Week 31 ???????

Monday

Helena Bright came all the way out to T?rnby to visit me for a work session. We are working on our Talent Promotion ??. Currently, hiring companies hold the upper hand, and we want to change that by creating a spot where hiring managers can access top talent. This can save them time by finding the right talents without going through a lengthy hiring process, and we get to promote the extremely talented people we have at CPHUX .

Last time, we started drawing out a blueprint, which we finished today.

After a break, we started mapping out the different emails we have and the ones we plan to send. It’s really cool to get an overview and more clarity on what we need.

I’ve realized I need to go through some of the other landing pages we have on the website. Yay, loads of things to do.

After Helena left, I was exhausted. A designated 20-minute nap became almost 3 hours. Honestly, I needed that. Even though I’m not on maternity leave, I still have to get up several times during the night to breastfeed.

I made us dinner and almost burned the meat because I forgot to turn down the heat after preheating the pan ??, but it was still good. I took Olivia out for a night walk and by 20:00 both kids were sleeping… but then Victor woke up. Around 23:00 he finally pooped, and at 23:30 he was back to sleep ??.

I did manage to work on the new Career Support page for our website ??.

Tuesday

Yesterday it was raining, but today was dry, so I put on some sportswear, tucked Olivia into the stroller, and ran to the daycare and back. It was a great way to start the day.

Lars helped me rearrange some power cords so I could plug in my extra screen. It was nice, but during the sunny hours of the day, it’s quite hard to see what’s on there.

Victor had a bit of a better day in daycare onboarding. He screamed most of the time, but the staff managed to get him to smile for a few seconds. I have so much respect for the staff and how they handle both the regular kids and onboarding small ones who are not okay with the situation. And damn, I’m glad I’m not Lars.

Zdeněk Pa?ek had already built all the modules I asked for, so I got to look through them and make requests for visual changes. I’m so excited for the new website to go live ????????.

I went on LinkedIn and started replying to messages. So often, it’s never just a message. I needed to send over an event guide, and when I read through it, I realized there was outdated info in it. I updated the content, saved the new PDF in the correct place, and sent it off. With us starting a new event series, I had to make a brand new guide and an accompanying survey. I finally got around to creating a meeting poll for the CPHUX event steering committee, and it was nice to see new people pitching in. Really excited for the upcoming event season ??.

Vaiva Kriauciunaite wrote me a lovely message, and a few hours later, we jumped on a call. She wanted some pointers on how to build and grow a community. It’s super cool that she wants to create a community for UX professionals in the Baltics ??. Super excited to follow her on that journey and see where it will take her.

Today marks the day a year ago when we moved into our house (and we have never lived upstairs ??). I texted Jayden, and he called me on his way to the hairdresser. It was nice to catch up with him, although brief. He’s buying an apartment, and tbh I’m pumped that it’s in Amager… yes, I’m that person… ??.

While cooking dinner, Olivia ate a banana, two boiled potatoes, a piece of rye bread with leverpostej, two large tomatoes, a few small slices of beef, some thick spaghetti, and some corn… ??. And she ate a baby-sized popsicle and wanted more ice cream. Wtf, you tiny human… guess she was hungry ??.

Wednesday

This morning I was ready to run with our baby jogger and Olivia in it to the daycare. But suddenly, time passed, and I wouldn’t be able to make it in time for their morning snack :( They’ve asked that we either come before or after, so we gotta try to make it in time. Up on the bike, and we made it in time.

I went to the grocery shop and got us some small things. While Lars was at the daycare onboarding Victor, I made us sausage rolls, and they came out warm from the oven when they got back. It’s awesome making everyone in our family happy with such a small effort ??.

As you might have read, I’m opening up for providing job seekers with individual feedback, either through career coaching sessions or by recording voice feedback of people’s material. On Monday, Helena Bright and I came up with a strategy to promote not just these sessions but also all our other initiatives to support job seekers. We’ve also wanted to do more video material, and soon we will, every Monday, have me sharing a piece of career advice in a small video. So today, I brainstormed 4 tips, easy peasy with all my knowledge ??. I brushed my hair, put on some mascara and a dress, and recorded, well, more than 4, but what will become only 4 videos ??. You will have to follow CPHUX's social media to get my advice ??.

Lars and I discussed what it could look like if we split up the membership into two. This was something Helena and I discussed on Monday, and both today and yesterday, I was texting with churned members who wanted a smaller membership for busy working professionals. So Lars and I talked and Googled and came up with ideas on how to do things. It is really interesting to have a developer's perspective at the tip of my fingers. But sometimes he has a hard time accepting a hacked MVP. At his last company, they tested things with coded setups ??.

I handled members in my Notion backend.

I locked in our next UX Talk with IDA in their big conference room.

I explained the guidelines of our event overview.

Most of the day, however, was spent building another landing page for the Talent Promotion. I’m really enjoying using ChatGPT , and damn, how I wish it had been there years earlier. High school homework would have been a breeze ??.

At 16:00, I checked in with Lars, and Victor was sleeping on his chest. We agreed that if he wasn’t awake by 16:30, I would go pick up Olivia. I didn’t get to run this morning, so I was excited to run there now.

I have had a sore neck/shoulder all day long, and while running to the daycare, I realized it was because of the stroller. I’m pushing it mainly with my left arm and straining it ??.

Back at home, I grabbed a quick shower, and then I got attacked by a small boy who wanted his milk. Savage.

Once I got away, I headed to the kitchen to empty the dishwasher, fill it, clean the surfaces, and then cook.

Olivia kept touching her diaper and weeping a bit. I went to change her diaper, and there were small pieces of poop in it. She was completely red, and it was clearly VERY painful. We washed it off with running water, dried her with the hairdryer to avoid friction, and then used a lotion designed to help out with red sore skin. Poor little baby girl ??.

On my way running back, I did feel a bit cold, and at this point in the evening, I could really feel it. I carry a DNA defect on my X chromosome from my mother, which prevents males from generating white blood cells. Although no research has been done on this, my doctor and I are convinced that I have a weakened immune system, so things like getting cold can easily make me sick for a day or two ??.

Anyway, after a cup of chamomile tea with ginger, honey, and lemon juice, I decided to call it a night and go to bed. Goodnight ??.

Thursday

Between two children waking up a lot during the night, falling asleep in a chair with Victor in my arms after breastfeeding, and waking up with a sore neck, it wasn't the best morning. To top it off, I was woken up by Victor slapping my face. Not the best start to the day, and it took a while before it turned around. It wasn’t until Lars and Victor came back home that I felt joyful.

Yesterday, I read an update on LinkedIn about how we, as professionals, should work focused for the first couple of hours of the day. It made me feel a bit guilty for wanting to do small tasks first thing. Getting on top of those makes me feel, well, on top. Either I’m not getting the point, or I’m just different from the people who wrote those posts, but why not start the day by feeling on top of things?

I mocked up the subpage about Talent Promotion, which I’m super stoked about. I wrote down some important details for later and contemplated what it should be called from the hiring manager's perspective. While writing this, I realized we should do some outreach already now and get hiring managers excited about it. Then, when we hit a critical mass, we can release it to them.

I’m just so proud of myself this week. I feel like I’ve accomplished so much, and holy smokes, it feels GREAT to be back at work again.

I had a meeting with Hugo Sant'Ana , who, despite being super busy, is interested in learning more about emails, automation, and all that jazz. The timing couldn’t be better because we’re about to get on top of all these types of things. So, I could even show him a matrix of our current setup and future ambitions.

My mom came over today, met Lars and Victor at the daycare to pick up Olivia, and walked home. I met them on the street. It was so cute when Olivia saw me; she started running towards me. I ran to her, and we met in a big bear hug. It is strange when your romanticized dreams actually match reality ??????

We had a very lovely evening. Lars massaged my messed-up back/shoulder. I’m excited for tomorrow, where we are having a family fun day and hopefully a better night.

Friday

I started off the morning with a catch-up meeting with Nestors Kuliks . He has done amazing work creating a design system for CPHUX on Figma and developed some filters we can add to the job board once the launch is ready. We haven't really collaborated on this since before my maternity leave, so we needed to go through it all. Now, I’m not super proud to admit this, but I’m really not a strong Figma user. I’m old school, and when Adobe XD came out, I was a first mover on that. So for years, I preferred Adobe over anything. I’ve never even opened Sketch ?? but obviously, with time, I realized Figma was the way to go. My point is that I don’t really know how to fully utilize all the cool things he has made. The reality is that if I’m not a front-running advocate for his work, we can’t expect others to use it. So we have scheduled a meeting where we will make a video where I ask a lot of great dumb questions and he explains how I should work with it. Then we can show it to others who, like me, aren’t super Figma users ??

Over the years, I’ve worked and used Notion in many different ways, and you can tell when you look at our Notion board ?? so I’m slowly trying to clean up as I’m working my way around it. We actually have quite a few contributors, and I love to include new people in our activities. So, at the moment, I’m trying to move all documentation and projects into a database that provides the contributor with an overview of the things we are working on. Hopefully, they will take ownership of their projects and start filling in there as well. The goal for me is to make it easy and intuitive for them to work and document projects ?? I’ve said it a million times, but I’m forever grateful for these people's efforts in the community and what I’m part of building. I’m just one piece of the puzzle ????

Speaking of puzzles, I’m putting the final ones into the landing page we have for companies to get an overview of our offering, which soon will include our Talent database or Talent promotion. I’m really enjoying making them in my super low-level, collage style. In the past, I would find landing pages daunting, but now I’m just having a blast. Thank God for ChatGPT. If anyone can recommend a good and free AI image creator, I’m all ears (comment, please).

I took a few garden breaks, and it was nice to cut down a crawling plant that was invading one of the trees and give a hedge a bottom trim. Underneath it, I found a large rectangular rock, and underneath some grass, I found rock borders between the grass and the pebbles. That garden is full of surprises, and it’s nice to fix some of the eyesores for my sunroom view. It does spark joy in my everyday life ??

Victor did NOT have a good time at daycare. Olivia being there made no difference. Two weeks, and his record is 30 mins. It feels like a joke, and it makes me sad because next week is my husband's and my wedding anniversary, and I had some really great things planned for us to do. Clearly, that is not happening ?? and it’s painful to see him come home so sad. I’m glad I’m working from home so he can get some comfort and mama love.

Olivia came home with him, and in the evening, we went out for some sushi and then we went to the Blue Planet (Denmark's aquarium), which is 10 mins from our house. It was fun being there, but the wine we had for dinner made all of us super tired.

Back at home, my mom and Lars tucked the kids in. I tried, but it didn’t work, so Lars took over for me. I sat back on the couch to watch the finale episode of RuPaul's Drag Race All-Stars season 9. The episode was kicked off by a short intervention with Kamala Harris, who encouraged people to register to vote because casting your vote is a display of power. I was very moved and felt empowered on behalf of the queer people out there. To see a world leader join in on this platform and segment is fucking awesome. I hope she wins and find it insane that Trump is even selected to run again ????

I wasn’t super impressed by the finale. Back in the day, they would do the finale in a theater with a live audience, and THAT was a show. Now it’s in the studio and feels like most episodes. A shame really. Now, what can I learn from that observation…? ??

Saturday

Lars took Victor when he woke up around 5-6 in the morning. At some point, we switched, and I vaguely remember us in each of our beds with two semi-sleeping kids.

I ended up getting up with Olivia, waking up my mom so she could change her diaper, and then I took Victor. Lars slept on in the bedroom, which he indeed needed to.

We had breakfast, but I put over a dough for some buns when Lars would get up. A few hours later, he got up. My mom had made some berry compote, which we ate with whipped cream. Then I went in to get a nap. At some point, Lars tucked Victor in. Next thing was, we woke up. Victor wasn’t in the bed with me but in Olivia’s cradle. I looked at him, and he woke up. Weird.

For Christmas, we gave Lars' mom 4 days during the year where we would come and do practical things for her. Today was such a day. So 3 adults and 2 babies crammed into the car, and off we went. Olivia was quite tired, and the first thing we did when we arrived was to walk with her in a stroller so she could nap.

We had cake on the porch, and she told us what she wanted done. I started in the driveway with a broom to remove spiderwebs and things. Then I moved over to a sponge and cleaning supplies. I washed a bit, and then I was called inside to drink some wine with the others. At that point, Olivia had been up for a while. After sipping on some white wine, I fetched the photo collages she made last year. We took all the photos out, and she sorted them. Then I organized them in the frame and glued them in. Four frames, one for each of her children and their families.

Then we had dinner, and it was awesome to see our kids feast on meat and cream potatoes. After dinner, I went out again and started scrubbing the beams and ceiling. To my surprise, it was dirt and not a type of fungus, so I could somewhat easily wash it off. But each little section took a while, and Lars objected that the kids were tired and needed to go home.

That evening, we really struggled to get Olivia to fall asleep. But it happened, and she is lying right next to me right now, in dreamland ??

Sunday

I got up and turned on the oven to bake some homemade buns for breakfast. We had a lovely meal and laughed at Olivia, who ate 5 slices of sausage in one go. The kids chilled while my mom and I went to the garden to make a bouquet of flowers for my friend Johanna. Later in the day, we packed the kids, the flowers, and the presents on the bike and rode to outer ?sterbro to celebrate little Alice’s 2nd birthday. The best present was by far an electric car big enough for the kids to sit in, and we adults could move them around with a remote control. Now that is parent-racing on a whole new level.

We left after a few hours because Victor was tired and we couldn’t get him to fall asleep. It was nice and a bit nostalgic to drive through the streets of Copenhagen. So many good memories and connections to large parts of the city. Lars reminded me that the kids wouldn’t be small forever and that we would soon enough get back into the city. That was the reason why we bought a house close to the city.

After hitting Amager, Olivia started complaining a lot, and with Victor sleeping, we decided that she would sit behind Lars on the bike. She sang, and we talked about the different vehicles driving past us. We stopped at a takeaway place and bought dinner for all of us. Back home, the sun was still shining, and we ate dinner on our porch. My mom had purchased waffles and ice cream and opened her own little ice cream shop. It took us quite a while to get the kids to sleep, but it was nice to get to bed a bit early.