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Sidebar: Rest and Relaxation
April owes me nothing! It was a great month full of rest. Much needed. It started with a big professional accomplishment—I facilitated my first city-wide town hall meeting by myself. How grown up lol Basically the city often puts on open meetings to discuss important issues and receive feedback from community. And of course depending on the topic, things can go south. Thankfully, my years of experience training other attorneys, facilitating discussions, and camera work all prepared me to take this on. I was really nervous for lots of reasons but not only did it not go terrible, people enjoyed my approach so it was nice to be able to…
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Sidebar: It’s been a year or, I’m back bb!
Hello, So, for my ride and dies, I’m so sorry we’ve had such a long pause on the sidebar series. It’s been a minute. For those that are new, sidebar is just way fo me to share some (usually fun) updates on my life. I like giving this peek into my month to month because I find it less likely for people to take guidance and advice from some rando. It’s also fun to get to know each other this way! But having said that, you probably noticed sidebar stopped around March and that is because I was in a weird spot that was not super easy for me to…
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Sidebar: Booked and Busy
That is how I would define February. I’m booked and hella busy in all arenas of life. Which is good, because that is always good but it is also stressful. Work has been busy like normal but there has been added work because one of the staff attorneys I supervise left so I have a few more added cases. There’s not a ton of work to do on them (like urgent deadlines) but adding more to your caseload is always stressful. I’ve also done a lot of extra work in terms of committees and projects outside of my direct rep that has been time consuming and mentally exhausting. It’s one…
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Sidebar: All Talents & Skills
It’s the end of 2018 and I can’t say that I 100% met my goals for the year but I definitely accomplished more than I thought I would and that is progress. The main thing is obviously this site. Working on the logo–actually the turn around time after I commissioned Carina was quick, but the concept, believing that I should do it, tracking down a graphic artist that had the skills I wanted, took time. But this new lewk has inspired me like no other. I feel like Laney in She’s All That after her eyebrows have been tweezed. Is that too old of a reference for many of you?…
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Small Biz Saturday Prep
So I’m not going to sit here and pretend I’m the perfect example of someone who is always politically and ethically aware about how I spend my money. I could be a lot better. But in fairness to me, ahem, growing up the idea was survival so you bought clothes, food, whatever other needs as you could afford them and there wasn’t time/ability to think, “is this product right for me and my values?” I’m sure many can relate. But now, I don’t have much excuses in not thinking through how I spend my money, especially now that I can know what my purchase may support. That’s why as I’ve…
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Sidebar: So Many Parties
August was a whirlwind. There was a lot of events left and right, both at work and home. At work, we had like a million going away parties–ok, just four, but still a massive amount. We’ve had a lot of turnover lately for various reasons and of course that means we have goodbye parties for everyone. And while I like all my coworkers, just like Animal Farm, some are more liked than others lol #kanyeshrug. Meaning, I was really bummed when one of them left b/c we were work buds. But that is the life of legal aid–people come and go all the time. In the meantime, I super enjoyed…
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Sidebar: Wtf is Happening
I can’t believe June is over. It flew by–I think it helps that I’ve been super busy at work. I have one month of supervision under my belt and now that we’re “fully” staffed I finally feel like I’m not drowning. Being a supervisor hasn’t had a lot of changes–some extra meetings, and more consultations than ever before but not much else has changed. I did realize that how I approached being an attorney has to be different than how I manage. Most attorney jobs are very solo-work dependent. I’m used to doing my work and calling it a day, but I’m really aware now that I have a other…
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Sidebar: Where to Even Start
The title says it all. I have been hemming and hawing since the beginning of the year about work. I didn’t really know where I was heading and I was a little nervous about the outcome. Let me start at the beginning. For New Year’s I made getting a new position one of my goals. I had hoped it would be something new at work, but wasn’t sure and I was pushing myself that if nothing was coming I would start looking for other work outside my agency. I wanted to stay but knew that even though I loved my agency, my clients, my team, and the work that I…
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Sidebar: Let’s Do Lunch
I feel like I spent all of April “networking” (i.e. meeting with friends for coffee/lunch) or real networking (i.e. meeting with other professionals for work events). Either way, it was a lot of coffee/wine. I saw a lot of people from outside my agency (both former coworkers and just people I know from the community) and it was SO cathartic to be able to talk about the general complaints about work, being a person of color in the law, plans/ideas, etc–I’m definitely adding more coffee dates to my summer! The official events for work were actually fun (surprise). One was at City Winery, so that was great because obviously…
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Sidebar: Did I get any color?
February was a whirlwind–it feels like it was a million years ago but probably because I had so much going on–which is nice because I like being busy but also that means that there is only so much I can do with my limited hours. And sometimes this site suffers, which I don’t like, but thanks for your patience! The most important part was that I went on a badly, sorely needed, well-deserved vacation at the beginning of the month. We went to Puerto Vallarta, which is just heaven. I’m sure there’s more to do in Vallarta than sit at a beach, but that’s literally all I want to do…