the up-to-date calendar of events and the fact that I even have a notebook can be just a façade. I slip, every now and then, as we all do, and if I’m honest, the past week has been a cloud of stress.

I don’t want to go into details because I have most of it under control, but instead I want to recap on the awesome month that February was. I started it off in Perth, speaking at the inaugural Localhost meetup (it went so well!), and I was so pleased at all the feedback and so aww, shucks ☺️ at all the love from the Perth peeps. I did an interview for Localhost as well!

I was in Perth for about ten days, dearly missed soy matcha milkshakes from Whisk, caught up with my friend Kim again, and returned to Sydney with so much love for my team at work who had supported me whilst I worked remotely. And, we had a new (female! Yay!) team member join us as an engineer – something our team had been waiting for for a long time.

After seeing The Beach Boys in concert, Nick and I prepared for our short sampler cruise. It was my first cruise and I really enjoyed it. We saw Explosions in the Sky last week. I went to the dentist for the first time in a couple of years, and my teeth were absolutely fine.

I went to the Girl Geek Sydney meetup this week and I interviewed my friend Monica for my Hey Girlfriend! interview series. If you haven’t read the interview yet, please, please, please check it out. I think it will be really eye-opening for some people, and Monica is an awesome person, very good-hearted, intelligent, funny, but knows when to be serious. You’ve probably heard this before but I did meet her on the internet, and that can be creepy as all hell to meet someone on the internet… but this lovely lady is going to be a bridesmaid at my wedding. 😍

Speaking of weddings, I managed to sort out a few wedding related things this week, and I guess that’s where last month fizzled into this month. So let’s recap the month gone by!

This past month, I learned:

That Perth cafés are pretty dang good.

This past month, I got bored of:

My clothes.

But that’s OK, because I enjoyed:

Buying some new ones. I really shouldn’t have bought so many, but I tried to make wise decisions this time about what could be mixed and matched with items already in my wardrobe.

Today, something that made me happy was:

Chatting to my friends.

Today, something I could have done better was:

Manage my time at work. I probably could have squeezed in a little more work and completed a certain task if I wasn’t so distracted.

Tomorrow, I’m going to:

Go to the gym, pick Nick up from the train station (he went to Melbourne for a few days for work) and finalise our wedding invites. Yup, as you probably guessed, I’m designing them myself. 😄

Next month (March), I’m looking forward to:

I’m looking forward to catching up with Dylan and Lilian next week.

Next month (March), I’m going to make the positive change of:

I said “saving money” last time, and I really need to listen to myself because I bought so many clothes in February. Ugh.

One thing on my to-do list is:

Apart from what I’m doing tomorrow, I am actually going to do another talk on blogging at the next Girl Geek event. I need to prepare that!

One happy photo from this past month is:

If I had to write a book or record a film about this past month, I would call it:

Good Vibrations 😆

After I post this, I’m going to:

I’m going to prepare some of our wedding favours. We’re making cacti in pots. 🌵 And I’m going to line the bottom of the pots with thin material to stop the soil coming out of the hole. There is more to be done, but that’s the next step.

I’ve finished this post before the end of the time I blocked out for typing a blog post – so I’m pretty proud of that. I was just chatting with Tara about how blocking out time doesn’t work for her because it’s very specific, and she just prefers a list of tasks. I think I will see how I go, but I agree with her to some extent. I’ll continue to try a combination of things, because everyone is different.

For me, I think that this will help with my distractions if I have dedicated time blocks. It’s easy to deal with my distractions by shutting off notifications and sitting in a quiet place, but this feels like another layer if I dedicate a specific amount of time to work on something.