Happy April! I’m excited because in just a few weeks, Nick and I will be travelling around Europe and visiting some countries we haven’t been to before. 🙌 And my younger brother Brandon will be graduating from his Masters degree, which is so exciting. Time has gone by very quickly… seems like not that long ago that I was doing my own Masters degree.

While I’m keen for both of those things, let’s go straight into the tiny wins I had last month. I snuck one in that happened today, because I felt like writing about it. 😆

tiny wins ✨

• I put $1880.69 in savings 🤑
• I went to a new place to get my eyebrows waxed and the lady there did a much better job than the previous place I used to go to
• Devcamp happened, and it was amazing – everyone praised our efforts
• saw a chiropractor for the first time, and the niggle in my upper back disappeared
• Jococup sent me a replacement cup after mine broke in the dishwasher
• listed a lot of clothes on Carousell
• got some 15% off codes because I referred people to my favourite jewellery store, By Invite Only (get 15% off with my referral link and I get 15% off too!)
• at work I sat in the first inception meeting I’ve had in over a year and I did not touch my phone once
• frequently left my phone at my desk when I went to meetings
• turned off many notifications for my phone
• bought $400 worth of clothes and actually returned all of it
• scheduled most of my recent blog posts so I was not trying to write them ten minutes before they were due to be posted
• started adding events in my calendar for things I need to do and it helped me maintain productivity
• literally scheduled “Nothing” in my calendar as something to look forward to
• got a new MacBook at work and named it after the late Stephanie Kwolek, who invented Kevlar
• spent a lot more time this month writing upcoming blog posts
• figured out how to access files on my VM via macOS without searching the internet for help
• got to work earlier than usual a couple of times
• took my old coworker’s chair after he left the company because the armrests on my previous one were falling apart
• got a very good massage
• spent a weekend away with Nick 🥰
• listed some of my designer dresses on eBay and actually got some interest
• went to the Genius Bar at the Apple Store and they will be fixing the internal keyboard and trackpad issues I have been having

my favourite tiny wins 💖

saving monies

I am really thrilled that I saved a lot of money in March. I actually hope to save about the same amount in April, but I am not sure it will happen because I think my bills have been really large this month.

weekend away in palm cove

Nick had a free domestic flight on his credit card, so we went to the tropical north of Australia for a bit of a romantic weekend away. We ate some nice food and also treated ourselves to a well-deserved massage. It had an exfoliation scrub as well, and I know you could really just exfoliate your own skin at home, but getting a treatment was nice to do, and it’s not like we’re paying for that kind of little luxury every month, or even every year.

I think I will write about the weekend in a bit more detail another time; I do have a few more photos to share ☺️

scheduling blog posts

I have been doing a pretty good job of writing and preparing blog posts in advance and scheduling them for 5:00pm AEST on Tuesdays and Fridays. I’m doing much better than I was at the beginning of the year, where I was often rushing to try and finish blog posts at 4:50pm. I have really enjoyed publishing twice a week and preparing content in advance – I feel more organised than I have in the past, and this method really encourages me to write, whereas before I would often be stuck on ideas. Now I feel more like I have a constant flow happening.

repairing my macbook

This happened only just today and it is technically April (but I still wanted to write about it). After almost a month of my laptop playing up, I made an appointment and took it to the Apple Store. The keyboard and trackpad in the laptop became unresponsive when I took it out on the first day of Devcamp. 😢 After resetting a handful of things, it worked, but when I arrived back home it would frequently stop working again. It seemed to have come back after I re-paired my external bluetooth keyboard and trackpad, but when I took it in today the man who helped me out said that he wouldn’t consider it fixed and suggested a repair because this was quite a common problem for my MacBook model.

He also happened to notice some weirdness in the screen coating of my laptop – something that I had noticed for a while but never bothered me – and said it was a known issue in my laptop model. He said that had I brought my laptop in 11 days ago, the repair would have been covered. I thought, bummer… but he managed to waive that cost for me, so I really only have to pay for the cost of the cable replacement that will fix the internal keyboard and trackpad issue. ☺️ So instead of paying $700 I only have to pay $15. 😆👌 I’ll be bringing my laptop in later in the week since I have to make a backup and sort out some other things, haha.

tiny wins ✨ is a monthly occurring “monthly review”-type post. It is focused on small achievements throughout the month, although some may be considered “great” achievements. The premise behind tiny wins is that everything should be shared no matter how big or small. The lowercase stylisation is deliberate, and is a nod to the name (lowercase letters being smaller than uppercase or capitalised text).