Given everything that my life has entailed over the past couple years, it’s crazy to realize that for the first time, I feel settled enough to invest in myself and explore what a balanced, healthy, and happy working life looks like for me. Maybe it doesn’t seem like I would have found stability by moving to Cambodia, working with a young startup, and accepting that I don’t know where I’ll be 6 months from now. But somehow, I feel grounded. And even though it’s a very different kind of adventure, having the time to plan out and experiment with my personal and professional development has been a fascinating experience of its own.
Okra, the company I’m working for, is an interesting cross between start up tech culture and off-grid social impact culture. On the one hand, our office has two ping pong tables (one of which is currently our desk), we use plenty of team organization tools like Slack and Trello, and implement agile techniques like “standups”. But on the other hand, we live among the chaos of Phnom Penh, we travel to off grid villages for installations and monitoring, and we often make trips to the local market together. The cutting edge tech and social impactful mission drew me to Okra, but one of the aspects that really sparked my attention from the beginning was the palpable love of learning and self-improvement throughout the team.
Living in Okra HQ, as we like to call it, results in a semi constant sharing of knowledge across all realms, for example the genetics lesson I got after one team member watched a documentary on human evolution or when I taught the art of yogurt making. We support each other in sticking with lifestyle habits around fitness, diet, and mindfulness, so I quickly discovered that living here is the easiest it’s ever been to stay healthy. Previously, if I’ve had easy access to a gym, it’s been for a few days at a time, not long enough to see any improvement. Or if I’ve had access to a kitchen, it’s been too short to justify buying more than the most all-purpose spices. But now, I can go to the gym every day, set fitness goals, and work towards them; I can cook more complex dishes and am excited to tackle as many of my mom’s recipes as possible; and maybe most importantly, I can discuss my progress with my team as we hold each other accountable to our goals.
On the work side, it feels like a flash from my university past to have batteries, circuit boards, and power-supplies wired together at my desk. I’m enjoying using my electronics background again, this time up close and personal with issues I’m passionate about, rather than in the isolation of a school lab. In addition to working at Okra, I’m still working part-time at TechChange doing the web development work I had been doing for the past few months. I’m happy with the decision and it’s definitely manageable, but as I found my rhythm and started latching onto problems in both jobs, I began thinking about the structure of my life here. It became too easy to not stop working.
Given some similarities between my environment here and at university (living with my team, constantly accessible work set-up, and no set work hours) I wondered if I was slipping back towards unsustainable habits. I seem to have the capability to work late into the night and still get up to go to the gym in the morning, but does it mean I want to live like that just because I can? Since leaving university, I’ve enjoyed greater separation between work and life, and I know that exploring diverse avenues of my identity plays a large role in my happiness.
Every Friday here at Okra, we do something called “innovation Fridays” where each person has 15 minutes to bring up a problem and everyone helps brainstorm and discuss innovative solutions. Some problems may be very specific to work, but others may be more personal. As I’m sure you’ve picked up by now, I’m pretty self-reflective. I regularly dwell on my personal fulfillment as well as my professional identity, but I’m used to doing this internally, or at least in a way where I share my conclusions but not my process. So when I decided to use “innovation Fridays” to externalize this process, I was a bit surprised at myself and even more surprised by the reception.
Two weeks ago I brought up not wanting to feel locked into just doing engineering. Together we created a whole plan for how I can integrate some of my human centered design skills and step away from the code to partake in brainstorms, grant/investor meetings, and diversify my role. Last week I brought up my concerns about work/life balance and how important it is to me that I incorporate creative, adventurous, and rejuvenating experiences even while working hard. We put together a plan to make sure I’m getting out of the office/house, by setting weekly goals for outings and monthly goals for travel/exploration out of the city. I felt myself gain a new level of trust and comfort with the team just based off of how sincerely they grappled with these topics and how they invested in coming up with solutions. Affy went on to build a spreadsheet to track if I’m meeting these goals, and this whole mission is known around the office as the “More than a Firmware Engineer” challenge. If I’ve spent a few nights in front of the computer, I get friendly reminders from everyone that I better have serious plans for outings later in the week. And if I’ve taken the effort to mix up my routine, I get a lot of affirmation. The collective atmosphere around growth is motivating and has left me in an optimistic mood. Of course this same atmosphere often results in zillions of ideas that will never come to fruition, but when something is important, the team steps up in support.
Over the past few weeks, I’ve been the most actively intentional about my health than I’ve ever been. I can set aside time for hobbies like cooking, reading, and music, and have the new ability to make monthly goals and track my progress towards them. There are definitely nights where I stray from my goals but I know that I’m in an environment where I will feel encouraged to reflect and adjust. I find it hard to explain exactly how it feels to simultaneously have the opportunity and determination to work on myself. It feels like I’m in sync with myself, like elements that were previously misaligned have fallen in place, and like I’ve been deeply recharged.
I haven’t gotten around to taking many photos in Phnom Penh itself, but started taking more photos during our trip out to the village and on a weekend excursion out of the city.
The first 6 rows are all from visits out to the village running our pilot site. We were a group of not just Okra team members, but also some interested partners and investors.
In the first row, I’m with “Van Khai” who is our friend/driver for village expeditions/translator/etc… He bought us all coffees before we hit the road bright and early!
The second and third rows show us in the process of taking a small boat from the mainland to the island, and the photos of homes with solar panels are using our system.
In the fourth row, there are photos of the process of uploading new firmware to the device, engaging with the home owner as we explain new things we’ve added to his system, and the Okra controller in action.
The fifth row shows the inside of one of the homes Okra has electrified.
The last row shows some of the paddy fields, as well as the shop of the solar distributor that we work with. This shop is a cross between a micro finance institution, a solar shop, and a fried chicken booth out front. Very enterprising.
The last 3 rows and the title photo are from a quick trip I made to a place called Silk Island. They grow and weave a lot of silk, and have developed a fairly touristy way to explore the area. Fortunately, my friend and I entirely missed the sign leading towards the touristy part of the island, and ended up on a fully local, very rural, adventure through the forests and fields of the island.
The first of these rows shows the ferry we took to cross to the island, as well as views of the Mekong River and a monastery.
The next row has more photos from temples we stumbled upon.
The last row has photos of a bunch of sculptures and scenes that we came across in the middle of some seemingly abandoned or very low-population areas. They seemed a bit out of place, but seem to have become the playground for a fair number of local children.
