Day in the Life

After four years moving back and forth between Northern Virginia, New Haven for school, and the west coast for internships, I'm finally carving out a regular schedule in the Pacific Northwest. The weekends are usually filled with hikes and adventures, but this is what an average weekday looks like for me in The Emerald City.

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5:00 a.m.: Wake up to the sound of my Google Home Mini alarm, so the first words I say each day are, "Okay, Google. Thank you."

5:20 a.m.: After getting myself ready, I make a carafe of French press coffee and have two mugs while reading theSkimm, for the news, and a bit of whichever book I'm currently working through.

6:15 a.m.: Out the door, podcast on (typically something with Jared Freid), and walking to catch the shuttle to work.

7:15 a.m.: Get on the shuttle to the office, using the commute time to read. My most recent favorite was Burnout: The Secret to Unlocking the Stress Cycle by Emily Nagoski.

7:45 a.m.: Arrive at the Google Seattle office and grab breakfast at the on-campus cafe while catching up on work emails. There are a lot of internal newsletters that I enjoy going through during this time.

8:00 a.m.: First (of two) Americanos of the day. The amazing baristas know my go-to order, which may be a sign that I drink too much coffee.

8:10 a.m.: Start my work for the day, which is primarily in C++, although SQL certainly makes an appearance. I'm a software engineer on the Basemap Data Quality team for Google Maps, so it's logical that some of my daily work involves querying databases.

10:30 a.m.: Team meeting to sync up on everyone's progress. This doesn't happen every day, and there are monthly/biweekly meetings with different subsets of the team at different times so that everyone is on the same page.

12:30 p.m.: Grab lunch, usually a salad of salmon and lots of veggies, and eat outside, weather permitting. The office is right on Lake Union, so the views from the steps along the water are gorgeous. It's even better when Dooglers (Googlers' pet dogs) are involved.

2:00 p.m.: Meeting with the Women of Silicon Valley (WoSV) team. Similar to "Humans of New York," WoSV tells the stories of women and genderqueer individuals in tech. These meetings are among my favorites, because the team I get to work with is a group of inspiring, smart, competent women. Most recently, I compiled the "Interns of Silicon Valley" series, highlighting 20 female engineering interns at Google and other tech companies. I'm very excited about what is in the works for the rest of the year.

4:15 p.m.: Go to the on-campus gym for a treadmill run and an arm/core workout before getting cleaned up and either heading home for a laidback evening or heading downtown to see friends.

7:00 - 8:00 p.m.: Arrive home. By around 10:00 p.m., I try to be asleep. Before bed, I've been journaling in this 5 year Q&A journal, which I would highly recommend, in addition to lavender essential oil to promote restfulness.