Life Lately: How’s Your 2018?

I started writing a blog post this evening about why I feel like I’m a living, breathing example of the quote: “it gets better” with respect to my school days (i.e. how they sucked but also managed to be kind-of great at the same time), but it all got a little too deep, I’m off schedule (i.e. writing this blog post after a 12 hour work day instead of on a Sunday), and I just didnt have the energy to construct such a post. So, whilst that will be coming your way in the near future, I thought it would be better to talk about how my 2018 has started off, what goals I’ve set and how and why 2018 differs to 2017…

As you may recall from my 2017 review post, last year was kind of…”meh”. I live (right now) what I’ll call a “cosy” life – I have a decent job, I have the opportunity to travel a few times a year, I get to share my experiences at times on panels or at events and I’m doing what I love with blogging and social media. But – the issue in 2017 is that I spent too much time just… coasting. Things were cosy, and so I sat in these cosy confines of my little box throughout the year – not doing much to push myself, getting seriously down if I didn’t see results in different projects, and overall doing a whole lot of nothing.

I am determined to make a change this year – to up my productivity, to pursue scary projects, to not feel defeated and to essentially keep pushing until I can’t push anymore. And although we’re only 2 months in the year, things have gotten off to a decent start.

I seriously upped my productivity game
I started 2017 extremely productive. I was blogging on a regular schedule, pitching a lot, seriously evaluating the direction of my blog and I even kept a little Excel that tracked my blogging income, contacts, and analysed which of my posts were doing well and what topics readers like to see. Some time into the year I just sort of… ran out of steam. And by mid year, I had completely fallen off. Even worse, I felt so discouraged by the state of my blog and online presence that I never really “got back on” in the second half of the year, and I did consider giving up all together. *Shudders* – dark times. This year I’m hoping to keep the productivity up into the rest of the year, and to spend less time whining and more time executing. One thing I’ve found to help my productivity has been writing To Do Lists, I tend to do this every single day that I hit the desk at work, but never when it comes to my own personal projects. Although I rarely manage to filter through everything I set out to complete in a day (I always think I’m superwoman… turns out I’m not), it brings some structure to my days and allows me to have trackable goals and a workstream to follow. As I work full time (and then usually go to the gym after work), it’s safe to say that I come home most days absolutely exhausted. I tend to get most of my blog / online work done during the weekend, but I’ve found that if I set myself just a small amount of tasks during the weekday, I’m able to get more done than I would have otherwise (the alternative is getting nothing done – hard to beat). It could be as little as “e-mail X, Y and Z”, or “research X” – but at least it’s something.

Shop This Look
Jacket: Missguided (similar)
Crop: Missguided (exact)
Photography: Marianna Olaleye

I tried my first fitness guide
I’ll have a more detailed post coming on this soon – but I decided to see what the fuss was around guides and purchase my first. I’ve come close to buying many guides in the past but usually stop myself at the checkout once I evaluate the cost and wonder if I’m just doing something because it was advertised to me, with little thought being put into it otherwise. Taking all that into consideration, when Hanna Oeberg put out a 4 week guide for only £22, and I figured I didn’t have much to lose. I finished it up early this week and overall, I can say that it brought a lot of structure, change and new considerations to my overall fitness routine / training regime. Although, that being said, I am also happy to be going by the beat of my own drum again. There’s definitely a fine line. Two major things I learned here is that it’s important to keep switching things up (to keep things exciting), and also that how I feel > what the scales have to say.

I’m building a business
You have probably heard me mention quite often that I am working on a “new project” and for the foreseeable future I will continue to mention it in the same context. But basically – I’m working on something really exciting that is also a lot of hard work. Traditionally what I’ve had on my plate is the balance of full-time work and blogging, but now that I’ve added working out / heath & fitness and this “new project” to that agenda and what I can tell you is that it’s extremely tiring and I feel like I’m working three jobs at one time (it means I always, always have to refer to point #1 on productivity). But really what I wanted to share here is that I’m actually doing something totally out of my comfort zone (I even have me some business cards – check me out), it’s a steep learning curve and don’t get me wrong – it’s incredibly scary. But sometimes it’s not enough to say what you will do “one day”, eventually you just have to just get out and do it. Live by the quote: “die by your own sword” – then at least if all turns to sh*t – you’ve died by your own sword and not some else’s! That’s as much as I’ll say on it for now – but definitely watch this space for more updates (although these may be a bit / a lot further into the future).

I’ve been travelling
I’ve had the blessing of travelling to three countries over the past two months, with another in the pipeline for next month. I started off my year skiing in the alps, pretending I’m a pro skiier and drinking away during that whole “apres-ski” thing, soon after made a quick detour to Stockholm for a day for a few client meetings. Finally, last week my boyfriend and I took on Vienna as he had a keynote at the ICONOMI Meet the Managers event – as the trip was partially funded we got to stay in the most luxurious hotel, and to top it off we went during Valentine’s Day so could go for a mushy v-day dinner too. I definitely have some sort of travel bug and feel (minor) withdrawls if I’m in the UK for tooo long; I just i) love having a break from “regular” life and also ii) love getting to experience a brand new culture. I’ll probably spend a week this summer in Santorini and that’s what I’m most excited for as – in case you’ve never Googled the place – it is absolutely gorgeous. That said, I used to feel like I absolutely had to be abroad almost all the time to be living a fulfilled life (blogger / instragram problems, I know ya’ll relate), but towards the end of last year I also came to appreciate just how much juicier my account looks when I haven’t been flying all over the place. So I guess it’s a win-win situation either way.