After months of frigid temperatures, warmth has finally returned to Boston! ☀️ I used to think of spring as my least favorite season—my distaste for rain does not mesh with April showers—but this past week has made me seriously reconsider. For the first time in forever, it was finally in the 50s!

On top of the weather, I’ve had a lot to be grateful for recently. On Thursday, I took Coconut to his yearly echocardiogram (the first since he started taking meds), and the vet said his heart health had significantly improved. There’s still a murmur, but apparently the measurements are looking much better than before!

I’ve also gotten into a great morning routine. The first 2ish hours of my day during the workweek look like this: wake up, get ready (aka brush my teeth and slap on some sunscreen!), take Coconut for a half-hour walk, do an obé workout, do five Duolingo exercises, and then make breakfast. Lately I’ve been really feeling oatmeal with freshly cut strawberries and a drizzle of honey.

I cannot emphasize enough how much joy this routine has introduced into my life. I’m starting to realize how much I appreciate consistency and movement. A lot of the workouts I’ve done on obé have ended with the instructor saying something like, “Thank yourself for showing up and your body for everything it was able to do for you today.” That message is so uplifting to hear, especially at the beginning of the day. Again, all about gratitude!

By the time I start working, I’m energized, showered, and completely prepared to enter focus mode. This week in particular, I really felt myself leaning into work. I’ve had a lot more autonomy than usual, which has been really exciting, and in general my schedule was pretty light on meetings. Another one of my New Years goals was to really engage professionally, and I feel like the past two weeks would’ve made January Natalie proud.

For one, I started reading a book on best coding practices, which I never do! Programming is one of those things that you get good at with experience, so usually the advice given to aspiring developers is to just do it. As in, create your own projects; contribute to open-source repos; anything, really, to get your feet wet. And for the most part, I totally agree with this advice!

However, writing code that’s elegant, readable, and flexible is trickier to learn on one’s own. My knowledge on the topic has primarily stemmed from 1) an advanced software design class in college and 2) reviewing my coworkers’ code. That approach has honestly gotten me pretty far, but I knew that if I ever wanted to achieve complete mastery, I had to be more proactive with my skill development. Enter, Effective Java by Joshua Bloch!

I’ve also begun taking more advantage of my work benefits, namely tuition reimbursement. My company offers up to $5000 to take accredited university courses in subjects related to our roles. Earlier this week, I got approval to enroll in a graduate-level web development course at Boston University. It’s completely online, six weeks long (starting May 11th), and the first class I will have taken since graduating college!

Finally, outside of work, this was a pretty reading-heavy week. The feminist romance book club I’m in met on Thursday night, so I spent the evenings leading up to that reading First Comes Like by Alisha Rai. And this morning, my own book club had our monthly discussion, which was on The Midnight Library by Matt Haig. As always, I procrastinated on the reading, so I actually had to wake up super early this morning to finish… whooooops

Until next time! 👋