I’m usually quite anxious around march as I need to prepare for my own birthday, my boyfriends birthday and meet the new year of life with realization that I’m now 31.

Simão’s birthday

Simão has a birthday on the first of March and he brought us all to Karen’s diner.
It’s a place there the service is intentionally bad.

The staff made fun of us, making us clean the tables and being particularly rude when we asked for something. They even made us special hats.

My birthday

I had my birthday at home inviting my friends! That was quite nice, though I got stressed preparing the food. Next time only take away!

Thank you so much for wonderful gifts!

An other art fair

My artist friend was visiting London and she would offer her paintings on “An other fair” – event for junior artist to sell their works. It was super fun as you could talk to each artist in person and ask about their art. And you will see a lot of imaginative and beautiful works.

Prep for _* interview

I got approached by a company that I was inspired to work for. I would not name the company here to be discrete. I decided to give it an opportunity – I was preparing for frontend engineering interviews using great frontend, got myself a few coaching sessions on igotanoffer. I was learning so much about how to build a website – I even made myself a practice website to showcase my small coding frontend interview questions. I felt I gather much better gut feeling about frontend development. I’ve spent my commute and hours after work and on weekends to work on my prep.
I got the interview – but the result was a rejection.
I was feeling quite down and suggested to interview for a backend position. That was not something I was looking so much forward for, but I’ve decided to try.
I’ve prepared as much as I can in one week and went through 3 onsite interviews.
Result – an other rejection. It was sad, but I’m glad that I didn’t need to prepare for any more interviews.

Interview aftermath

I was tired of being advised to do more. My problem was – I was already doing more than I was capable of doing. I was too eager to jump on an other opportunity but it would absolutely exhaust me.

After _* interviews I needed to scrub myself from the floor. Yes, I did it, but the price was too high.

I pushed myself to fight or flight, and my body had run on adrenaline. I did the impossible – yes. I was highly exhausted- so much!

And it all was in the year that I’ve promised myself to slow down and pace myself.

The same week I got myself a stomach ache so bad I couldn’t leave the bad.

I got weird when I got an illness. I feel totally overwhelmed with guilt for having it. Had I’ve only did everything right I would not get it! I could trace it back to my parents.

My father accused me of faking pain, because it couldn’t possibly be so bad.

My mother that would heavily imply that any pain I’m experiencing now is the result of my past actions. If I’ve only done enough, I would have not experiencing it.

So every time I get pain I have to deal with double sword 🗡️- first, the pain itself, second the guilt feelings. If on top of that I had to work this day, add to that extra guilt for not being able to work without breaks and “certainly faking it”.

I realize, how cruel this is. Instead of giving myself time to rest and deal with pain offering myself compassion, I induce on myself more suffering than I had to go through. At least I’m grateful to myself to allowing to get this f*cking sick day.

A lot of BOB events

This year I’ve decided to give my best to gather my 25 hours a year volunteering. I would aggressively pursue any volunteering event I see was available for attending. I’ve cut brunches and bushes, remove litter and build a fence. I’ve made 6 hours of volunteering this March.
It was nice to be outside during work hours and do some physical work instead of office tasks.

Simão’s mom dies

At the same day I had my interview – 24th of March, Esmeralda, Simão’s mum had suddenly passed away. We were all in shock. Simão’s immediately flew to Madeira to be with his family. I couldn’t go because I didn’t have an active shengen visa.

I was fortunate enough to meet Esmeralda last year when I was traveling to Madeira. She had showed me her garden, her website and her painting illustrations – she was such an undiscovered painter! When we parted, I’ve painted plants and flowers from her garden.

Esmeralda’s garden is the work of her life – it has a lot of herb plants full of different behaviors and smells.

Olaf the cat

Someone was just a sweet but sharp fluffy bun.