Diary of a self-employed UX writer: Week 5

This week was HUGE! Two days of work and two days as a mentor at a hackathon with a play day in Sydney in the middle was awesome!

I was in Sydney this week from Wednesday to Friday for Remarkable’s Enabled by design-athon event where I assisted participants as a mentor. Before this week, I had actually never been to a hackathon — let alone helped run one! I’ve always thought I wasn’t smart enough to do a hackathon or that my skills wouldn’t add value and that I’d just be in the way. Funnily enough many of my fellow mentors said the same thing and of course we found that isn’t true. These events are made successful by diverse skillsets and backgrounds and aren’t just all about tech. The human centred humans are needed too!

My experience as a mentor at a hackathon was an incredibly positive one. I can’t tell you how beautiful- delightful even- it is to watch 60 strangers come together to form teams and grapple with concepts and problems they’ve just discovered. The analysis process, the discussions, the arguments, the disappointments, the lightning moments and of course the triumphs made for a spectacular experience.

There were challenges and sometimes it was hard to know if I was interrupting discussions or just plain annoying people. So, I watched and learned their patterns and found that they were quite capable of asking for help so the best thing to do was to drift between the tables, be visible and be approachable. Just being around and close by seemed to be what they needed from me and I was given very positive feedback at the end of the two days. It was a privilege to be able to observe this process and I’m so very proud of every single one of the participants. I’ve been asked back to attend the next one and there may even be a speaker engagement opportunity in my future. The other mentors were amazing too! They were all lovely, whip smart and each with their own incredible stories to tell. Special mention goes to Spud the cameraman!

I also had my first self-employed nightmare last night. I dreamt that I was missing deadlines and had huge piles of articles that I’d forgotten to write. I woke up to find email alerts on my phone and became convinced that it wasn’t a dream after all! Thankfully it was just a dream and I’m going to take this to mean I’ve well and truly settled into my new work life. I’m having a restful weekend before I dive back in on Monday. I’ve been to the hairdresser and a soothing foot soak is on my to do list for tonight. Next week I have 4 full days of work planned across two clients, a trip to my therapist (nope, not ashamed to admit that) and a day dedicated to working on that book of mine.