Things almost seem normal again

Every now and then, when the moment is just right, I forget that I can’t really walk just yet. Like the morning of this photo, when I did my home-famous ballet jump, only to land on my left foot in a way that made me regret everything. It was the morning of my birthday gift to Anja: a taster class at Studio Pansa, where she hadn’t been since her head injury. About three months ago, I triple-fractured my ankle. What came after was a transformation, both of the body and of the mind.

At work,

There’s much to discover. We’re full steam ahead, and there are plenty of unknowns to investigate, which means I’ve got my hands in the clay of delicious exploratory research. I’m impressed with how capable we all are of committing to continuous research. Meanwhile, Gerimedica is growing, and it’s great to welcome new faces.

Health-wise,

I’m delighted by my progress. When I was on the ground behind the Royal Palace, tired head resting on the cobblestones, getting acquainted with the sensation of fracture, one thought hovered in my head: I’ll wake up in April thinking “oh wow, I can barely remember what that felt like.” Nothing could be further from the truth. Every day, I have at least half a dozen déjà vus.

Remember when bathroom visits were pistol squats? Remember when you couldn’t walk into the patio at home? Remember when you couldn’t walk to the tram stop? Remember when you couldn’t walk and hold anything but crutches? Remember how your left leg was elevated two feet at bedtime, 7 weeks in a row? Physical therapy thrice weekly is doing wonders.

At home,

We’re taking on DIY projects again. Now that I’m better able to help out around the house, Anja gets a much-needed break from it all. Also: home improvement! We recently began remodeling our bathroom, and boy, does it look sexy. I feel like I live in a Swedish hotel.

Community-wise,

All Saints continues to grow. While we’re still a small bunch, familiar faces keep returning to join a church service, to attend morning or evening prayer. Recently, we hosted a Bible study at the most progressive queer bar in town. Shouting thoughtfulness across the table over loud music, and sitting with our eyes closed praying for each other felt so powerful. I love the community we’re perpetually becoming.

What I’m looking forward to

I’m impatient to get back to “normal”, foot-wise, because I have things to do! We’re hoping to make it to Paris in late April, and in the meantime, my excitement for pottery continues to simmer. I’m looking to enroll in an eight-week ceramics course to better understand the process, and to get that coveted status of being eligible to become a studio member at Pansa.

Here I am with Anja outside Badeta, a local coffee place. We visited het dad in de Bijlmer this morning, and just finished biking back to Indische Buurt. I love riding my bike with her. This is one of our micro dates: a little pocket of quiet time for coffee or ice cream. It’s a good day.

Work is slow but sweet

I’m coming out of a slow period at work: projects wrapping up, establishing new objectives, reporting back on research. I’m excited about something new, something to sink my teeth into. Something difficult, intricate, substantive.

In the meantime there is the never-boring project of being the best coworker I can be. In the past few months, I’ve had one or two headaches about that, but I feel I’m making progress.

At home in Indische Buurt,

Anja, Lemonade, and I spent the Summer essentially hibernating in Amsterdam as we took care of a few health challenges. It’s sweet to see we manage well together, but boy, am I excited to get out of the country for a solo trip in September. I’ll be visiting my sister and her children, as well as Godzilla.

Community-wise,

Things are slowly picking up again after the Summer break. On Sunday, All Saints will celebrate homecoming. I’ve missed my church family. In addition, the most recent Omek Summit culminated in the founding of the Omek Innovation Lab, of which I am a part. I’m looking forward to working with other Africans on digital and physical technology, and stepping into more of an R&D research role.

Lastly,

I am stoked that I’ve successfully established a workout routine. Personal health challenges make it notoriously difficult for me to work out in a way that’s healthy and sustainable, and after five months of taking it more slowly than I ever nightmared I could, I find myself embracing early morning workouts that really set the tone for the rest of the day. #Proud.

Here I am at the Gerimedica office, posing for an employer branding photoshoot. I usually don’t use that whiteboard to draw anything, but that is my desk in the background, and that smile is genuine. I gave a great talk at our periodic company update, and I feel I’m doing good work that helps the company reach its goals. It’s a good day. The days have been good.

Right now, I’m

• At home in Amsterdam’s Indische Buurt, where I share a small shoebox with Anja and Lemonade. We are childless child-free and enjoying every bit of it.
• Enjoying the alternation of sunny and rainy days
• Appreciating how the environment of Amsterdam allows me to meet new people almost everywhere I go
• Helping out at All Saints to make it the church I need it to be
• Working out again and loving it
• Making music in my spare time, and moving slowly as I set up my personal space for recording and writing
• Trying to bring my ideas and experiences into my writing more

Existing

In Amsterdam’s finest neighborhood, de Indische Buurt, I’m watching the autumn set in, and I’m loving every minute of it. Apart from the scorching hot first week of September, everything about the weather tells me it’s time for hygge, hygge, hygge. Anja’s back in school, which means I’m settling back into a more structured hybrid work method. Wednesdays I spend at the office, and the other days I start off at home, and join my coworkers on-site on most afternoons. I love this, and the structure of it all is doing me good.

Enjoying

Unlike what I had planned, I barely spent any time in the pool this summer. What I did continue to develop is my yin yoga practice, alongside a practice of guided and unguided meditation. To decompress in the mornings and evenings, piano practice remains a close friend. I’m not making the progress I want to be making, but composition and singing help me regulate emotions stunningly well. Lastly, I’m fond of the writing practice I’ve established. I publish on this website, write in my diary, and correspond via snail mail with a few friends.

Community

I feel fortunate to be engaged in a number of communities where I meet people in which I can see myself. A few months ago, I discovered Bar Bario, a place by and for queer people of color. In addition, I’m enjoying watching the community grow at All Saints Amsterdam, where I’ve joined the team as website person. In the margins of my thoughts, I’m slowly putting together what the future of [[Queer Salon]] will be.

Working

I’m approaching 6 months at Gerimedica, where I’m a senior-but-silly researcher and designer. The term senior-but-silly is growing on me, because it helps me be humbly confident, and open to the whimsy’s of working with other people for a common good. I’m impressed by the company Gerimedica has become, and I am even more excited about their current challenges than I was when I began. Some questions I ask myself as part of my daily work are: how can designers facilitate developers? How do I foster user-centered curiosity among domain experts? How do we organize a UX research repository in a strict GDPR environment?

Learning

Through trial and error, I continue to find ways to be my best self, both at home and at work. Acknowledging the physical and mental realities of my life, I’ve been learning a lot about [[Neurodivergence in the workplace]], about the Polyvagal theory, and about a holistic, trauma-informed understanding of mental health. Practically, the books The Smart but Scattered Guide to Success, Divergent Mind, and Living with Intensity, and Elizabeth Filips and the Crappy Childhood Fairy have been sources of inspiration.

Reading, watching, listening

The History of Love takes my breath away, as did Fleabag.

I’m Zinzy Waleson Geene, I’m in my mid-thirties and I have a penchant for casual web publishing

This website is a digital living room; a place where I think aloud, change my mind, and share slices of life. I think the Internet is a miraculous place, and believe we all have the right to own our stuff, and do so in a sustainable way. I suppose this means I like IndieWeb principles.

I live in Amsterdam’s finest neighborhood: de Indische Buurt.

I share my life with Anja Waleson, a high school English teacher and new ceramics enthusiast. We live in a little shoebox with a petit garden. We’re companions to puppy Lemonade, who may or may not have her own blog, let’s find out together.

In my spare time I enjoy swimming, writing, making music, and painting

With generous donations from friends, I bought myself a piano for my birthday last year. It’s a journey of rediscovering how I best learn, of what draws my attention, and of how music is the best mental health item in my toolbox. For entirely archival reasons, I’m making a little EP with self-written songs this Summer.

Aside from music, I like to spend time writing, drawing, visiting the theatre, and swimming. With the puppy it’s a bit of an adventure, but I’m hoping to settle back into my 6:30AM morning swim routine. I’ve missed swimming plenty over the winter, and it might be smart to find a good indoor pool for the later months of 2023. For now, I’m pleased to know that Amsterdam’s finest outdoor pool is in our own backyard.

I’m embarking on a new professional adventure

After 2.5 years with the wonderful team of Leeruniek I joined Gerimedica in May. Onboarding there has been an absolute dream, and I’ve felt a part of the family since the moment I signed the contract. I’ve been given plenty of space to roam around, which means that I was able to hit the ground running, teaming up with my buddy Hans to improve not only product design, but also research and evangelism.

I’m mentoring again

After a hiatus, I’m pleased to be back on the mentoring market. With 16 years of professional experience, I’ve found that my stories, many of which I had always deemed irrelevant to the world, can be of help to other people in the IT industry, specifically UX designers and researchers and product managers. If you’d like to book a session with me, you may do so via ADPList.

I’m doing my best to accept the ebb and flow of life

One of the thinking traps in which I routinely fall is the one where “Y can happen when X is completed”. We make a plan and God laughs. I’ve found that meditation helps me break this cycle. I’ve been devoting time daily to a meditation session. It’s becoming easier to remember that even 10 minutes of practice is worthwhile, even when I keep comparing myself to monks on some Tibetan mountain.

I’m learning how to be kind to my neurodivergent brain

Through trial and error, I’m finding ways to help myself best learn and deliver. One thing that’s been helpful in this regard is accepting my tendency to think top-down rather than bottom-up. It’s marvellous to see how much of the world assumes a bottom-up approach to learning, communicating, and creating. YouTuber Elizabeth Filips has been of great help on this journey.

• I’m at Leeruniek building a sustainable design and product practice
• Reading Zadie Smith’s On Beauty, enjoying it so far
• Building a sustainable meditation practice by engaging in daily unguided sessions (which, as it turns out, is a lot more relaxing than finding the perfect guided meditation on the perfect app)
• Training my product management muscle by having difficult internal conversations about priorities
• Thoroughly enjoying mentoring on ADPList.

It’s odd to think about what life was like in the Spring of 2021, or even 2020. Sure, we were definitely working on our little street-side garden, hoping to bring some color to the neighborhood, but other than that, not much was the same at home. We had a living room office, each with our own command center. Now, things are slowly returning to normal. We’ve installed new kitchen counters, getting our couch reupholstered. It feels like the house is becoming a home again.

At Leeruniek, I’m focused on creating a user-centered mode of collaboration. It’s great fun work with colleagues from outside the product team, and develop a shared understanding of what we and what we do mean to our customers. Part of this effort involves cultivating a culture of receiving and giving feedback, something I find very refreshing. We’re also hiring in the product team and we’ve already found a new engineer and a new designer. I’m looking forward to exploring our new team setup.

Every year, without fail, I find myself longing for Autumn in the middle of Summer. I’m looking forward to cups of tea, blankets, and rainy afternoons. Much like the characters in You’ve Got Mail, I love September because it reminds me of freshly-sharpened pencils and other things that prompt a back-to-school vibe. I’m also looking forward to quilting a prayer mat.

What I’m enjoying spiritual reflections on the Lectio 365 app, as well as CelinaSpookyBoo’s dad jokes and her accompanying laugh. I’ve been reading about chronic shame. I’ve been playing around with Gatsby starters for a bit, and I’m ready to begin building things from scratch.

• Finishing up five years of design at Airtrade
• Preparing for a new adventure in education technology
• Wondering how in the world I missed the lesbian memo on Girl in Red