joannawoo

[joannawoo]

Through the heart of a depressed empath

Today felt a little off for me and I just wanted to cry. Initially, I thought it was because of the emotionally taxing day I’ve had between work and dealing with a potentially sick kitty. When I reached out to a friend for a virtual hug, he mentioned that he needed one too. His next message really struck me because I finally realized why I wanted to cry today: loneliness in a time of unprecedented social isolation.

My mental health is taking a very deep plunge right now on many different levels and while there may be light at the end of the tunnel, nobody knows how far away the end is. Normally when I’m feeling depressed, eating chocolate and exercising will help reset the imbalance of chemicals in my brain, but it didn’t work this time.

I’m an empath. I cannot fully explain what it feels like to be an empath because most people do not experience intense emotions. When someone tells me about a paper cut for example, I will immediately feel the physical pain of that paper cut on myself. My emotions mirror the emotions around me. When others share their stories, I feel all of it.

A gentleman shared his story about not being able to attend a loved one’s funeral recently because it was out of country. He didn’t know if he’d be able to get back safely and was not able to say goodbye. He also mentioned that the wife of the deceased told everyone to stay put and not fly to her because of the pandemic. When I heard his story, I immediately felt his sadness and started crying, but upon realizing that the wife grieved alone without the support of her family, I could not stop crying. Earlier today, someone shared a photo taken in Bergamo, Italy of coffins being transported out of the city because they didn’t have capacity to handle all the deaths in the city. While others on the outside hear about this and are saddened by the news, as an empath, I feel all of it as if I’m watching all of it happen within 3ft from my eyes.

I’ve tried to avoid reading about what’s happening around the world because the emotions are crippling for me. However, as much as I avoid reading about global events, I’m very aware that my parents who are in their 60s are still working because their line of work does not allow them to work from home. It terrifies me that they’re not able to distance themselves from people and could potentially come into contact with the virus. They’re in Mississauga and there are so many people flying into Pearson every single hour. (For those who didn’t know, Pearson Airport is in Mississauga). I can’t even write about how much fear I currently have about my parents potentially getting sick. I’ll skip to the next topic.

On the individual and personal level, I live alone. I don’t have a partner to hold me while I cry. I don’t have kids to help distract me from my own sadness. As great as virtual hugs are, they do not compare to a physical one. At times like these, I’d rather be stuck at home with someone who is sick and be sick with them, than to be completely alone.

Grey skies affect my mood heavily and because of the lack of snow this year, the skies have been pretty grey this winter. Just as spring was starting to arrive and I was happily planning my birthday celebrations, the pandemic hit. Everything’s been cancelled and in order to be socially responsible, I’ve also cancelled plans I had with a small group of friends for an evening birthday drinks celebration. I can't even have dinner with my family because I was recently in contact with some people who travelled back from the US and showed flu-like symptoms and didn't quarantine themselves. Loneliness has always been my biggest fear in life, and I have to celebrate my birthday (March 24th) alone this year. I didn’t actually cry about that though, even though I was a little bummed. Instead, I felt pretty lucky that I even get to celebrate my birthday at all. I read a Reddit post a couple hours ago. It was an update from a cat loving woman who recently passed away. Her love for her husband, her cats, and her life was infectious. I started crying again, but this time they were happy tears. I needed some good news stories, so I started reading posts from the CareMongering-KW: Kitchener-Waterloo Community Response to COVID 19 Facebook group. There were a few immunocompromised individuals asking about where to find hand sanitizer because they didn’t want to go search several places and potentially exposing themselves to more people. As soon as I saw those posts, I went out for a drive but every place I visited was either closed (this was around 8:30 pm), or was sold out of hand sanitizer.

A coworker posted a quote on Slack about how the term “social distancing” isn’t entirely accurate. This is social cohesion and we’re only physically distancing. I liked that because while I’m physically-deprived, I know that I don’t have to socially isolate myself. In a world that feels so disconnected right now, the only way I know how to connect with others is by giving. Tomorrow, I will continue my mission to find hand sanitizer and buy as many bottles as I can afford/find so I can drop them off with those who need them. And hopefully in the process, I’ll be able to feel connected to others through my heart, even if we are physically distant.

[joannawoo]

Mental Health is Important

It's been a long time since I've written a longer post. My last one was around my birthday, just as I was about to embark on my birthday trip to Australia. Today is World Mental Health Day so I figured it'd be a good time to talk about that and what I've experienced since the end of March. 

I ended my last post with the words that I can now look back on and laugh at, "I know that no matter what happens, I’ll maybe not enjoy the whole ride, but at least I’ll probably get a good story out of it. :)" By far the most interesting chapter of my career so far, but also a very important one related to my mental health. Recently, I started reading The Empath's Survival Guide by Judith Orloff. I find that I have better control over how others affect me now, but I was really struggling from the beginning to April right up until the end of August and there were so many different factors that contributed to it. 

While they probably didn't even think anything of it, for months, I felt awful for not always checking in with the North folks who were let go. I started my role at HelloFresh, learning about things and relationships before my start date. Between wrapping up my time at Mappedin and starting at HelloFresh, I never took the time to reflect on my trip to Australia and there are still hours of unedited underwater footage from when I did my dives in the Great Barrier Reef. Now, the trip seems like a very distant memory. To this day, I still feel bad about not checking in with everyone, but have realized that they would've reached out if they needed help and that I am not responsible for their happiness. 

Prior to moving to Toronto, I knew that loneliness would hit me like a brick wall. I had pre-emptively set up a doctor's appointment in for 1 month into my new job just to make sure I'd have professional help if needed. I also tried my best to find a community there. I signed up for ultimate frisbee and reached out to a Krav Maga gym. Neither of those really worked out as I was working 14-16 hours a day and didn't have time. I also asked friends to reach out to me, drag me out, invite me out, and that actually worked decently well. I had several friends over to cook with me, making sure I was eating right, and got to connect with certain people a lot more. I tried to date in Toronto as well, but again, didn't have time nor did I have the mental capacity to do that. I ended up having to see my doctor at least once a month and was referred to start seeing a therapist as well. It just kept spiralling downwards to the point where I knew I needed to move back to KW and get away from all that was associated with Toronto. Somehow being physically closer to friends and family resulted in me seeing everyone less. For months, I wasn't eating, wasn't sleeping, hated everything, was severely depressed, and just barely got through each day. Having to decline coffee dates and refusing to find time to help others made me hate myself. I knew it wasn't me. Every trip I took during those months, my enjoyment was taxed. For several nights each week, I'd just either stare blankly at the TV or cry. At some point, I stopped asking for help because for once, I didn't even know how to ask for help any more. I'm the type who doesn't ask for help generally. The first time I ask, it's mostly because I desperately need it. When I'm too far gone, I no longer have the strength to ask. My usual tactics didn't work. I completely lost myself. It really sucked.

I'm very lucky in that I had the option of just throwing in the towel and deciding to move back to KW. I am so thankful for my family doctor because after one of our sessions at the end of July when I scored much too high on her depression assessment, she asked if I had considered just moving back. Right after that, I made my decision. A month later when I had a follow up appointment, I scored significantly better on that same depression assessment. Friends who had the opportunity to see me in July vs September have mostly all commented on how much visibly happier I was. I started having time for myself again and even had a little bit extra to help others again. The move back has made me feel whole again. The lunch, coffee, and dinner dates haven't really stopped since moving back and I'm back to a very full schedule of activities again which I love. 

With seasonal affective disorder, my mood just takes such a sharp downturn around October/November. I cannot imagine how bad it would've been if I was still in Toronto right now. Being a leader in HR, I've always felt the need to remove barriers for others. I try to open up conversations around mental health whenever I can because I know how lonely it can be. I share my stories of success and failure hoping that others might benefit from them. I love hearing other people's journeys as well because we're all so different. 

People comment all the time about how open I am, but I've been talking about mental health for so many years now that it just seems like a normal thing to do for me. The scariest part this time around though, was that my normal methods of dealing with depression didn't work. Normally my 3-step process is 1. Eat dark chocolate. 2. Exercise. 3. Reach out to friends. This time, I just kept drowning further and further. Let that sink in (no pun intended). I've had about 20 years of experience dealing with depression and had a foolproof science-backed solution to repair myself / re-balance brain chemicals...and I still couldn't get myself out of it. Mental health issues are fucking hard. Love yourself and be kind to others.

[joannawoo]

Goodbye 31, Hello 32

Thanks for all the birthday wishes everyone! Normally I would've written a reflection post on my birthday but it's a few days late this year because of all the changes happening in my life right now. First of all, it feels weird because I'm not sure where the last year went, but at the same time I know I've accomplished more in the last year than any other year. I really enjoyed being 31. A lot of it was talked about in my 2018 reflection post in case you missed it: https://www.facebook.com/woo.joanna/posts/10102725244780637

Since then though, I really kicked it up a notch to make sure that I didn't waste away the last few months of being 31. I helped a couple of people, started regularly going to krav maga classes, and made a couple of new friends. This past month has been a complete whirlwind for me because I'll be going on a couple of new adventures coming up. First of all, I have a flight Thursday morning to go to Australia for the first time! I'll get to go scuba diving in the Great Barrier Reef. For those who know me, you can imagine how scary it might be considering I'm deathly afraid of water and will get anxiety and panic attacks. But I also recognize that it's a once in a lifetime opportunity and I'm not going to miss it just because I'm a little scared (it's one of my biggest fears actually and I'm freaking out, just trying to play it cool...). I haven't planned most of my trip and don't even have a place to stay yet beyond the first 3 days because while I was supposed to be trip planning, my attention was focused on other things.

In the last 2 weeks, I've had to deal with renewing my mortgage and stressing about that, but my condo also has some legal issues that I'm trying to understand, then had to make an important life decision within a span of 48 hours (actually less), and then engaging with a real estate agent to help me move my life. A lot of people know already, but I'll be moving to Toronto shortly after returning from Australia. This is only half of it, haha. I haven't been able to really sleep much in the last 2 weeks, and mostly running on adrenaline currently. Australia will be a much needed break.

While I was 31, I really embraced the mental health conversation and that's something that I'm quite proud of. While chatting with my real estate agent, I mentioned that I need visitor parking in my building because I have depression and am so afraid of being alone that by having visitor parking, it'll hopefully lower barriers enough for my friends to visit me and keep me company. This is the first time I'll be living completely alone and it's giving me anxiety just thinking about it. I don't enjoy being alone. I've done so well this year in terms of practicing self-care and communicating what I need. It's been great. I didn't take a Joanna Week this year (a week around my birthday where I say no to all requests and just take a week to myself to be selfish), mostly because I've been saying no to things all year round.

I already know that the next 2 years ahead will most likely be the most important years of my life and I know for sure that I can expect even more changes to come. I'm scared. I'm nervous. I feel incompetent and unworthy. That's just me and my skeletons. At the same time though, I feel extremely excited to close off a chapter of my life and start a new one. I know that no matter what happens, I'll maybe not enjoy the whole ride, but at least I'll probably get a good story out of it. :)

[joannawoo]

What is HR really?

Industry 4.0, Business 4.0, whatever you want to call it. That's the new buzzword popping up everywhere. If business is changing so much, why isn't HR keeping up? At most, we're maybe at HR 2.5. HR 1.0 was when policies and procedures were brought in along with unions to make sure we didn't put our employees in danger and paid them just enough so they wouldn't want to burn the business down. HR 2.0 was maybe when we actually started to care about people a little bit more. The 2.5 part is now adding in diversity and minimal analytics. When are we going to get to HR 4.0? 

People always think that HR is there to protect the company, not the people. I don't see why HR can't do both. Protecting the company IS protecting the people. Fundamentally at my core, I care about people. Because I care, I will do whatever I can to ensure that the business has sustainable growth year over year. This is important because a healthy business means that more jobs get created with minimal layoffs. Several companies in the region have gone through layoffs recently and hundreds of lives have now been impacted.

So what does HR 4.0 look like? Actually, let's start with HR 3.0 because a lot of businesses aren't even there yet. HR 3.0 is where you care deeply about people and help them grow. Enable them to exceed your expectations. Apply tech design and development practices into HR. Run HR as a business. With HR 4.0, it's mostly figuring out how to balance between technology and human, and running HR as a profitable business. So what does all of this look like in practice?

I wrote an article years ago about applying software design and development principles to HR. This was back in 2015 and sadly the site that hosted the article is no longer around so I can't pull it up but the piece to take away is that when faced with an HR problem, tackle it like a product problem. Analyze the situation, gather information and do research, brainstorm solutions, build the solution, gather feedback and validate that it solves the problem, and iterate. If your recruitment process isn't getting the results you want, run a retro to figure out what you're doing wrong. Too much on your plate? Do some backlog grooming, figure out what will deliver most value with least amount of effort, do some sprint planning. Start talking to your employees and figure out what they want to do in life. When that opportunity comes up, reach out to them. Stop misusing data. Applicant tracking systems love to track "source of hire". You see that 50% of your employees are from Source X, and only 1% of employees from Source Y, so naturally people come to the conclusion that they need to talk to more Source X people. THAT'S WRONG. Plot your source of hire data against employee performance. Don't just settle for where all your employees come from, figure out where your top performers come from. If all your top performers are from Source Y, then your job is to figure out how to increase that 1%. And if you think "top performer" is only defined by one thing, that's wrong too. It's a combination of productivity, impact to company culture, impact on coworker productivity, potential for growth...the list goes on. Stop being so one dimensional. This is all still HR 3.0. 

I don't think too many companies are doing HR 4.0. I know I'm not there yet because I don't have the expertise or capacity to run analytics on certain things. Google's probably the opposite where they've got the analytics and tech piece, but don't have the human side. Let's talk about the easy part first which would be the analytics. We need to start doing more industrial/organizational psychology research to study employees in the workplace. We also need to hire more data scientists into HR to help analyze this data. Humans are so complex. Issues are so divisive nowadays and as a society, more and more people are suffering from mental health issues. Most of the research done was from decades ago. Have we really studied workers in today's world? We've evolved, yet our research has not. I'll use job postings as an example of all the analytics that could be done on an important, but very small piece of HR in the grand scheme. We should be doing tests on what information to include (or not) in job postings, how it affects application rates and quality of candidates, what the length of the job posting should be, different methods of application and what barriers are being created, when to post the job posting, where to post it, do you change the format and content based on where it's posted...that's just the tip of the iceberg. When it comes to sourcing, testing out different reach out messages, how/when to contact a candidate, etc. If it's a junior candidate, how long after they start a new job do you wait before you poach? What if they're an intermediate/senior candidate? Have you studied turnover rates and timing of turnover for certain companies? Then you have the rest of recruitment which is actually so much important than the 2 I just mentioned. And "recruitment" is just 1 of 9 of the mandatory HR courses to take. So think about how much there actually is to know and analyze when it comes to HR. Let that sink in.

Now let's talk about the hard part. How do we balance all the analytics with the human-ness of HR? What is actually the human side of HR and what does it look like? I share so many ideas of how to balance between business and people. Let's start by picking on unlimited vacation. Companies sometimes use this as a tactic to get their employees to take less vacation. That's what the analytics show. It's great for PR, people take less vacation, for a company that wants to take advantage of employees, it's a no brainer to implement this (at an org that has employees that already care about the company). So then if you knew that's what the analytics said and you truly believe the other studies that show employees perform better when they're well rested and feel taken care of, along with the studies that show that underrepresented groups usually take less vacation than their peers because they feel the need to "prove themselves" and to appear hardworking...then maybe HR would change those policies. There are definitely ways to make unlimited vacation less intimidating, usually by implementing a minimum vacation policy and letting people know that on average, people take x number of weeks of vacation, but we've also seen as high as y weeks and that's absolutely fine too, can't even remember who the employee was. Could also monitor vacation time to make sure that there aren't certain groups who tend to take less vacation than everyone else. But really...the better solution is just to get rid of unlimited vacation and give everyone 6 weeks. Typically, people don't take 6 weeks. It's seen as over and above "unlimited". To balance the business though and to ensure that you don't get stuck with millions of dollars of vacation liability, have it only accrue up to 3 weeks and it stops accruing until you actually use up certain days. This way, payout is never more than 3 weeks and employees will be using up vacation throughout the year and getting some breaks in instead of waiting until the end of the year or worse, when they burn out. Next, let's talk about catered meals. Companies sometimes implement it because they think that way it'll save time for employees and they can then spend that time working instead and it's a cost savings overall for the company. The pitch is that we cater lunches though which is a draw for people...FREE LUNCH! (There is no free lunch in life as my dad always says.) It's a taxable benefit, it's usually not the healthiest meal, there are food allergies or preferences not considered, employees complain about the food options, etc. For any company who truly believes that they want to improve lives of employees and offer them a good healthy meal at work, why not bring in fresh groceries and have a meal prep station at work? It doesn't need to be a full kitchen (but that'd be super nice!), but have some way of cooking meals at work. This way, employees choose what food they want to eat and you're helping them build life skills and teaching them how to cook. The analytics part? Have you ever considered how many people are becoming complacent at your place of work because of these perks or the golden handcuffs you've placed on them? Are they still passionate about their jobs or are they only there for the free lunch? Don't even get me started on catered dinner. People should be going home to their families for dinner, not stick around until a certain time just to get a "free meal" out of it. Look into the analytics of how a strong social network and family life outside of work can affect someone's job performance. This is why I have always believed that we need to do whatever we can to help people be successful outside of work. Whenever a new father tells me that him and his partner are expecting, yes I'll go through all the parental stuff with him, but I also tell him these are the entitlements his spouse is eligible for at their place of work, and advise him on how to best support his partner through this, and if his partner decides to take time off work to later transition back in, how to help with that transition. I help employees' friends and family members find jobs, because I believe that if a company truly cares about an employee, they'll also care about that employee's extended network. Think about the studies that talk about how personal lives can affect performance at work. If a company can do more to help people remove stressors from their personal lives as well, then that employee will have so much more positive energy to put into their work. Salary negotiations, most people hate these. If a company actually cared, they'd pay their employees as much as they can that is fair before the employee has to ask for it. When people have to ask, it taxes that relationship. People like to be recognized and should be paid what they're worth. Just because someone is an inexperienced negotiator doesn't mean they're inexperienced at their job (unless you're a lawyer maybe? or a salesperson?). Why not just be transparent with salary all the time? I find that it's usually an easy conversation for me in terms of, this is what I think you could be making anywhere else based on your skills, but this is the money we have right now. Or I don't think your skills are there yet, here are some goals for you to meet before you can get this salary. If a candidate gives you a salary expectation lower than your actual range, do you really think you can just go with their number and get away with it? People will talk. That employee will find out that they lowballed themselves and then they'll resent you and just leave for another company. Is it really worth it when you think about all the money you'll now need to spend to backfill the role and retrain someone? Look at the costs of onboarding. There's your analytics piece and now figure out how you can treat people like humans first of all and then secondly as adults so that they don't leave your organization and will also give you 100% of themselves at work. Let's be realistic here, most companies only get about 40-60% of their employees' focus/performance potential. 

I could probably go on forever about what HR 4.0 looks like, considering I've spent the last 72 hours (on and off) writing this. FFS just treat people better and get some data to back up why you should treat people better. I do what I do because I believe that's how you help grow a business; you start by growing the people. When you do a good job at taking care of the people, the people will take care of the business. 

P.S. I've had so many people thank me for doing what I've been doing lately with the layoff stuff, telling me how they've never met anyone who cared so much...stop thanking me. This is what being a good human being means and what we should all be doing. Again, I'm not particularly kind. I'm just trying to be a good person and ideally, this is what an average person should look like and the things I talked about above are what every average company should be doing. Let's create change together.

[joannawoo]

Values

I celebrated my 2 year anniversary at Mappedin last week and it has made me reflect quite a bit on my time here so far. I'm given a lot of autonomy to do what I think my job is. I've always believed that my job is to enable others to do their best work. If the microwave is broken and people are getting hangry and can't focus, it's my job to get that microwave fixed. If there are mental health or engagement issues, also part of my job to help with those. Office management is usually lumped into the HR role at smaller companies, so my day to day ranges from trying to find good deals on office furniture to dealing with serious life-changing situations.

I helped document the values we have at Mappedin, so naturally I'd like to think I'm fairly aligned to them. Learn fast. Be honest & accountable. Play for the team. Focus on customers. So many things have happened in the last month or 2 for me, both personal and work-related. I chat with a lot of other HR leaders and business leaders about their companies and they sometimes tell me how empty their values are and how people don't actually live those values. It makes me sad. I'd like to believe that I live our values every day, or at least I try to. I'll attempt to share some stories.

Learn fast. Play for the team. Focus on customers. I'm going to lump all 3 of these into one example because I recently completed 2 RFPs for our Marketing / Sales team. They were swamped and I wanted to learn more about our business so I offered to help. I've never done an RFP before and have no idea what I'm doing. I learned. Within a span of 1.5 weeks, I completed both RFP responses. Got some feedback on them from some seasoned business leaders and apparently I did a fairly good job. Yay me. Time and time again, I see our employees step up, volunteer to help another team out, and pick up new skills along the way. I love this about Mappedin. In terms of focusing on customers, the 2nd RFP I completed was interesting. They asked for a simple indoor wayfinding solution which we could easily meet requirements of, but it actually bothered me quite a bit that most of the questions asked by other responders were around just that. A large part of my pitch was focused around how wayfinding was only the first step because I went and looked at their values and looked up their 10-year strategic plan that they had published and found many more ways around how our technology will be able to fulfill not only their indoor wayfinding needs, but also help them be successful in delivering all their other promises. I guess we'll eventually find out whether or not that was good enough.

Be honest & accountable. People are shocked when I tell them that we reject candidates on the spot. There's no "you'll hear back from us in 3 business days" or anything like that. I've asked all our interviewers to reject people over the phone or in person at the end of an interview if they don't think they're a fit. I ensure that our interviewers can clearly articulate why someone is being rejected and if they feel ashamed of saying it out loud, then it's probably for the wrong reason. I also tell candidates that if they are rejected at any point, that's their opportunity to challenge us on it. If we were wrong in our assessment, we want to know. Also because I'm lazy and don't want to go back to email someone about the results of their interview. I don't have an ATS so when I tell candidates that they're moving forward or being rejected, they're not waiting around for an answer. If they know they're moving to next steps and don't hear from us, they know to follow up and know that we're not ghosting them.

The other side of focus on customers...employees are my customers. I am their customer success manager. In every 1:1 with employees across the organization, I always ask them how Mappedin can help them be more successful. Putting together a list of family doctors in KW accepting new patients so they can finally have a family doctor in the region. Helping their friends and family find a job. Providing their partners with HR advice. Kicking people out of the office so they can spend more time with family. Helping people find volunteers for the causes they care about. I always stress that we don't only want to take care of them as employees at Mappedin. We want to take care of them as people. We care about the people who they care about. We love helping people grow their careers and firmly believe in not holding people back. Several employees tell me they want to start their own business one day so I'm always excited to tell them to shadow Hongwei because he 100% encourages it! We tell people to shadow every opportunity they can (except 1:1s), and would love for them to learn new things, even if it means transitioning to a role outside of Mappedin. I've always had issues with companies who have strict no poaching rules. I believe that if you treat people right, they won't want to leave. I love it when other companies try to approach Mappedin employees because most of the time, they tell me about it. They also tell me when they're thinking of looking for a new role, because they trust me to have their best interests in mind. If someone leaves because they've been poached, I want to know what kind of underlying issues exist and try to figure out how to fix them. I actually tell my own direct reports to interview elsewhere and that they should explore every opportunity that they can. I tell co-ops the same thing when they ask about returning for a future work term. It's their opportunity to explore, so I tell them to go get experience from a variety of companies (and then come back to us after they graduate).

Play for the team...it's not just the Mappedin team. Hongwei knows this about me. I spend time and energy helping out a lot of other companies in this region. I share insights around how to recruit and how to use data to make informed HR decisions. With all the North stuff that's been happening, as well as other smaller scale layoffs at a variety of companies, it actually keeps me up at night (hence why I'm writing this post at 4am). I feel so uneasy about the whole situation, thinking about how many lives were impacted last week. I do what I do because I believe that we as a community should help people in need. When BlackBerry had their massive layoffs, I was one of the people affected. I was still very early in my career back then and couldn't help at all. I didn't even think to help because I was anxious about my own situation. I'm thankful that I'm in the position I am in now where I can just take action and get shit done when big events like these shake up our community. I'm fully supported by my team to do all this because we need to play for the bigger team and give back. When I asked for a list of employees who were let go, I actually had to explain multiple times that I'm not doing this to recruit for Mappedin (we actually don't have that many roles open right now anyways) so it wasn't going to be helpful to just share my contact info and careers page to ex-North employees. I just wanted to help connect people to jobs and equip them with skills to help them land those jobs. It's great that outplacement services have been provided and that they're being told what resources are available to help them transition, but we could do better. Having been in that situation and having used outplacement services before, no offense...but they suck. And people don't need to be told what resources are available to them so they can take advantage, they're an emotional wreck right now most likely. I added "give you a virtual hug" on the form I created in the what we can help with section and the number of people who needed one breaks my heart. But that's what's needed. They need a hug and they need someone to hold their hand right now and put them in front of their next job opportunity. They need to be validated and know that they're smart and capable people. They need hope. I hope they feel the love from this community and choose to stay in KW. I hope they know that people care about them. I know I do. And again, I never worry about software developers because every company wants to snatch them up. I worry about the admins and the highly specialized roles. I worry about the people who have less transferable skills. Some of the companies who asked for access to the list will just recruit the people they need and then disengage. I know that. I know that most people who have access just want to snatch up the best talent and that's it. I don't mind them doing that because it's still helping someone in need. I also know that there are a handful of us...maybe 2-3...who will look at that list every single day and see who is still looking for a job and actively try to match them with a local company. Those are the ones who drive this community and truly play for the team.

[joannawoo]

Competition

I'm always surprised when people think I'm not competitive. I mean, have you even read my post about my video game addiction? :p I guess my sense of competition has just changed a bit over the years. I get why people like to compete against others and why people like to be the best of the best...trust me, I've been there. But does that really need to be the focus all the time? In my removing barriers post, I mentioned the planks challenge and the 10 push ups thing. It's a completely different vibe between the 2. I purposely set up push ups to be a "let's do this together and just better ourselves" and I guess the planks challenge has turned more into a "who can plank the longest" thing. I admit, I silently judge (and sometimes outwardly judge) people who think they're holding the longest plank and like to brag about it, but in reality they're not doing a proper plank compared to others who can't go as long but are doing them right.

The other day, someone commented about why do them if you're not in it to win. I just don't get that. Maybe because I am so self-motivated, (or maybe I'm just too self-centered and don't really care about others and what they think,) but I really enjoy competing against myself and bettering myself. When I run, I don't care how fast other people are around me. I care that I've met my own personal goals and that I'm improving. As soon as I get back into my peaks of physical training outside of work, I'll probably start an easier planks challenge where we start at 10 seconds. You know, to remove barriers. :) Until then, I don't have time to do separate sessions for myself and for others.

This whole thing about competition reminds me of the hypothesis that some women believe there are a limited number of senior positions for women, so they must compete against each other and will not build up other women because they think it limits themselves. I've never bought into that. I'm just going to continue improving myself. You do you.

What made me think about competition in the first place though was when I was telling a friend about a guy asking me why I'm still single as a way to flatter me because he thought I was so amazing. (I really don't like that question when asked that way, btw.) I gave the standard answer of not having found the right person yet (I wasn't into him and didn't want to get into a whole conversation about it), but what I really thought and what most people don't want to hear is that I love my current lifestyle and I'm not changing it for just anyone. I think by default, some guys think they're competing against other guys...but really, they're competing against my hobbies and interests. My interests and hobbies are much more interesting than most guys I meet. It's the same the other way around though. It's like...here I am, you either like me or you don't (on a sliding scale), stop comparing me to other women.

Oh. Something just clicked. I guess I do the same with candidates. I have a certain bar for candidates and it's always been first come first serve. You meet the bar and we like you, you get an offer. You don't meet the bar, you get rejected and we tell you why. If it works out timing wise and we can compare a couple of candidates, we'll do that, but otherwise...waiting around hoping someone better will come along is just foolish and you lose out on a great candidate.

I love it when I realize that my personal and professional opinions and actions are consistent. :) Let me set the record straight though...I am super competitive and will always want to win in absolutely everything. I will not settle. The only difference is, most of the time, I choose to compete against myself making this a neverending challenge.

[joannawoo]

The Fear of Failure and Removing Barriers

Some of you saw my post late last year about wanting to introduce others to trail running. (Quick update: I did manage to convince 1 person to do it!) A lot of people were kind of interested, but then didn't really want to because it seemed too difficult so they decided to not even try. I notice that a lot. The fear of failure is so great that it prevents them from taking the first step.

That's where I usually come in. Sometimes I feel like my purpose in life is to remove barriers and break down walls. I was thinking about this the other day because we started a planks challenge at work. Every day, we yell planks and then get down and start planking. We had 6 people the first day and today we had 8-9. When I notice people start to shake, I drop shortly after because I think people push themselves too hard in order to not appear weak. When others push too hard all at once, chances of something being sustainable is significantly lower. When I first started gathering the women of Mappedin every day to do push ups, some people asked why only 10, why not more. I always said that if they wanted to, they're more than welcome to do more than 10, but that I was not going to do any more than that. It was mainly because I knew that 10 was something that everyone could commit to every single day. If we started doing 20-50 each time, people would start dropping out and 10 push ups every single day is much better than 50 push ups once a month. Just do the math. (Mike "Pinball" Clemons mentioned this exact thing, so it feels good to be validated by him at least.) I also tell people that they can do push ups against the wall to start. We've been doing these push ups for almost a year now and it's still going strong. :)

I probably have several more examples where I will always try to give up first or go slower than the slowest person, because I believe that these actions are the ones that help show others that there's not much of a barrier there, and really it's just their fear of failure taking over.

Recently, I've been trying to convince people to go winter backcountry camping with me. Everyone thinks it's so hardcore and badass and difficult. It really isn't. There are far worse things...like yoga. :p This is usually when I try to do whatever it takes to remove those barriers for others. Don't worry, we can share my tent. Don't worry, I have a winter stove and can cook food for us. Don't worry, I'll bring the shovel. Don't worry. Just pack warm clothes and show up. The reality of things like this is much more tame than the stories we tend to form in our heads. Once you've done it once, you'll realize that you worried for nothing. This is why I will always just tend to say yes to things without thinking, because if I think about it too much, I'll be tempted to talk myself out of it.

I almost skipped krav maga today. It's the first Level 1 class I've been to and I had no idea what to expect and no idea if I'd seem out of place. The more I started thinking about it, the more excuses I thought about for skipping. Then a switch just flipped and I was like...forget this, I'm just going to drive over there. By the time I drove there and went in, I saw so many familiar faces. Then got introduced, everyone was super friendly. I was feeling winded after just the warm up, but it got easier and easier and I loved it.

I don't know where this post is going. :p I guess the story I wanted to share the most was that to not let your fears prevent you from doing things. Just say yes and you'll figure it out. Or we can figure it out together. :) If you ever need someone to try something new with you, let me know. I don't mind failing or being judged. If it helps even just 1 other person build some healthier habits, I'm okay with it. :)

Also, if it's a couch to 5k program you want to do, the actual couch to 5k has a huge jump in the middle and that's when most people give up. If you want to do Joanna's version of couch to 5k instead, let me know. Happy to run with you. :)

[joannawoo]

Emotions at Work

I have so much on my mind today. There are about 3 different blog posts I want to write about...on top of all the other ones I wanted to write last year. Heh.

I broke down crying at work the other day. And then I posted about it. What triggered it was actually our quarterly engagement survey. One of the comments really hit home. They mentioned that they felt demoralized bringing up the topic of office temperature and that they're only told to change the thermostat, wear extra layers, or make a hot beverage. I don't remember exactly what else was said in the comment but I could feel their frustration and I understood why they felt that way. I also was very hurt. I answered the question publicly because I had no idea who had written it. In my response, I mentioned that it hurt me to hear them say that. It hurt because we've already tried. When our building manager says nothing can be done about it, we're just relaying the information at that point. I was hurt because it saddens me to think that people's assumption of me and my team is that we know about issues that we can fix, and actively decide not to do anything about them. It hurt that they didn't know how much I actually cared. I mentioned all of that in my response to the comment. I poured so much emotion into my response that as soon as I thought about it, the tears just came. I immediately called out to another coworker and asked him for a hug. Then proceeded to sit on the floor in my little corner and just cried. Quietly, but also not actively trying to hide the fact that I was crying. About 4-5 employees came over, asked me if I was okay, offered hugs, etc. After about 10 minutes, I got up and just went back to doing my job. It felt so good to just let it all out. I needed it.

When I got back to work, I actually wrote about my experience in our wellness channel. I share a lot of my stories in there about mental wellbeing and I openly talk about my depression. I think as HR, it's my responsibility to remove some of the stigma around this stuff. This is what I wrote in my post:

--

So I totally just broke down crying in my little corner. Some people stopped by to give me hugs. I flagged --- down to ask for the first hug. Let's talk about this though. I feel like crying in an office is so taboo, but it's very healthy and cathartic. I have very real emotions and I bring those emotions to work; it's a big part of why I'm good at what I do. I care and it's okay to care. It's okay to be disappointed and feeling down. I probably could have held back my tears and just kept it all inside for the rest of the day, only to then break down crying at home or continue to keep everything bottled, but then I'd probably be less effective for the rest of the day because I'm not dealing with my problem and just delaying it. I'd be distracted for the rest of the day. Now that I've had a good cry and got some hugs, I'm perfectly fine again and can go back to being focused. Knowing when to deal with your feelings is important and today was just one of those days when I had to deal with it immediately. If you're ever at work and just need a good cry or a hug, I hope you know that you can always come to me. I don't need to know why and sometimes you might not even know why. It's okay. It'll be okay. :) Knowing when to ask for help is important too. I felt a rush of emotion coming on after posting my response to the office temperature comment so I immediately called out to --- for help. Others seeing that I was down and miserable came by to offer hugs and words of encouragement. Never underestimate how much impact a small act of caring makes on others. Thanks again those who came to check on me. :) I'd encourage all of you to just...reach out and care a little bit more. :) I have another story about reaching out and caring, maybe when I'm less emotionally drained I'll talk about that.

--

The number of responses I got encourages me to continue opening up about these things. So many people connect to this and just don't feel comfortable talking about it, so I'll happily lend them my voice.

And honestly, throughout my entire moment of breaking down and crying, I actually fully felt in control of my emotions. I knew that I needed to let it out because I had 2 more interviews to conduct in the afternoon within an hour so I needed to rebalance mentally before those took place. I could've easily held it back, but I didn't want to. Not that day. That comment also really hit home because although I knew they didn't intend to come across that way, it still affected me a lot...thinking that they thought I didn't care. I've shared this with a couple people, but my level of empathy surpasses anyone I know. I've had to have really difficult conversations with people at work on several occasions and the worst part is that I actually do have to hold my emotions in...only to go home afterwards and break down crying for them. I probably cry more for others than I do for myself if I actually sit back and think about it. I know I shouldn't be taking on these burdens because it's such a huge mental drain, but I honestly can't help it. I am on both ends of the extreme in terms of logic and emotion. I've just learned to accept that this quality makes me who I am. :)

[joannawoo]

Reflection on 2018

Oh 2018. 🙂 As usual, I spend a bit of time on NYE to reflect. I'll read through my post last year (https://www.facebook.com/woo.joanna/posts/10102339528030097), then start thinking about what all went down this year.

If I didn't blog much last year, I definitely didn't blog much this year haha. I actually had a lot of topics float through my head but I honestly haven't had time. I never finished posting photos from Iceland (April) and didn't get to finish telling some of those stories, never finished posting about Indianapolis and GenCon (August) where I made so many new friends. Also never finished posting about Vancouver (November). There was definitely a blog post that was supposed to happen about cheating and taking shortcuts when I did my 5peaks Enduro run at Heart Lake but I couldn't find the time to put everything into words. There was also one about trying new things. One about facing fears. One about setting goals. One about relationships and love. One about overcoming obstacles. They're all written in my head. Just need to get everything down in writing some time.

The only longer post I managed to compose in 2018 was the one around caring about others: https://www.facebook.com/woo.joanna/posts/10102588203667127

And guess what! I finally took some time to compile all my posts onto a site rather than just letting them live on Facebook: http://joannawoo.tumblr.com

So let's start...

Happy 2nd birthday to Lexi! I love my travel bunny dearly and she's been adding more and more places to her travel log. I took her on a bunch of hikes as well in Iceland and Vancouver! She's been up on so many mountains now!!

As you know, I kicked off last year in Belfast in Northern Ireland last year. Made my way back to Ireland, went to Iceland, hit up GenCon in the US, and went to Vancouver for the first time ever! Booked Australia for March already as well! I suppose I didn't travel as much in 2018, but I did get to experience several new things.

2018 was a hobby year for me. When Jon and I broke up in April, I was determined to try new things and start new hobbies. I picked up backcountry camping very quickly and went on a couple trips. Now I'm picking up winter backcountry camping! Backcountry camping gives me such a rush, to know that I can survive on a backpack for several days. Learning how to pack for backcountry camping has also drastically improved how I pack for travelling. I'm able to pack less now and it gives me a sense of...freedom. To be able to travel the world with just a carry on.

I did a full season of 5peaks Enduro races this year and even shaved off a minute per km off my time from Heart Lake compared to last year! Already signed up for next year so I suppose this is just a thing I do now along with obstacle races. Really got into bootcamp this year as well, which led me back to conditioning classes with the krav maga training centre. Signed up for a full year of krav maga for 2019 so looking forward to being able to build up some strength for next year! Seems like all my hobbies and interests are aligned because I'm starting to pick up rock climbing as well. Between krav maga, rock climbing, and trail running...I'm hoping that it'll help me more easily carry my backcountry camping pack! 😁

When I mentioned facing fears earlier, it was a post I wanted to write around the time I got certified for scuba diving. As some of you know, I'm deathly afraid of water...but what choice do I have when I also love corals and I'm headed to the Great Barrier Reef in March? 😊

Aside from the travels, adventures, and other progress for physical wellbeing, I've been opening up a lot more around mental wellbeing as well. I was emotionally drained on several occasions in 2018 because I opened up so many times. I don't have those moments often but when I let someone explore the depths of my emotions and thoughts, I'm usually not fully functional for several days after because my head just hurts. In December alone, I can think of multiple times when that has happened. They were mostly because I was helping others navigate through their problems, but once or twice a friend would get to see what really goes on in this head of mine and I treasure those moments when I let another close friend in. 🙂

Romance. Haha there are some weeks when I've had 3-4 dates a week, and some weeks where I'm so tired of dating I'll stop for 3-4 weeks. All in all, I probably still average about 1 first date a week. I do remember all the absolutely amazing ones 😊 and as much as I try to forget the really horrible ones, some of you have heard the stories of a few. 😛 Was telling a friend today that most people only hear about the bad ones because those are the only ones I'll talk about. The great ones I'll always keep to myself because they're special to me. 🙂 Trust me in that as bad as some of my stories get, I have just as many pretty awesome dates!

Work is a whole new area to unpack for this year. I feel like I've made so much progress here. Every time I think about the impact I have and the lives I've changed in 2018, I can't help but smile. There were some hard times for sure, but overall, it's been amazing. I told a friend just earlier this month that although it's been almost 2 years since I started, I'm more engaged now than when I first started. It's a really good feeling. 🙂

Throughout 2018, I definitely noticed a change in my values. I don't know when it happened, but all of a sudden, everything just seemed to click. I care a lot more about spending quality time with family, care a lot more about social issues and taking care of strangers, and care a lot more about investing time and energy into people and things that matter. Not that I wasn't doing all of that before, but I'm doing it a lot more now and I'm consciously doing more of it. I think it's because I'm actually starting to mature a bit more and I'm fairly settled now that I can pause, take a step back, and have a better idea of how I want to live my life.

It feels weird to not be travelling right now, but at the same time, I'm glad I got to spend Christmas and New Years with friends and family instead of with a bunch of strangers for once. 🙂 With that, I should probably make my way to the festivities for tonight.

2019 new years resolution? Continue to travel the world and maybe write about all those topics that I haven't gotten around to yet. 🙂

Happy new year! 🎊

[joannawoo]

Hey Guys

I'm personally not offended by hey guys, but that doesn't really matter. If others are and there are alternatives, why not choose the least offensive option?

I'm also thinking that women are now ok with hey guys because women have been treated as second rate this entire time and compared to much larger issues, this was no big deal. It's part of the sexism built into our society and culture. When you've been mistreated for such a long time, it becomes your new norm.

If you think about domestic violence and for decades you've been hit 5 times a day most days, wouldn't getting hit only once seem ok after a while and become something you can tolerate? But it shouldn't. You shouldn't be getting hit at all. The abuser usually claims no ill intent and that it "just happens".

It doesn't matter what your intent was, it matters that someone else is getting hurt and that you should reflect on why you keep insisting on hurting others when it's so easy to make a small change. Instead of forcing others to keep tolerating this and getting angry about why they'd want you to stop saying guys, why can't you just make the change?

You're fighting for your rights to be lazy, we're fighting for our rights to feel included. You're fighting for your rights to keep hitting us once a day, we just want you to stop hitting us altogether.

https://www.theatlantic.com/family/archive/2018/08/guys-gender-neutral/568231/

[joannawoo]

Reflection on 2017

Had to repost this from last night because accidentally deleted the last one. :p

This is the second new years eve in a row being away from home. I counted down in Hong Kong last year, meeting a bunch of awesome people along the way. My new years resolution was to travel more...and I think I've done well.

Lexi (my fluffy travel companion) turns 1 today! I picked her up a year ago and she's travelled with me everywhere:

- Hong Kong - Thailand - Macau - Ottawa (I haven't been as an adult, and I was able to do Winterlude for Canada's 150th birthday!) - Ottawa again (this time for world's largest scavenger hunt! And my first time travelling with Jon!) - Morocco - England - Ireland

Reading my post from last year, it seems so different. I feel like KPL's my second home sometimes, just because I know the librarians now and I know where everything is. I don't sign as many books out anymore either though. :(

Hackademy hasn't been doing much this past year, but hopefully that'll change for 2017. I still take every opportunity I can to promote Hackademy and to volunteer with groups to teach. For all of 2017 though, I probably only taught 4-5 classes.

Happy to say that I stuck with my active habits! Lately I've been walking 12.7k steps a day, an increase from the 10k a day I used to do. No half marathons for me yet, but I still play badminton 2 times a week and will continue to do Rugged Maniac and Badass Dash every year. I discovered 5peaks races in 2017 and I'm so glad that a former coworker and good friend convinced me to do the 12.7km run at Rattlesnake Point. Right after the race, I remember saying that I'd never do that again. A week later, Jen asked me to do the Heartlake one and I said yes. :p Heartlake was only 11km though, so not so bad. I've now signed up for a 5peaks seasons pass for next year and have 5 scheduled 12-16km races coming up for 2018! Back in 2016, I had also planned to do Oxfam Trailwalker in Hong Kong in November 2018, which I hope is still happening. :) 100km in 48 hours, going over a few mountain ranges, looking forward to it!

Sorry friends, no more crazy dating stories either because as you know, I met someone earlier this year in July. There were probably still a few weirdos in the early half of 2017. Haha! I don't know how much longer I would have enjoyed being single though.

I...definitely didn't blog as much in 2017 as I did in 2016. Here are the ones I could find, not sure if I missed any though:

Courage and Faith (June 17): https://www.facebook.com/woo.joanna/posts/10102108025952117

Being Mansplained (August 31): https://www.facebook.com/woo.joanna/posts/10102206679324967

Perspectives (October 24): https://www.facebook.com/woo.joanna/posts/10102267377545247

And of course my reflection post from last year as well as my epic encounters from NYE last year:

2016 Year End Reflection (December 30): https://www.facebook.com/woo.joanna/posts/10101896522985757

NYE Encounters (December 31): https://www.facebook.com/woo.joanna/posts/10101897998728357

I've gone through a lot of changes this year. I feel like I haven't had a lot of time to just reflect on my emotions and whatnot because of all the other things to focus on.

I started a new job earlier this year and that has been amazing. I've learned so much and have grown significantly in the last year. I love the level of impact I have right now and being able to actually see the fruits of my labour fairly quickly.

New beginnings also come with endings though. For the first time since 2010, HRPA does not have a volunteer position for me in 2018. This will be the first conference I'm missing since I've started going. It's a bit sad to think about, but as others have pointed out, I've probably gotten everything I need out of the conference from the last 8 years.

This past year, I've travelled much more than I have before. Some days, I was probably in cultural overload, but I wouldn't trade it for anything else. I've been on 4 different continents in 2017. :)

Another big change was taking a break from the first dates. I went on my last first date of 2017 at the end of July. :) I love the feeling of having someone to come home to after my travels.

So between getting things done at work and accomplishing things, travelling the world, and spending quality time with Jon, I didn't have much time to blog. :p

I forgot to mention...I turned 30 this year. :p It honestly wasn't a big deal. I feel like I kicked off my 30s in the right way so I don't feel bad about being in my 30s at all.

As for my latest round of shenanigans...and natural ability of attracting people, on this trip, I met Warren at YYZ when we realized we would both be in England/Ireland, he's from Sudbury. Then at my first hostel, I met Kerstin from Germany and Lawson from China. Now in Belfast, we picked up Casey from New Zealand! Celebrating NYE at a pub with most of these characters now and sharing stories while I take a moment to reflect before the countdown to 2018 begins.

Happy new year! Here's to a great 2018!

[joannawoo]

Perspective

It's all about perspective and what you decide to focus your attention on.

Minutes ago, I was about to post about how the universe has been kind to me today. I felt so good about my day. Then I started thinking more and realized...oh wait, I think I had a really shitty day to begin with today actually. After some quick analysis, it turns out that I've had roughly an equal amount of good vs bad things happen today.

I honestly feel like my horrible memory is a blessing sometimes. I get to watch movies over and over again because I can't remember what happened in them. I also get to easily forget about why I'm mad at someone, so it's usually easy for me to forgive them (if they're worth forgiving). I don't let bad things make me bitter (mostly because I've forgotten about how bad it was).

Even though my day didn't start that well and I was frustrated, my bad memory allowed me to completely forget about my morning and instead I got to focus on the good things that happened today. I know that I'm just really lucky, but I do believe that you can decide what to focus on and choose to be happy.

As for the source of my happiness today...it feels good to be validated.

Sometimes to others, I seem to be fairly well put together and know what I'm doing. However, that's so far from the truth. I feel like I have no idea what I'm doing most of the time. I have opinions and beliefs on how I should act and do things whether it's work or personal, but I have no idea if those beliefs are correct.

5 different people offered me validation today, 4 of them work related and 1 personal. It was especially nice because all the work related ones were for different aspects of my role. The personal one...it's good to know that my kindness and inspiration does reach people who don't seem receptive at first. All the validation I received today allows me to continue doing what I do best: care about people. :)

[joannawoo]

Mansplaining

I think last night was probably the first time I got mansplained. Actually, maybe second time.

The first time, he wouldn't even let me say my piece, just talked over me the entire time and turned to talk to others when I was speaking, claiming that I had no idea what I was talking about. This happened even when I asked him to stop interrupting me and let me finish talking. I still remember and he has no idea. I don't see him that often but when I talk to him, that's the only conversation I'll remember. It wasn't fully around HR though, just gender diversity in general, which I'd like to think I'm well versed in.

Last night, had someone close to me do it and it was the first time I've had my HR expertise challenged...by a dev. When things got heated, I even reminded him that I have an education, a professional designation, and 8 years of practical work experience in this field and it's my expertise...but he didn't hear me. He claimed he had 7 years of experience working and 7 years' worth of observations. I analyzed it from his perspective and told him how he was right...in his context, but not others, but he just kept explicitly telling me I was wrong over and over again and pointed me to some article to prove his point (which I completely agreed with, his limited knowledge misinterpreted the article though), until I told him that he was mansplaining me. I thought I understood a bit of what it might be like to be a woman in tech...but no. I had no idea that there are actually people outside of your field who think they actually know more. I'm usually told of stories of people within your field, maybe different expertise, try to convince you that they know more, but never in a completely different field. I told him the analogy was an English scholar / literary expert....being told that he knew nothing because someone who's been speaking English every day just pointed to an article that they misinterpreted. That was during our heated discussion and he ignored it and kept going.

Anyways, it sucked. He apologized when he FINALLY heard himself and what he was saying to me and how he was treating me.

Silver lining is that I got a small glimpse of what it's like for some women every day in their chosen career. I am so sorry you have to deal with this shit regularly.

[joannawoo]

Courage and Faith

I think this time last year was when my blogging efforts started with the post below!

Let's talk about courage and a bit of faith. I'm not religious, never really have been. However, I've had a large amount of Christian influences throughout my life. My 2 best childhood friends were both involved in their churches. I started going to youth group and even went to a Christian conference in Niagara one year because of one of them. I've listened to the other and have let her guide me throughout my life. I was in a Christian choir group outside of school for most of my elementary school days. I took piano and vocal lessons from a Christian book store from grades 2-12. My closest group of friends now, 2 of them are leaders within their churches. Most of my past relationships have been with men whose families went to church on a regular basis, so I would join them from time to time. And now, some of my closest friends in KW are Christians and I go to church with them from time to time. I believe in the teachings and I've naturally been drawn to good people in my life, so I'm thankful to have these influences in my life.

Recently, a good friend took me to the Creekside at the Movies series. The lessons were actually highly relevant and I really enjoyed it. One of the movies we watched was We Bought a Zoo. This particular clip was about 20 seconds of insane courage: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZmMFIganRQY

I've actually applied this 20 seconds of insane courage rule to a couple of things in my life. And my faith in that has paid off. Good things have come of it every time. Actually, a good friend has recently discovered how bad my memory is, so maybe I've just forgotten about the times when good things haven't come of the 20 seconds of insane courage. :p I don't think I've told anyone, but even just going to church causes a lot of anxiety for me, so every time I've gone, it's required a lot of courage on my part.

Even before watching the clip from We Bought a Zoo, I have always had these moments where impulse takes over. I've had a few "Just Do It" years where if I thought about doing something, I would just do it because it's a lot easier to sign up for something and hype myself up for it, rather than try to talk myself into signing up. Organizing events and conferences, challenging myself physically, starting a new job, booking my roundtrip to UK/Ireland, speaking my mind/sharing feelings, and most recently (read: last night)...finally doing something that I should've done months ago.

Sometimes we all just need a dose of courage, even if it only comes 20 seconds at a time. The effects can last a lifetime.

[joannawoo]

Because I Said I Would

Because I said I would. When I met Alex Sheen (Founder, because I said I would) earlier this year, I wrote my own promise card. Some of you may have seen this card or the bracelet I wear on my wrist (along with my other ones that spell out "Geeky" and "1Love" in binary) that help remind me to live up to my promise.

Related to my other post about calling non-emergency OPP if I see things on the highway that are unsafe, I had to call Waterloo Region Police for the first time about 45 minutes ago. I had just left work, got to my car, started driving home when at an intersection, I saw a man yelling at these 2 girls. He stopped in the middle of the intersection and although I couldn't hear their conversation, it was obvious that he was harassing them. At first I thought nothing much of it because it seemed like the girls were a safe distance away and the man was not pursuing, so I kept driving. Within seconds, I felt the weight of my bracelet. It wasn't sitting well with me so I turned around immediately. I actually had to look up the number for WR police and was put on hold for what seemed like a fairly long time (~5-7 minutes). The girls were nowhere in sight anymore, but the man just kept walking back and forth on King between Ontario and Water, and appeared to be harassing other people as well. I pretty much followed him in my car for as long as possible to get a good description of him and to keep eyes on him until I was able to let dispatch know about his location.

It's been a long day; we all have long days. Although I'd like to consider myself a good samaritan most of the time, for a split second, I hesitated and just wanted to drive home. I hadn't eaten since early morning, missed my exercise routine I had planned out for the day, didn't get to run certain errands...and I just wanted to get home. How many of you would've just kept driving and gone home? How many of you would've hung up if you had to wait 5-7 minutes to actually talk to someone on the phone? Although I hate admitting it, I definitely wanted to hang up. Nobody seemed to be in danger, the original targets who triggered my concern were far away and seemingly safe. I didn't feel like there was any immediate danger. I started to think, what if this guy recognizes my car, knows I'm following him and reporting him, what if he smashes in my car window, is it really worth it to go through all this trouble for this? I recognize that I can be pretty selfish and flawed and have these "wrong" thoughts, and I think it's okay to have them, as long as we still think about what the price of inaction is.

For me, although nobody was in immediate danger, if he wasn't dealt with, I don't know if his next target(s) will be as lucky as the ones I saw. It might not have been tonight, it could be tomorrow night. I wanted to make sure he got the message that his actions are inappropriate and that people are watching, he's not getting away with it. I'll never know if my actions actually change the future at all, but at the very least, I know that I tried my best.

So I encourage you to think about the consequences of inaction and despite roadblocks you might face, consider taking positive action even when you don't feel like it. We won't always feel like doing the right thing, but sometimes, others will need us to.

P.S. Waterloo Region Police non-emergency number is 519-653-7700.

[joannawoo]

Common Knowledge and Bystander Effect

I share this article a lot because I think we all suffer from inaction due to lack of common knowledge. I think Nicholas Oddson was the one who first shared it with me.

Naturally, there's a story here. For the last couple of years, I've regularly made phone calls to the OPP Non-Emergency line. I have the number saved in my phone. Every time I notice something unsafe on the highway, I report it. I never did before because I didn't know the non-emergency number and felt bad calling 911 because a mattress had fallen onto the middle of the highway. Whenever I feel that anything is unsafe now, I call the number to report it. Sometimes I think it's dumb and don't know if they'd do anything about it. Nobody I know does the same thing and if they were in the car with me when I notice these things, they look at me funny.

Today, there was a crate thing between the left and middle lanes on the 401, causing cars to swerve when they finally saw it. At first, I didn't think much about it because it didn't seem that big and cars were able to avoid it, and I was having a bad day. I figured it was too small a thing to call OPP about. A few seconds went by and I kept thinking...what if a car doesn't swerve in time, what if someone's not paying attention, etc. So I called. After describing the location, the phone operator told me that it had already been reported and that they were on their way to take care of it. This is the first time I've realized that it's not silly to call OPP for these small things. Other people do it too. But this is only one of many many calls I've made so I also know that other people will assume that someone else will call. Don't wait for someone else to do it, because they might not.

In case you're wondering, the number for the non-emergency line is 1-888-310-1122.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/monkey-cage/wp/2015/04/08/mark-zuckerberg-wants-people-to-understand-common-knowledge-whats-common-knowledge/?fbclid=IwAR2-uhrSqqlbzhf5lHr6d0ejl5-3qFo__-SXNWDXQ1StVAkkIaC-C40KqJE&noredirect=on

[joannawoo]

Goodbye 20s

Goodbye 20s. I just wanted to take a quiet moment, this last hour of my 20s to reflect.

I used to write Facebook Notes on my birthday, just to reflect on everything I've accomplished in the past year. For the longest time, I couldn't find the Notes section on Facebook, so then I just started writing posts. I found the section today and read some of the things I reflected on back when I was 21-23. It's so interesting to read that stuff. My focus hasn't completely shifted, but it feels...different. My life is no longer around UW and school. I'm no longer celebrating success and impact I've made at school organizations or the conferences I used to be involved in. I've moved on to a larger stage and now I celebrate the impact I have in the real world and on the future generation.

Throughout the entire day today, small things have been making me smile all day long. :)

As most of you know, I started a new job recently. In my first week, I had put something in the women's bathroom and earlier this week, I saw a written response. :) I...have no idea who wrote the note but it made me smile, knowing that I was able to help someone.

I also placed a mini zen garden that I bought while I was in Ottawa. Originally, it was supposed to decorate my desk at work, but I wasn't really using it that much, so I placed it on the table in the front reception area. I've never seen anyone near it, but somehow, the design changes every single day. I hope that it brings zen to some people.

Then while I was walking over to the Tannery today, a stranger who was walking in front of me turns around and asks me if I know what time it is. I tell her it's 3:28 pm. Then she asks if today's Wednesday. I tell her no, it's Thursday, March 23rd. Our conversation ends and as I walk a few more steps, I then turn to her and ask..."I just had to ask, but are you time travelling by any chance?" :)

When I left work and was on my way to my car, something happened on the streets of downtown Kitchener and made me realize that I'm such a...good samaritan. Someone had told me once before that when she heard the story again, she thought of me. I didn't think much of it because I don't actually think I'm good at all, but today, I saw a glimpse of what she sees in me. :)

My 3rd? birthday celebration was earlier tonight. Friends in KW. <3 When we sat down for dinner, one of the first topics was about how to make the region better. The types of conversations that we have are just so...amazing. I'm surrounded by so many change makers and people who want to make this world better; it rubs off on me sometimes. :)

While I was driving home from dinner, I listened to the end of the Leafs game...and I can't help but smile at that. They've been making me proud lately. :)

Then as birthday messages start trickling in because I have friends and family from the future, I realize that it's going to be midnight here soon. :)

The number of hugs I've received this week has been wonderful. :)

So yea...I've posted about some of the new things I've done this past year already, but let's see...

I walked...a lot. I ran some too. I went up mountains. Crossed the ocean. The 50k steps a day was accomplished in Hong Kong when I met amazing new friends through a random hiking trip up said mountains. I made so many new friends from all over the world. Krav maga and my first real archery lesson happened. I ran a small business and inspired kids. I took a step in the right direction for my career. I made an effort to re-introduce music into my life. When you've played piano since the age of 8, I guess you don't really forget even if you haven't played for 10+ years. Speaking of not doing things for 10+ years...I got REALLY into badminton last year. Can't forget all those first dates, some good, some bad. Travelling alone for the first time in my life. From Hong Kong to Thailand. Then to Ottawa.

Some of you may know that last year when I turned 29...I had been thinking since October, oh no I'm 29 soon...but by the time March 24th came around, I thought I was 29 turning 30. When I realized I was only 29, it seemed like I had an extra year. I feel like I've made the most out of this past year. I'm...actually quite okay with 30.

Of course, I'm curled up in bed, looking at my winnie the pooh bed sheets, next to my 2 stuffed animals I sleep with in bed...and realize that I'm still a kid at heart. <3

And yes, that's me drinking wine by the bottle while I'm gaming. :)