A Summary of my New Year's Resolutions

1) Sprint Distance Triathlon - 1 pt

If I could give myself more than one point, this is the one that deserves it. I didn't only do a single triathlon, I stretched myself into doing three (one that turned out to have no swimming, but I was prepared for three). And I'm still training (albeit a little slower in the winter) for future races. I've always said I was only "sort-of" a runner because of how slow I run, but you can't be sort-of a triathlete - you either are or you aren't, and this year, I am one. 

2) Chronological Daily Audio Bible - 0.5 pt
I started out so strong on this one, but I got frustrated with the extra, non-bible stuff in the podcast, and stopped. It was interesting hearing the bible chronologically though, as it put a lot of the old testament into context for me. I got through King Solomon's reign in history before falling out of the habit, and it was good to be reminded of the history of the nation of Israel.

3) Jen Wilkin's God of Covenant Bible study - 1 pt

This one was pretty great. I enjoyed my time studying the second half of Genesis having studied the first eleven chapters last summer. And I found myself identifying with biblical characters I have typically ignored. Genesis is a set of stories that you grow up learning as kids, but it was great to read the text of these familiar stories and see new themes.

4) Make a second quilt (gotta use that fabric!) - 1 pt

I did this! I finished a second quilt top, but I still have not bound the quilt from last year, so that extends into next year. I also made some other blocks for smaller quilt projects.

5) Sew a piece of my own clothing - 0 pts 

I had such good intentions here. I bought the fabric and made a paper cutout of the pattern, but then I got scared and never cut my actual fabric. I did do some quick basting stitches to put together this year's Halloween costume, which made me feel crafty, but not enough of anything to call this resolution a success.

6) 2019 Reading challenge - 0.5 pt

So, I failed to finish this challenge, but the intent of the resolution was to broaden my reading horizons, which I would say I successfully achieved this year. I was trying to do the "Reading Women" challenge, which had a list of 24 books with the caveat that they should all be written by or about women. Here are the 15 books I managed to read for the challenge (I read some other books this year too, but they are not recorded because they didn't meet one of the challenge categories).

A book about nature - Old Lady on the Trail by Mary Davidson

A myth retelling - Gingerbread by Helen Oyemi

A book written by a South Asian author  - The Widows of Malabar Hill by Sujata Massey

A book about or set in Appalachia - Miracle Creek by Angie Kim

A book featuring a religion other than your own - Home Fire by Kamila Shamsee

A book you picked up because of the cover - Becoming by Michelle Obama

A multigenerational family saga - Divine Secrets of the YaYa sisterhood by Rebecca Wells

A book by Jhumpa Lahiri - Interpreter of Maladies (by Jhumpa Lahiri, obviously)

A book you bought or borrowed in 2019  - My Grape Paris by Laura Bradbury

A romance or love story  - To All The Boys I’ve Loved Before by Jenny Han

Any book from a series - Always Dakota by Debbie MaComber

A novella - After Many Years, by L. M. Montgomery

A mystery or thriller written by a woman of color - Aunty Lee’s Delights by Olivia Yu

A children's book - Clik’d, by Tamara Stone

A young adult book by a woman of color - The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas  

7) 12 baked complexities - 0.5 pt

I was doing pretty well on this for the first half of the year! I made an ice cream cake, DIY pretzels, DIY pizza crust, and a number of gluten free baked goods (not pictured). I didn't do some of the things I wanted to try (like DIY puff pastry or DIY croissants) so I'm not giving myself a full point. I also did the Paleo diet for three weeks this year, which expanded my cooking horizons dramatically!

8) Complete a capture the flag hackathon challenge - 1 pt

I did this because one of my co-workers started a monthly hackathon happy hour, which I have enjoyed. I don't know that I'll do it again, but I'll count it as a pass - thanks to my workplace!

So 7/8 that I made progress on and 4/8 that I definitively completed, I'm happy with that.

I'm still putting my 2020 list together - I'll post that January 1st. Have a blessed holiday, all!

Top Ten Moments of 2019

For the last episode of Rhett & Link's podcast Earbiscuits, they challenge listeners to go through their memories or camera apps to find their top ten moments from 2019 (after they've both gone over those moments for themselves). So, in that spirit, here are my top ten moments of 2019, with images! If you got my physical Christmas card, some of this is a repeat, but the blog allows me to be more detailed.

#10: National Night Out and the Columbia East Buy Nothing Group

I picked this photo from National Night Out in August to represent a whole series of things I've enjoyed/that I'm grateful for in 2019. Over the past two years, I've been trying (with the assistance of my friend Julie, who works for  NavNeighbors) to be more intentional about making connections to the people who live around me. One of the ways I did this was by taking Isabel to National Night out to meet our local police and firemen when they were at the village center, and trying to engage more with the village center meetings. While at one of those meetings, I met my neighbor Mandy, who is a part of the Buy Nothing group I'm a part of on Facebook. I enjoy swapping things on the group for porch pickups and have gotten some great home decor items. There have been two in-person swaps to meet each other (one for clothes and one for toys) and neighborhood walk/bike events that Mandy has organized. I haven't made it to any of the in-person events yet, but I'm grateful to have found this way to connect with those who live in my community.

#9: WELocal and IEEE WIE
I presented on two diversity panels this year at conferences, both due to my connection with the Society of Women Engineers group at the Applied Physics Lab, where I work. I value working at a place that supports my attendance at these events and always love attending them and feeling the energy of a bunch of female engineers looking to encourage and support one another. You can read my post about the IEEE WIE talks from November if you're interested!

#8: Guinness for Ryan's Birthday
I love the new Guinness brewery in Baltimore. I'm not a big fan of traditional Guinness, but I like the vibe and the layout of the place, and have learned that trying experimental brews is usually more successful for me in terms of what I like to drink (the tangerine ale this year was a particular favorite). We went for Ryan's birthday and I enjoy the tasting experience they provide, as well as the space to hangout on the lawn in the warmer weather.

#7: Family Vacation
I wrote about this (and the next one) in great detail on my blog earlier this summer, so you should check out that post if you are interested, but it was a highlight of the year to re-live the nostalgia of my childhood summer vacations with the whole crew again. Also this family froyo selfie is possibly my favorite photo of my family ever taken.

#6: Deep Creek Anniversary Trip
I also wrote about this in great detail, but essentially, Deep Creek was three days of Ryan entertaining my every whim, letting me go kayaking every day, walking around the Oakland B&O station and small shops for hours, and waiting while I tasted lavender everything at the Deep Creek Lavender farms. Our July anniversary means we always see fireworks on our trip, and fireworks over the lake makes not only my top ten for this year, but probably my top fireworks experiences of all time (that's another blog post I'll have to write some day).

#5: Boston's Downton Abbey Exhibit
While we're on the subject of travel, my crazy one-day trip to Boston (I flew in late Friday night and flew out early Sunday morning) to celebrate my cousin Megan's 25th birthday was a pretty epic trip. We went to the Downton Abbey exhibit which was tons of fun, the perfect mix of history and movie magic, walked around Boston for hours, and ate delicious Chinese food together in Boston's Chinatown. I've enjoyed re-defining my cousin relationship with Megan as we've both become adults and can now get together and do fun things without needing to coordinate with our parents. Last Christmas, she and her boyfriend Zach stayed with me and Ryan and we went to Korean BBQ, so this trip was a continuation of our enjoying being adult cousins together. But no matter how old she gets, she'll always be my baby megs!

#4: Meeting Andrew & Bethanie's Baby
Moving closer to the top of the list, this October I got to meet Eden, the firstborn of two of my college friends. Andrew & Bethanie were my Bible study leader & discipleship mentor while I was in college, and they've been praying for a baby. I didn't meet her the way we'd planned - she was in CHOP getting a feeding tube inserted unexpectedly - but I did get to meet her and love her, and gift her a UMBC baby hat (which, her mom tells me, she absolutely hates wearing). But she tolerated it long enough for us to take this matching photo! As more of my friends have kids, I'm consistently amazed at my heart's capacity to immediately love these children because of my love for their parents. I could go on about the other kids in my life, but since baby Eden was born this year, she holds the spot exclusively for this year.

#3: Dress Shopping with Abigail
My sister got engaged this June, and one of the highlights of the year was going dress shopping with her. Dress shopping when you are not the bride is a completely different experience, and I found it amusing to compare my experience to the TV show "Say Yes to The Dress". I went to two appointments with her to shop for her dress, and this photo is from another appointment, when we closed down the David's Bridal store looking for bridesmaid dresses (we did find one that we all liked that night). I fully expect to cry when I give my matron of honor speech in February, even though I've tried to practice it so that I don't cry. I'll post the text of the speech to this blog after I've given it, so stay tuned for that!

#2: Triathlons (& other races)
It feels like cheating to put all three of these into one moment, but I'm going to anyways. The level of training I've put into triathlons definitely is a defining moment of this year, and my good friends Christina (who trains with me) and Dave (who supports and Instagram coaches me in training) made the races even more enjoyable. For all three events, during the swim I thought "this is awful", but by the time I got to the run I was hyped up on adrenaline and thinking "I have got to do this again" - and so I will! I got a USAT membership for 2020 and am slowly re-training my brain to recognize that I can call myself an athlete, and be proud of it.

I also did a bunch of other foot races in 2019 that were lots of fun - Run the Vineyards with Christina and her husband Josh in April, Crushing the Bay cancer research fundraiser run in May to mark the one year anniversary of Dad's passing, the Downtown Columbia 5K, the Ellicott City Turkey Trot, and the Celtic Solstice 5K at Druid Hill Park. I'm no Eric Liddell, but I have gotten to the point where I genuinely enjoy running (even though I'm slow) which I never thought would happen!

#1: Brown Cyber Solutions
OK, by far the biggest defining moment of 2019 was Ryan's deciding to strike out as his own consulting business. This was a huge, huge part of our year, and unfortunately, there's really no photo to show for it! Here's the little logo we designed for his company as the best image I have for it. Ryan has wanted this for a few years, and while he essentially does the same job he did before, he enjoys the fact that he is managing himself now, and we are learning a lot together in the process. We are so grateful that we're both working so that he can take this risk without too much stress, and that it's worked out for him. I'm incredibly proud of him for taking the risk and pulling it off successfully.

My next post (which I will probably also publish today) will be the resolutions post I have done annually for the past decade.

That Decade Meme

Well, as 2019 draws to a close, my mind is naturally drawn towards a year end review (which, never fear, I will still write - but I have a few more weeks to finish off last year's resolutions before I score myself). However, in addition to the year-end, it's become an internet thing to reflect on the decade, either based on your accomplishments:
https://mashable.com/article/theres-only-one-month-left-in-the-decade-and-weve-accomplished-yet-another-meme/

Or on your levels of attractiveness:
https://slate.com/human-interest/2019/01/2009-vs-2019-how-hard-did-age-hit-you.html

I posted my 2009 vs. 2019 photos on my Instagram, and since then I've been thinking over my past decade. If you are a frequent reader of this blog, you'll know that I usually dwell on the decades in May (around my birthday) due to my annual "Dear Future Me" tradition of writing to myself one, five, and ten years in the future on my birthday. But since we're at the end of the 2010s, I'm doing a look back - not at my accomplishments, but at how my life has changed. The 2010s were a decade of big change for me because I'm a millennial (born nearer the end of the millennial block, but firmly in the standard years of 1981-1996), and I came into my adulthood in the past decade.

At the start of the decade (2010) I was set to graduate high school, and was waiting to see what colleges I'd get into to move into the next phase of my life. I remember vividly the night of December 31st, 2009, when I was rapidly finishing the college applications I had held off until the end (there were tears) but in the spring of 2010 the acceptance letters were rolling in and I was re-visiting colleges to make my decisions. Ultimately I decided to go to UMBC, and in the summer of 2010 I was on campus as a student for the first time for honors orientation, then the CWIT retreat, and then my first week on campus as a real college student that August. There are so many more photos from that first week/that first semester, than the rest of my college years because it was all brand new and I was making new friends. Flowing into 2011, I finished my first year of college and got my first job, a summer internship, at the end of which I had decided I wanted to keep working. In one of our monthly dinner (when I went to college, my dad started coming up to campus for dinner roughly monthly) Dad talked me out of it, and I went back to school to finish my degree. I was fighting my first ever case of imposter syndrome. I was worried that if I gave up this first job, I'd not get another one, which was silly. I went back to school, and the start of February 2012 was the semester I started talking ballroom dance classes - and therefore the semester I met Ryan. I remember the day vividly, and I remember the first day he asked me if I'd go to the Friday night dancing with me, and I remember the Easter Sunday in April that Ryan came to meet my family and ask Dad if he could take me out, and the very awkward first date we had (even though we'd been dancing partners for three months by then, this was a date and that made things different) and the moment that summer that he asked me to be his girlfriend officially. 2012 was quite the year.

For the most part, 2013 passed normally - until that October when we got my Dad's first cancer diagnosis. He'd fallen on a hike with my brother, and had assumed for a while that the pain he felt in his hip/posterior was just a result of that fall - but it was cancer. He had surgery, and it was supposed to be over, and we moved into 2014. The spring of 2014, I was applying for full-time jobs and deciding on how to best fit in as many graduate classes as I could while I was still on scholarship. That May, I graduated with my friends with a bachelors of science in computer science, and they started full-time jobs, but I took a summer internship at APL, and was back in the fall for a final semester before graduating with a masters that December. I also ran my first race that November, driven by Ryan's passion for it to try to get myself into shape. Dad's cancer had spread, and the summer of 2014 he started chemotherapy - but we were still thinking that there would be a way to beat it at the end of that year (or at least, I was - I don't know what my parents thought).

In 2015, I started my full time job at APL, and I started bugging Ryan about what the plans were for the future of our relationship. March of 2015, we got engaged, and as we were planning our wedding, we got the news that cancer had moved into Dad's lungs, and this had moved from a "we can beat this" to a "how long do we have" kind of cancer. As that news spread around my extended family, our July 2015 wedding became a more significant event. After my wedding, Dad never went back to work full time again, and my wedding was the last time all of my Dad's side of our extended family were all in the same place at once. And then I moved into Ryan's house and changed my name and started my new life. 2016 rolled through, and Ryan added me as a co-owner of his house (making 2016 the year I became a homeowner), and we kept running together (we ran the 10K across the bay that year). Somehow Dad kept beating the odds, and kept living, and at the end of that year, my sister got engaged. So 2017 because the year of gaining a brother-in-law, adjusting to that change in our family, and we rolled into 2018 as a family of 13 - 2 parents, 2 brother in laws, and 9 tight siblings.

At the start of 2018, things were tough (and you can go back and read the blog about those days) as it became clearer that Dad was at the end of his battle with cancer. I'm not going to re-hash the bad days - instead, I'll focus on the precious memories from the start of that year. In February, UMBC opened a new event center, and Dad (wheezing and on a cane) came to a game with me. UMBC pulled off an impossible win in March Madness, and I enjoyed watching with Dad on TV. My parent's 2018 wedding anniversary (their last) was spent in a hospital, and at the start of May, my dad moved into his eternity with Jesus. And that was 2018. And now we are coming to the end of 2019. I'll recap this year in a later post, but I ran my first triathlon this year (I ran three) and Ryan started a business, and another one of my sisters got engaged.

IEEE WIE USA East Forum Recap

Hello all! The weekend before Thanksgiving I got to attend the IEEE Women in Engineering USA East Leadership Forum. Here are my notes from some of my favorite talks at the event.

A) The Neuroscience of Inclusion
This talk was given by Dr. Asma Abuzaakouk, a neuroscientist at the Mitre Corporation. She started by stating that Inclusion + Diversity + Psychological Safety = Creativity & Innovation, and that there was hard science to backup the imperative to have a culture of inclusion.

She described how human brains "feel before we think", because the outermost layer of our brain is the Reptilian fight or flight response (it takes 8 ms for a response to be generated by your reptilian layer), followed by the Limbic response (which controls needs like hunger, thirst, reproduction, etc.) followed by the Neocortex (which takes 40ms to generate a response). She phrased it that human brains are hardwired to scan for threats first, and not reward, and a response to the perceived threat will be out of our mouths before our neocortex has processed the information.

She argued that social exclusion creates a state of threat, impeding the best possible thinking from employees, and showed some scans indicating that social exclusion lights up the same part of the brain as physical pain or threats. She described some ways to control the three types of chemical "brain messengers" - Norepinephrine, Dopamine, and Serotonin - to decrease the sense of threat:
1) Breathe intentionally - this slows your reactions and allows you to actually formulate a response
2) Engage in Appreciation/Gratitude - this produces positive brain signals, countering threat state
3) Engage in short tasks - this occupies the outer layers of your brain and gives the neocortex processing time
4) Shift your questions - ask what outcome you want and focus on outcome rather than threat input

She also noted that humans will mirror the neuron patterns of other humans when engaged in conversation, and that it's faster (i.e. easier) to mirror the neural pathways of your in-group, so bias is biologically inevitable - but that we can intentionally counter those unintentional neural shortcuts to create an environment where everyone can do their best thinking.

B) Leadership Secrets of an ex-CIO
This talk was given by Dean Lane, a four time CIO, military veteran, and book author (https://www.amazon.com/Chief-Information-Officers-Body-Knowledge/dp/1118043251).
He opened his talk by asking how many of us self-identified as managers, and when only about a third of the audience raised their hands, said, "you're all managers - you all managed to get here on time!" He then challenged us that true leadership would take it to a different level, and had ten characteristics that could move you from a leader to a manager. They were:
1- SPIRIT, a vital principle that gives life to organisms and decides temper, especially when animated
2 - MOTIVATION, the incentive to do well, to consistently play hard and rarely admit defeat
3 - INTEGRITY, firm adherence to a code of values, "doing the right thing even when no one looks"
4 - PROBLEM SOLVING, finding a solution by examining, assessing, advising, acting, and assuring
5 - TEAMWORK, work done by several associates, each doing a part but subordinating personal preference or prominence to the efficiency of the whole
6 - DECISIVENESS, inferring on the basis of evidence the final judgement on what to do ("she who hesitates is lost")
7 - SENSE OF HUMOR, the ability to say funny things and see the funny side of things
8 - ATTITUDE, a mental position regardless of fact, your feelings or emotions towards fact (Optimism vs. Pessimism)
9 - DETERMINATION, firm intention to achieve a specific desired end
10 - TIME MANAGEMENT, managing what gets done in a day and prioritizing what you need to do

C) Social Media - Toxic or Tonic?
This talk was given by Veronica Wendt, a researcher and educator at the National Defense University.
She opened her talk with a brief history of information exchange in human history, highlighting how the printing press (in the 1400s) changed communication from one-to-one spoken word to one-to-many with the advent of broadcast news. From then to now, mostly communication has evolved as a broadcast capability, built around trust agencies like the government or corporate news organizations. From home radios (1930s) to home telephones (1940s) and home TVs (1950s), all technological development had improved the speed with which you could have one to one or one to many conversations, and you could always assume you could trust the party on the other end (either because they were your friend or because they were a trusted organization given permission to broadcast). When home computers and web browsers were developed in the 1980s and 1990s, the nature of communication changed. At this point, we no longer had to worry about being in the same place at the same time to communicate (as with telephones) and could no longer trust the people on the other side of communication. The web shifted us from one-to-many to many-to-many communications.

She showed a clip from a 1999 (twenty years old!) David Bowie interview, where he predicted this future. She defined information (facts provided to learn about something or someone), disinformation (false information intended to mislead) and propaganda (misleading information used to promote a political cause). She then cited the MIT study "How Lies Spread Online" (https://www.media.mit.edu/articles/how-lies-spread-online/) and talked about cascading of different types of information/disinformation/propaganda occurs. This study proved that a lie spreads six times faster than the truth online, based on the following principles of disinformation: dismissing the truth as false, distracting from the truth with lies, distorting the true information, dismaying the audience, and dividing the audience.

At this point, she provided a series of countermeasures to disinformation:
1 - self assess your online behavior, how likely you are to click and why
2 - recognize what the space is, and what it can be, when online
3 - acknowledge the power of algorithms to sway you
4 - add some unpredictability to your digital patterns
5 - acknowledge the addictive nature of social media
6 - choose your platforms deliberately

She closed her talk with some stories of social media "bright spots", like the online WIE forums, and encouraged us to be the bright spot, realizing that as an individual, we should all view how our behavior (choosing to engage with someone online or not,) sets the tome of the whole ecosystem.

D) Connect to Lead - Human Skills for Future Ready Leadership
This talk was given by Rachel Druckenmiller of Unmuted Life
Rachel's talk started by highlighting how we are more connected digitally than ever, and how that leads to less overall human intimacy. She challenged us that our leadership needed to be based on real human connection, and stressed that was not possible with a phone or other devices. She then provided three simple steps to human connection:

1 - Be Conscious. Have self-awareness and be willing to let others expose your blind spots. Understand your skills and the skills or others. Understand how you show up when it comes to stress - are you a turtle (who retreats into a shell and needs some space to process) or a tiger (everyone knows when you are angry, and you need people to have your back and support you)? Be conscious of how you are wired, and buddy up with your opposite.

2 - Be Curious. Everyone you know is carrying an invisible backpack of experiences that effects how they show up to the meeting with you. It's up to you to be curious about what's inside. Notice their load without judgement and listen. Empathy is listening and accepting (without always agreeing) - understanding, recognizing their feelings, and accepting their perspective. She argued that the most under-utilized words as a leader are "tell me more about that?" and that leaders should also be asking about their own opportunities for growth (what's one thing I did well - to build confidence - and one thing I could do differently - to build competence without criticism)

3 - Be Connected. Make other people feel seen. Look for your opportunity to be the difference in someone's life. Bet on yourself - your skills, your humanity, your relationships and experience - and make a moment for someone else.