Every year on your anniversary date, HR sends an email to you to give you some stats from the last year. Since I wrote my One Decade post the day before my actual anniversary, I didn’t have the email. Now I do, and these are my stats:

• Posts: 233 (2699 likes!)
• Comments: 1294 (1877 likes!)
• Days AFK: 38 
• Kudos Given: 33 
• Kudos Received: 23

Dec 4 2021 – Dec 3 2022

Last year, these were my stats:

• Posts: 160 (1674 likes!)
• Comments: 537 (973 likes!)
• Days AFK: 53 
• Kudos Given: 31 
• Kudos Received: 18

Dec 4 2020 – Dec 3 2021

While I spent two months of the past twelve in my previous role (so not all 12 with Tumblr), I think we can still safely attribute the increase in posting and commenting with diving headfirst into Tumblr and growing more confident there.

I give out pretty kudos fairly consistently, though I personally think I’ve given out far too few this year. We get 3 kudos a month to distribute, and each time you give them all out, you get an extra one for the next month – up to 7 kudos maximum. I routinely work up to having 7 kudos to give out, then may skip a whole month. I try to show appreciation directly, in the moment, when it’s warranted (and it often is!), but I also know how validating I personally find kudos, so my goal is to be more consistent about using up my kudos. I certainly work with enough people that it is easy to do so.

AFK – afk is one of those benefits of working for Automattic that I talk about from time to time. In 10 years, I have had two multi-month AFKs (5 months for the birth of my youngest, and one 3-month sabbatical), in two different years. Most other years, I take off 50+ days. A lot of that has been for childcare. I have said it before, and I’ll say it again: childcare instability is one of the most difficult things that working parents deal with. I personally find it traumatic, and I have a very flexible job that lets me take time off to do whatever I need to do. The expectation is that we take off at least 25 days a year. Around halfway through the year, I realized I’d only taken 10 or 12 days off, which was unusual for me! I scheduled in some more AFK, but ultimately, I’ve been enjoying my time “on” so much, I’ve just needed less time off. I’m taking time around the holidays, though.

Now to flowers.

I think one of the nicest things is fresh flowers. I buy them all the time from the grocery store, since I’m there already. I found a couple years ago that a bouquet of grocery store flowers made me quite happy, and I didn’t have to wait for someone to send me flowers to enjoy them. When I was picking up groceries yesterday, there was a bouquet of a dozen white roses. A little worse for wear, perhaps (they weren’t quite touching the water), but whomst among us isn’t from time to time? So of course, I bought them as a little anniversary present to myself, and I am once again delighted to have flowers in the house.

I do think it’s important to use florists, however, because I worry about a world without them. I just opt for convenience over a life without flowers in the house.

I like to take pictures of flowers in nature, too. I am not especially savvy about it, but if I see a bit of lovely, I like to take a quick photo.

One of these photos is obviously of very fake flowers – I got the lego bouquet set for my office, so I could have flowers there all the time, and they wouldn’t rot or die if I wasn’t in every day. I haven’t been able to be “in charge” of putting legos together in years! It felt really good to have my own lego project.

And that’s it! Thanks, the end.