Getting back on the bandwagon | #43

I fell off the bi-weekly newsletter bandwagon in August and ever since, it has been hard to regain momentum. This has been frustrating! I am trying to get myself back into the cadence and shy of this week passing me by, here is an update on what has happened in the past few months:

My birthday falls on the last days of July and the weekend after birthday, my friend Sylva bought me a ticket to a rave in North London by record label Anjunadeep. Their genre spans melodic house, electronic, ambient and techno. We saw Above & Beyond, a very well known group especially amongst old time Burners:

With Burning Man quickly around the corner I spent most of the weekends in the lead up shopping. I found a really cool trimmings and materials shop which I have pinned for future costume creations:

The weekend before we left, Alex and I watched a play recommended by someone at work called Slave Play. It was thought-provoking as it interrogated the dynamics in interracial relationships. We went with my friend Steph and her husband - also an interracial couple. We did a final charity shop run too where Alex found many awesome bits for set of Burning Man costume.

And then the time to leave for Burning Man finally came! I promised a piece on the Burn but there was so much to integrate and I am still integrating elements of it so that one is still in the makes…

Coming back to work after such a peak experience was quite tough. I enjoy my job and didn’t expect to face such an emotional challenge. It took me a week to get back into the default world. In that time, Alex and I indulged in some movies and a play called Next to Normal. One of the nights I even asked Alex to dress up in Burning Man costumes with me to go for a dinner in London so we went to a normal restaurant with our top hats and my cup clipped to my leather shorts.

The weekend I felt a bit more grounded in real-life, I had the horrible luck of having my phone snatched out of my hand. Alas, such is life!

Trying to find ground again after that experience and having just come back from the Burn was challenging but I put one foot in front of another and despite also getting sick, I kept going.

In that time I passed my onboarding field certification (yay), which involved a few certification exams on our learning platform, two demos of three product or content areas and a multiple choice question. I also ran a webinar on building AI literacy programs for super busy people working on the frontline of their businesses. You can check it out here.

I flew out to Lithuania to celebrate Alex’s dad’s birthday and explore Vilnius, which is a beautiful city. I’ll be heading back to do more exploration as I was unwell and didn’t get to see as much as I wanted.

Next week I am in Madrid for a all-company get-together which should be intense but also fun! We are around 200 people and it will be nice to meet many I have worked with but not met yet in person.

No rest for the wicked as the week we are back, I am running an all day masterclass on the topic of AI Ethics. I love facilitating an audience so I have been thinking up interactive and fun ways to bring this topic to life.

The year is quickly coming to an end and I am feeling okay about that. In past years I have felt a bit panicked by how little I felt I’d done but this year has been filled with wonderful things and lots of experiences. And there are more than two months left! In that time I am hoping to show my art once more and start creating again.

Thanks for still being here!

Caryn