Dead already?

It’s been a full month since I last posted. I started this site in the hopes of getting me writing, and it worked to some degree. There’s just been a lot going on this last month!

First I was wrapping up my work at LloydsDirect. I really enjoyed working there—I joined back in 2019 when it was called Echo. It was nice to work on a product that helps people with their health. Initially I joined to work on internal tooling for the operations teams, things like stock management, prescription safety checks etc. I ended up joining the patient facing team shortly after starting and made some big improvements to the patient apps. We made it easier to navigate, introduced a new design system that’s more accessible, and opened up other ways for people to get their medicine leveraging LloydsPharmacy’s physical stores.

I’m really proud of the work I did there, but I left so I could join up with some old pals at plain.com. One of the things I worked on at LloydsDirect was our own customer service tool that was tailored to the online prescription service. I actually worked on it with Matt, and he went on to found Plain with Simon, the previous Head of Design from Deliveroo when I was there. I’m excited to get back into this space again. It’s going to be fun building software primarily aimed at engineers, and working with old friends!

I’m taking a month off (currently a week and a half in) which I thought would be nice and relaxing. It has been a bit, but I’ve also been getting more into the crypto space, learning new things. I actually deployed my first ever smart contract which I loved. It was my first time writing Solidity too. Lots of firsts recently! I’ll probably write a bit more about it as the project matures, like how I got started, the things I learnt along the way etc.

I also had what’s potentially my penultimate therapy session. I have one more next month, and then that could be it for that type of therapy! We’re going to compare my progress from when I started to now. Looking back on when I started, it doesn’t seem like me at all. It was like I was a totally different person. I still need to practice the things I’ve been taught, and might start another type of regular talking therapy but I haven’t decided just yet.

For now though, I need to chill out a bit. I’ve got a bunch of house admin to do because I’m planning on moving to Brighton to be with my girlfriend just before I start at Plain. There’s quite a few things to sort out, and I hate moving. I find it so stressful!

I’m going to continue writing when I can, but I’m not 100% what about right now. There might be more of these little update posts, but I’d like to do some more in depth writing about the things I’m learning. I’ll share more when I can.

Thanks for reading, Sam.