It’s been a little over two months since I’ve been working from home full time now, it’s been an interesting experience. I thought this would be the best platform to share my thoughts.

I have to admit, at the start I was seeking for different resources to help me determine how to best to be productive at home till I realised all the advice people were giving were from people who already either ran their own business or work from home full time. The advice wasn’t come from people who prior to Covid-19 were working in a corporate office that had to commute to each day, with a team of people they worked with, with a leadership team they had to report to.

That type of working from home is so different to “working from home running my own business”, and I know. I’ve done both now and I can tell you they are completely different experiences.

When you work at home for yourself, you ultimately have control over your time. You can decide what time you wake up, what times you eat, what time you finish work. There is a lot to be said for having that sense of freedom. Granted that isn’t to say working for yourself at home doesn’t come wth it’s own handful of challenges.

When you work for home for a company, that time is still not yours. You can’t decide to take a day off cause you don’t feel like working, you need to request for a personal leave and in today’s climate, often you’ll be asked to give a reason why. Maybe even obtain a doctor’s certificate. I’m not saying all corporates are like this, but you get the idea. It’s not the same.

For me the biggest struggle was finding a new routine. In the office I had my routine down pat. Woke up at 6:30am, got ready, prepped my breakfast and lunch and then begins my morning commute to the office, arriving at around 8am to prep my morning tea and then check and respond to emails for around an hour as my coworkers trickled in. And the slew of daily meetings often kicked off around 9am. Generally my days had a lot more structured by nature.

My new routine at home was a bit chaotic for the first month. Sometimes I’d feel motivated, get up my regular time and try and use my commute time to eat a nicer breakfast. Other times I’m totally sleep in right till the 8am mark and struggle into my office half asleep in my PJs. Also my home was my office, so even after 5pm I was still working and just could not mentally switch off (at least at the office at had the drive home as my way of switching off). And even worse, I couldn’t have the typical “water cooler” chats I longed missed that help lift my spirits at work when I was feeling down.

Exercise also started to become a problem, I could tell I was starting to put on a bit of additional weight. I never exercised seriously before, but the constant walking between meeting rooms was still enough to give me a bit of movement. At home? Hardly ever left my chair if it wasn’t to get food, go to the bathroom or go to bed. And honestly if you watch my vlogs, you’ll notice I’m basically in the same room all the time.

Two months in, my routine at home is a lot more down pat. I still miss physically seeing my team daily but have gotten very comfortable with now seeing them on videos daily in their home wear 😀 I’ve picked up a walking treadmill to help with the exercise which I use for any meetings that I’m just required to listen. Tobias and I have set up agreed break times where I stop looking at my laptop or messages that are related to work to help me mentally switch off, one thing we do that I love is that at the end of the work day we always take a quick walk around the block as a transition from day job to side hustle.

All in all, I’m enjoying it a lot more. I’ve adjusted well and whilst I hate what triggered all of this, I really am enjoy the new way of working and am curious to know how other companies adapt over time. So all in all, I’m doing well.

As we come to the close of the first week back at work, I’m taking time to reflect and process everything.

I remember clearly the week before work commenced I was on a high. Excited, motivated and energised to make some serious strides on my own projects. But I also had that lingering fear, that a return to work out hurt my motivation as it so often has for the many years prior.

But this year would be different, 2020 would be where all of that changed. I even put in a few checks to try and prevent me from falling such as maintaining a clean working space, putting together a vision board (something that is still in draft mode and not yet complete), researching some new medication techniques and , giving myself this blog.

So how did I do?

Not… too bad actually. My energy levels and emotional state certainly took a hit, but not even close to the degree it did last year. And so I remain cautiously optimistic as we enter the weekend. There is a lot of my plate, many goals to hit. But despite my consistent whinging, I am surprisingly still the eternal optimist. Always hoping that tomorrow will be better.

With a little less than an hour of 2019 left, I thought I’d come to the one place in the blogsphere where I feel I can truly be myself and reflect upon the year.

Honestly, I see some people reflecting on the year and having truly amazing things to ponder over, or some really not so great things they’d rather forget. As for me? I don’t really feel like I have… anything!

This year was really like any other year honestly. I could very easily dwell and call out how this year was so much more anxiety inducing that previous years (which it certainly has felt that way, I have no idea why I’m not coping as well as I used to..) and how further away from true happiness I currently feel. But…. a lot of it is in my head. Like a lot.

So 2019 from my perspective.

For some reason work has stressed me out a lot more than all my previous working years, yet the actual work itself and environment has got to be one of the most relaxed I’ve ever had. So what gives with the anxiety levels? Hopefully 2020 gives me better answers around that.

Honestly what probably hasn’t helped is what I’ve felt was a general decline in “success” around all my side hustles outside of work. Maybe I’m too thinly spread? Maybe I haven’t worked out what my true calling is? Maybe 2019 was just a sucky year? Either way, probably my biggest focus for 2020 will be to figure out what’s wrong and hopefully turn it all around.

On the flip side, I did a lot of fantastic travel during 2019. Kicking off the year in Tokyo, Japan. Spending Easter in New York and then Los Angeles. Spending my Melbourne Cup in some of the most beautiful and scenic parts of New Zealand! And I know any sort of travel, especially given my frequency is a true blessing that I am very grateful for.

So here’s to 2019! Just another year. Maybe 2020 will be better?

What if we ignored what we’ve been taught to believe our whole lives? What if we ignored societal pressures, if we put our own feelings and needs first? What if the path most walked didn’t exist and we had to discover our own path?

I do wonder how different my path would have been, and would I be much happier?

Because I know for a fact that for the most part, I am happy. But how much of that happiness is as a result of happiness based on the boundaries I’ve placed on myself?

I’m happy with my job, but is that because my belief is this is the best I can achieve to maintain the security I believe I require to be happy in the long term? I’d be willing to bet a lot of people sit in a similar bucket.

But I also know plenty of people who believe they are perusing their dreams, but are those dreams only sweeter because they believe they are doing something different to the norm? They’ve “escaped”?

You know logically as you get older, you have fewer years on this planet than before. But I don’t think it really hits you till you actually get older. And then you wonder, am I really happy?

I think I am.

And I think the majority probably are, but could an alternative path make us even happier? I think so.

December is well and truly here! And in the land of Youtube, December often comes with Vlogmas~ For those who don’t know what is Vlogmas, it was a concept invented by Ingrid Nilsen, one of the OGs beauty gurus from Youtube where you vlog every single day from the start of December till Christmas.

Like many I thought this was an amazing idea, vlogging can be so much fun but is also incredibly draining. So to have a strict timeframe where I have permission to vlog every day, but know there is an end in sight sounded perfect. However I didn’t want to just stop vlogging on Christmas, I wanted to vlog throughout the entire month. After all December is a special time of year for most, it’s festive, most people are on holiday, fireworks, and add on top of that my own birthday along with many others, and it really was the perfect month for me to go all out.

So instead of calling it Vlogmas, I called my version “Once Upon a December”. It felt just perfect, leaning into the whole fantasy and fables genre I love so much, and it is still one of my favourite songs from the movie Anastasia.

For a little while I wasn’t sure where ONCE/OUAD should live, it started on my vlog channel, migrated for a year or two to my main channel, but then I decided nope. It’s vlogging, it should just stay on my vlog channel so I can keep the content on my main channel consistent. I love categorising and labeling things, so it just makes sense that if I want to cover multiple topics, I have multiple channels.

Once Upon a December 2019 is currently in full force! You can head on over to the channel to watch, I have the latest videos linked in the side bar too~