We are a month in a bit on from moving house and it's finally time to get my
life back on track. So obviously with the whole upheaval of everything, it's been
fair enough to say that I have let things slip a little bit; kind of lost my
self-discipline especially working from home. I do think that standards of my
work and my art have slipped a little bit and just from that there's been very
little development for me creatively and professionally. So it's time finally to
sit down dedicate this week to just fully focusing and getting myself back on
track. My priorities at the moment are just to establish a good schedule again,
just a good daily routine and starting especially with a good morning routine
and generally if I have a good morning routine, everything else kind of follows
from there. But we're gradually building up furniture and unpacking and get everything
is in place so I think now's a good time to just regain some structure in my life
and also figure out now I'm living with someone else, how I'm going to fit
my schedule around Ozzy's work schedule. So it's gonna be a week long thing but
today I am just kind of regrouping. I'm gonna focus a lot on the adminny side of
stuff just to get myself on a good footing for the rest of the week, just to
kind of ease myself back into productive work days and have myself set up nicely
to do that. I've already packed and sent off a load of orders from my shop- I did
that yesterday so that's done and out of the way.
And then today I started the day as usual by doing my usual bits and bobs
of tidying and cleaning of the house before I get to work. Now that was
going to be just a quick one but we happen to have an electrician around
this morning which has definitely held things up a little bit. I think if you
remember in my last vlog I mentioned the electric hob that we had that was just
awful and old and I said I think it was going to take a while to get used to...
it turns out that as well as being the most inefficient way of cooking and
just a completely ancient appliance as well, it actually was faulty so every time we
used to it would blow all our electricity out in the whole flat. So
this morning, a month on, and we had an electrician around to come in and change
into an induction hob which just meant that I had to kind of spend a lot of my
morning waiting around for him to arrive. It's funny because I was watching a
Chris Hong vlog the other day and she mentioned the exact same thing where she
was saying that you know working from home if you know that there's someone
coming around even if it's just at some point in the day, it is really hard to
settle into work knowing that you're going to be disrupted at some point and I
had the exact same thing today. But eventually he came and did his work. The hob
was too big for our surface so he had to cut into that which meant that he was
here for a lot longer and kind of cut off the whole of the downstairs of the flat
for me so I've been stuck up here and just kind of not on track with what I
wanted to be doing. He did a really good job, really lovely guy- thank you Dan
the electrician- he also cleaned up a little bit after
himself as well which I really appreciated but because of the sawing
and stuff that he'd done, there was a lot of dust and dirt on everything and in
cupboards and drawers so and my usual quick tidy turned into a very big tidy
and clean downstairs which has really set me back a lot today but thankfully
I decided that this day one would be more of a casual one just
to kind of ease me back into the good routine so I don't feel too off-track. I
do think I have a good amount of time for the rest of the day to get back to
what I wanted to do.
I started off just by it brain dumping all the things that I would ideally like to
get done this week and also as well as those to-dos just more general goals for
this week- just what I want to get out of it. So now that I've figured out the
tasks that I want to get done this week I'm actually going to head into my
calendar- I use Google Calendar- and I'm just gonna start laying out a few kind
of general timeframes for things. Not anything set in stone but just chunks of
time I'm going to dedicate to specific things. When I'm doing this, I generally
start with deadlines or meetings, things that are set in stone and I work my way
back from there. Even if it's like a personal thing so for example I'm having
friends around for dinner on Saturday evening and one of my to do's is to
clean up a dining table that we got from a charity shop; I just want to at least
give it a deep-clean but hopefully strip off a few layers off the varnish that's on
there- it's quite old it's quite thick- so strip off that varnish and re-stain it,
and and I would ideally like to have that done before we have people round for
dinner. So I can kind of look at my calendar and see where I'm gonna put
those kinds of things in. And for the first time, I'm also going to start
putting in Ozzy's work hours because they change every week and
obviously it doesn't affect me too much whether he's here or not but I do
like to know if he's gonna be here for dinner and you know what
days we both can figure out to have off together so maybe we can go and do
something. But what I'll do is I'll probably keep his calendar
hidden just so it's not in the way of my tasks as well.
Well, different outfit, same day. It is 3:30 in the afternoon now and I've
only just had a chance to have a shower and eat with all the extra stuff that's
been going on today and the kind of repercussions of that. Yeah, I'm way
behind but thankfully I didn't put too much on my plate for today. I really am
grateful that I chose to ease in to having a productive week and made Monday
that day that was just going to be a little bit less stuff. So I'm still kind
of on track with whatever I need to be doing I am now pretty much set to spend
the rest of the day just sat right here at this desk
whacking out all the other bits that I've got to get on with. But now that
everything's done and out the way I can really just focus on what needs doing,
I'm gonna use my kind of modified Pomodoro Technique and set a 45 minute timer,
do as much work as I can in that chunk of time, then have a 15 minute break
and then do that again as many times as I have to.
That's just the best way I find for me to do work that I don't necessarily want to do.
I've also got a lovely thick smoothie that I whipped up with all our kind of
fruit and veg that's on the turn so that should tide me over until dinnertime.
Yeah it's gonna be probably quite a boring one so I'm just gonna crack, on do
as much as I can, and I'm looking forward to getting it all done so I can start
the real fun tomorrow.
I've really been loving my mornings in this place. When
Ozzy's left for work and it's just a nice time to myself, a little bit of me-
time so I can kind of potter around and tinker and do whatever needs doing
around the house. It's kind of weird, I really love cleaning and
tidying- like I almost wish I had more time to do it in the mornings but I do
think my main struggle with the mornings is it just making that initial step to
actually get up and to start doing things. Once I'm doing it it's fine, I enjoy it
but I've always struggled with getting up in the mornings, I've never been a
morning person and like this morning I spent a good two hours just lying there
and trying to convince myself to get up. It's hard to convince myself to leave
the warmth and comfort of my bed especially when I'm here on my own so
that is really the main goal for this week, just to get myself back into a good
routine of getting up when I wake up and you know once I've sorted that out, the
rest should really follow. So when I'm done with whatever little jobs I'm doing
around the house I come into my studio room and sit at my desk and I love
leaving my calendar open just so as soon as I sit down and turn the screen on I
know exactly what I'm aiming to do that day. I kind of get that instant direction.
So here's a better look at my calendar. You won't be able to see it
all in detail but you get a kind of general gist of what I'm talking about.
So anything in light purple it's kind of a personal thing so up here is usually
just like my morning routine, the darker purple stuff is my work stuff and then
you'll see in the middle there's like the light purple so like lunch breaks
and then down here is just making dinner and winding down for the day. Anything in
this colour is like a meeting on appointment then down here anything in
yellow is kind of a social thing so I've got Rob and Jodie round for dinner from 7
p.m. to 4 a.m. is what I've pencilled it in as. And it's not particularly detailed,
it's more just like chunks of like where I'll be and what I'll be doing at
certain times rather than like hour by hour. And like I said yesterday I
put Ozzy's hours in the calendar as well, so he's there in the blue and as you can
see on the days where he's working longer I do kind of extend my work days
just to make the most of that time I'm here on my own. But yeah the first couple
of things on the agenda today was to catch up on a couple of things I didn't
have time to do yesterday so I needed to book a dentist appointment and a
doctor's appointment.
Hi, I'm calling to book in to get two fillings...
...booking in for a cervical screening...
...would it be possible- I've been grinding my teeth recently
can I talk to the dentist about that...
...Alright perfect thanks.... you too! Bye!
I've been putting off for so long I thought while I'm
working on my calendar it would be good to pencil those in and now I'm ready to
start my day properly. Today it's going to be a creative day which I'm really
looking forward to. I've been really stuck art-wise I'm really kind of unsure of my
work again and you know that generally means that I need to focus more on
studying or learning something new. Usually I will use Skillshare- you guys
know I've loved Skillshare forever- I might still have a coupon for two months
free if you're interested in taking any classes, I'll leave some links
below to my favorite classes on there anyway -not sponsored but I just thought
I might shout them out. Yeah this time I'm looking for something a little
different. I've been eyeing up to schoolism
for a while and I think I'm gonna check out one of the courses on there by
Nathan Fowkes . He's done some really incredible work, I've loved a lot of his
like animation backgrounds I think he worked on the Prince of Egypt which is
one of my favorite films of all time and he has a few courses on there and- I
don't know- it's a different type of learning. I really like to kind of
diversify any lessons I take in so sometimes I like to read, sometimes I
like the way that Skillshare do things and this is something else I just wanted
to try for a while. It's a bit more of an investment but it's something I've
really thought about for quite awhile so I'm excited to check it out and
hopefully that'll kind of kickstart me back into being more confident in my art.
I've also been reading a lot more so I kind of spend my evenings reading,
at the moment I'm reading a book about kind of taking small steps to achieve
your goals and it's really helping to put things into perspective for me and
just kind of reel in the expectations I think I've been putting on myself
recently to just jump into this new place and be this fantastic new person.
It's good to kind of step back and think about the little steps it's gonna take
me to get to where I want to be and also the little steps I've taken so far to
get to where I am. Yeah, today is gonna be an exciting day, it's going to be just
a good day to bring attention back to myself and just kind of enriching my
mind and feeding my creative side to hopefully you know spend the rest of the
week putting stuff back out there.
The schoolism class went really well. The teacher Nathan Fowkes was just amazing
just an incredible teacher and he has such a huge wealth of knowledge and also
just the way he delivers everything that he has to teach is entertaining and
really captivating and I'm really looking forward to carrying on this
course. It's a lot more structured like a uni kind of lecture and you also end
up getting homework at the end of each lesson as well. The lesson I took was
about two hours or maybe even longer but it was so worth it and had just the
effect that I wanted. It really spurred me on to start making some art. I got on
with the first part of the first homework assignment. If you sign up to
the proper course on schoolism -there is a waiting list- you
can submit the homework to him. I think the next available slot to be in that
class is in May 2019 so I'm not doing that but I am still gonna do the
homework assignments and yeah I would a hundred percent recommend it if you do
want to make that kind of investment into really immersing yourself into you
know school-like lessons. So after finishing that off, I did get on with a
bit more work. I actually worked quite late just because as I said before, Ozzy
was working late that evening as well. So it turned out being quite a stressful
evening just because the oven doesn't work now! So obviously on Monday we
had the hob replaced and I think he must have switched something off when he
replaced it- also not an induction hob, I don't know why they told us that it was
an induction hob, it's still electric which it's fine but I don't know why
they told us otherwise. Yeah now the oven isn't working so that scuppered my
dinner plans and just kind of set me in a bad mood, but I've already contacted
them this morning to see if they can come in and fix the oven now which is
going to be you know another kind of setback in the week, just another thing
that's taken up time already- you know talking back and forth with them- and
it's gonna take more time again to you know sit around waiting for the guy to
come and sort it out. It should be a quick thing, I really think he's probably
just unplugged something or switched something off and not switched it back
on, it's just not something that I have access to- like I've tried switching on
different switches and just nothing's working.
So that's on its way to getting sorted out anyway, I'm still on track pretty
much with how I want to be getting on with this week and today's focus is
really getting back into my online presence. I always take like these weird
little breaks where I just don't like uploading things on social media I just
like to keep things to myself but I'm in a place now where I feel ready to get
back into a good routine. It's been a long time since I've had a good routine
with how I post online so today I'm actually filming a speed
painting, almost finished now, and it's an interesting one. I feel like I don't make
as many speed paintings as I used to so I'd love to know what you guys prefer. I
do find- I don't know I've seen this with a lot of art channels- where it just kind
of gets boring to make these kinds of videos, to make like speed painting
videos. I know Baylee Jae has talked about it and she's found a really cool
way to kind of format them differently to make it more interesting for her to
film and to edit but yeah let me know if you guys really miss the speed paintings
and I will definitely do more of them. But I'd also just love to know what kind
of content you like seeing on this channel and I don't know what stuff
you're interested in and not interested in. So I'm pretty much done here and I'm
quite happy with it. I was painting different views from my windows here at
the new flat but I guess if you watch the video you'll see more about like the
information behind these paintings. For the rest of the day I am still gonna be
-as I've been for the last few days- just sat at this desk,
but I will say whenever I am having days like this I do make sure to get up at
least once every hour to move around a stretch
and just you know get the blood flow going because it's really not good for
you to be a desk all day solidly. So the plan for the rest of the day- and the
daylight is already fading it's only half 2- but the plan is to respond to
some emails, I've got an invoice to draw up and send to a client, I've also taken
on a new commission which I said I wasn't gonna do- I'm gonna focus on more
personal artwork- but this one was just too good to pass up so I want to maybe
get some concepts going for that today but we'll see, that might have to wait
till tomorrow. I'm going to do a little bit of tweaking on my website and shop,
just update the product descriptions a little bit - nothing noticeable. I'm gonna
edit the video that I filmed today and hopefully upload it today as well and
then I've got three kind of proposal type things to write up- just kind of
video related stuff that I need to send to a sponsor to see if I'm on track, and
then with whatever time I have left I'll go through a few of the things that I
was supposed to do in the last couple of days that I haven't got round to yet.
So yesterday was very difficult one. Ozzy's work hours changed so
apart from Monday, he's actually been out the house every day this week between
about 8:00 in the morning and maybe 12 o'clock at night. It's been a bit
difficult just kind of trying to fit everything into my schedule, getting on with
my work and also just dealing with stuff around the house. I actually had a deadline
this week on Tuesday but I didn't manage to meet in time which is obviously not
something that I'm happy with, it's not the way I want to work and there were
some things that were out of my control that led to that but yeah not ideal. I
did finally finish that work last night, I was working on that till about one
o'clock in the morning but it's done, it's out the way - but yeah, the stress
of that is not something I really want to repeat. On top of that yesterday was
just one of those days where everything goes wrong, so I actually ended up like
melting the sleeve of my dressing gown on to the new hob. I think the dressing gown
must have like synthetic fibers obviously maybe some kind of acrylic but
yeah I accidentally leaned over it and it melted on to like the glass or
ceramic top off the hob and it was a complete nightmare to get off. I
spent pretty much the whole day just coming back and trying all different
things; soaking it, heating it, cooling it, scraping it - obviously didn't
want to damage the surface either but yeah in the end I had to use a mixture
of baking soda and vinegar and a really rough sponge and just spent really long
going like centimeter by centimeter, really really scrubbing it and- as someone
that doesn't have a lot of body strength- having scrubbed
this table and then that hob, my body is knackered now. I was also
planning on going food shopping yesterday as part of my like you know
'stuff around the house' day but as I said we had the electricians round yesterday
to fix that oven, so I was waiting around for them
and they ended up not coming till about four / five in the evening which I mean
obviously I could have gone shopping if I'd known that that's when
they were coming but it's fine. They fixed the oven which is great, we can cook
again now- and I ended up going shopping this morning instead. So now that that is
done and out the way, I've actually
finished all the work I needed to do this week other than editing this video.
I'm actually gonna have a self-care day today, so basically that's just gonna
entail just kind of chilling out and getting on with some personal things, I
think I'm gonna wash my hair, probably do my nails- I haven't done my nails into so long-
and then I'll just slowly but surely catch up on a few of the tasks that I
haven't got done yet this week. Easy little things. Potter around- my favorite
kind of things to do. I'm going to kind of dip in and out of doing this table as
well, maybe putting on a layer off this stripper, leaving it to sit, go ahead and
do my nails or something, and come back and work on it again and
hopefully it will be ready for when we have people round tomorrow.
I know it might not look like your typical self-care but for me it's just
all about spending time with myself, doing something kind of self indulgent
and just having that moment to zone out and just focus on the task at hand and
nothing else. And as you know, I just love to get my hands dirty and get stuck into
something like that. So I got the table just kind of finished enough. Just the
tabletop I got to a state where it was ready to be varnished and then the
legs are gonna need another couple of rounds of stripping before I can varnish
those. But here is how it looked the next day.
After that day I felt like I really
needed some human interaction- obviously I just spent the whole week just
basically here on my own so I just popped over to my mum's and had my
dinner there, we watched some telly, I think we watched a film and that was enough to
kind of break me out of that little isolated circle I put myself in. On
Saturday morning Ozzy and I popped out through the shops to pick up the last
little bits that we would need for dinner and then we spent the rest of the
day just preparing for our guests.
We had such a great time and Ozzy couldn't have made a better meal, it
couldn't have been more perfect and as I had expected we were up til about 6:00 in
the morning the next day. So understandably, Ozzy and I spent the
rest of Sunday just chilling in bed, sleeping. It was a lovely wind down to
what has been a really really good week, really productive and just a nice
feeling to it I guess. And I want to make a habit of having more weeks like that
even if I'm not filming them. Anyway, that'll do for today, thank you guys so
much for watching let me know if you like this kind of video, if you like to
see the kind of week in the life structure or you do prefer the monthly
kind of vlogs that I do. I'd love to hear from you and other than that I will see
you in the next video.
Bye!
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