I'm now officially in a relationship! It took us a while to get to this point, but we wanted to do things slowly. My mom can't wait to meet her, I've been testing her patience for a looong time now. I'm seeing her family this weekend and I've already asked her to join my family weekend later this year. It feels great to finally be able to say 'my girlfriend'. :)

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Had a feedback session the other day. It was a 360-degree feedback thingy for the young professionals training my company has. Basically, it ended up being a two hour long, unexpectedly open-hearted session with other colleagues that started working here this year. I found it super interesting to hear all the different problems that my peers are struggling with, from time management to reputation to communication issues.

Turns out that everyone has their own battles to fight. On the one hand, no shit, but on the other hand we're good enough at hiding those problems away that it often passes by unnoticed. One that I think is doing great talked about her struggle with insecurity, for example, despite always presenting herself as confident Reminded me of thenewgreen's duck on the pond:

I talked about how I care a disproportionately large amount about the commitments I make, and how much effort I try to pour into understanding someone else's point of view. How I always want to do things perfect, effective and full of energy but that I should be watchful not efface myself too much in the process.

The exercise made me realize that most of my motivation comes from desparately avoiding failure - not all failure, but only the failure that disappoints to the people I care about. I constantly worry that the good things I try to do can be negated by a single failure, despite knowing better than that. It may have felt true in high school, but it isn't now.