- Good morning friends,
welcome to the first vlog of 2021.
I know I did upload a vlog already this year,
but it was actually filmed in December 2020.
So this is officially the first 2021 vlog.
And the year has kicked off well,
I mean, it's been wild, hasn't it?
Like I've been thinking about everyone in the US
and dealing with everything that's been happening there,
it's just, it's a mess, it's a mess
and we knew this would happen,
we knew that the calendar
doesn't automatically like cause a shift in the world
or fix pandemics, fix governments or anything like that,
but overall for me,
well, I was gonna say overall it's been a positive start,
but I don't know if I can actually say that or not.
I had a rough week last week, honestly.
I don't know, it was just dealing with life.
Some frustrations at work, some frustrations with myself.
I wasn't very kind to myself last week perhaps,
so this week I've definitely been trying
to like stay more positive
and not be bringing that energy into this new week.
Yeah, but, I felt like vlogging today,
felt like showing you what I'm up to.
It's a Tuesday and something that we're doing at ConvertKit
this year is having no meetings Tuesdays and Fridays.
So, that means that, well I don't have any meetings
booked in today, so we're not gonna see as much footage
of me talking into my microphone.
I am gonna record a podcast with Them though
so that's something that will be happening
and I do have a Spanish class today,
so, there will be a bit of that
but maybe not as much as usual.
It has meant that the other days of the week,
so the Monday, Wednesday, Thursday,
my afternoons/evenings are crammed with meetings
'cause we're trying to fit everything in then.
But I'm hopeful that it means that today
it's gonna be a good, like nice productive day,
'cause I don't have to think about content
switching as much.
What have I got to do today?
So, right now we're working through our review cycle,
this my first performance review cycle as a manager
so that's exciting and interesting and challenging
and difficult and freaking scary,
but yeah, working through that.
Luckily I only have three people on my team
who were there for the full write review cycle.
So, I've only got three to work through
and I'm getting help on them from their previous manager.
But yeah, it's something new for me, for sure.
In exciting news, we had an new designer start yesterday
which is very exciting.
I don't know if he wants to...
like haven't been on publicly, but his name's Caleb.
And so you might hear me reference him every now and then
but we'll see if he is a person who would want to
actually be on camera, like, me filming my screen
or whatever.
At times, like kind of a Corey doesn't mind
but yeah, that's been cool.
So I'm gonna check in with him now and see how he's feeling
for a second day at the company.
We have a pretty like intense two onboarding process
of like getting people up to speed with learning
about the company and the product
and all that as well.
So he's got lots to be getting on
with lots of learning to do,
but yeah, I'm gonna see how he's going.
What else, I need to get some design done today
and it might stream it.
This is something that I did two weeks ago.
I didn't stream it all last week.
Cause like I said, wasn't really feeling like it
but I streamed a session by framing a website
and I would like to stream some more as I move on
with the design with it.
So that might be a thing that we do today.
Let's get on and have a good work day.
(lighthearted music)
So I just had a private Spanish lesson, which was very fun
as you know, if you've been watching my vlogs for a while,
I've been doing classes for almost a year now?
I started in March last year, one in person
before the quarantine hit.
My online classes that are like
the group ones I was doing throughout 2020
we're in the evenings on Mondays and Wednesdays.
And I was just really finding it
like affecting my whole week,
having classes from 6:30 to 8:30 PM.
It made work more stressful
to like fit meetings in around other things.
And sometimes I would end up needing to do work
after my Spanish class, which meant I didn't get good sleep
which I end up ineffective the next day, et cetera.
And so I tried to do a group class earlier in the day
because one of the things I wanted to do
with Spanish classes was like meet people.
And sadly, it's you can't meet people as well online
through your Spanish class.
I don't know.
There's no sort of like before class-after class interaction
we could go get a drink with someone or whatever.
I don't know.
I was kind of like hoping to make friends in class.
There was one girl who once we're able to meet
in person again, ask out for a coffee or something.
But anyway, I'm rambling.
I've decided this year to go for private classes instead
just so that I can have them in the morning.
Cause there wasn't like an online morning class at my level
like a group one that suited and yeah, it went really well.
I feel like I spoke a lot more
than I would normally do in the group classes.
And that's what I need any practice
like being forced to speak it and uncover all of the words
that I don't know because there is a lot of them
that I just learned in today.
Where I like was like, Oh how do you say this?
Anyway I'm gonna record a podcast with them now.
So let's go do that.
(lighthearted music)
What are we talking about today?
Did you wanna do...
Oh men, okay. The camera's in the same place
So it probably looks like not a lot of time has passed
but many hours have, it's been a busy afternoon not working
on the things that I wanted to be working on.
I've been sort of like fighting a few files
lets just put it that way.
And there's been a lot of like back and forth
and communication, very synchronous with communication,
with teammates about some things.
But to end out my day, I want to make sure I'm getting
in like an hour of focus design time today.
Cause that is like just something that I need
to make happen.
So I think I'm gonna stream.
Last week, I think I said this well as well,
I streamed on Twitch some design stuff
and it wasn't really great like productive session.
And so I'm going to try it again.
I'm gonna try streaming as working on design.
So I'm just sort of like closing stuff down
that I don't want to have showing on my screen
during stream and getting ready for that.
This will be fun.
(lighthearted music)
Oh, hello.
We've got Corey (indistinct)
Corey go away.
Let's be real you're strengthening.
Oh man, that stream was great.
That's exactly what I needed.
It was like a chaotic afternoon as you probably like sensed
from the way I was talking about it.
Was a lot of like reactive stuff and sort of take the time.
And I spent like an hour and a half on that stream,
working on things was great.
Yeah. Really good, feeling really good about that.
Now I'm stopping this.
So we're gonna sign off for the day
and go and make dinner and I'll see you again tomorrow.
(bouncy music)
Good morning. I'm gonna take this off
so that you can actually probably hear me for a minute.
There's no one around.
It's just me.
Come on the morning walk to visit my favorite buildings.
I feel like these buildings don't feature in my vlogs
as often as they feature in my life if that makes sense.
It's in very accurate representation of a work day
for me to come and visit these,
do it a couple of times a week,
just to go for a little walk.
Yeah. I love them.
These buildings were part of the reason
why I fell in love with Betsy.
I just think they're so cool.
And even though like when you get up to close to them,
they're very rundown and like, not as...
Can you even see that one in the background?
It's Nope, it's too right?
Yeah. They're very run down
and they perhaps don't look as good in person
as they do in pictures, but hey, it's still nice.
Nice to have a place to like a destination to come walk to
to get out of the house, to kick off my day.
Yeah. To start for a bit of exercise.
Oh man.
Last night I didn't sleep good.
Well, I slept okay.
But I woke up really early and it's like,
as soon as I wake up, my mind is like,
it's time to about work now.
And I need to find a way for that to be not a case.
Cause it's not gonna be sustainable.
Long-term.
I always do something sort of like mindful
like this in the mornings before the work day
come for a walk, do some yoga, do a workout,
as you've seen in previous vlogs.
Something that I remember Mark suggested
as I was talking to him about it this morning
is that I end each day with something mindful as well
to sort of have more of a break between the work day
and the evening.
Because I sort of like am finishing up work
sort of like tearing myself away
from replying to messages,
getting things done because when it's the end of my day
it's sort of the middle of the day for the US team.
And that's when they're like active on Slack
and conversations are happening
and I'm like I gotta be a part of it.
Yeah. So he suggested that I do something mindful
to close the day.
So thinking I'm going to do that today
and we'll try it out and see how it goes.
I know that you can't just do it once and expect it to work
but yeah, we'll see how it feels to not be a sort of like
rushing from work to making dinner, to like, okay
you've got to get like an hour of relaxing.
And now before it's time for bed
like it makes no sense to stress about relaxing time.
Does it?
That's that's just weird.
So yeah.
I think it's a good suggestion.
We'll try it out.
I don't know if I have anything else to say right now.
Yeah. I'm gonna sort of continue on a little bit more.
There's some more buildings down here.
Check out that one.
That's the science museum.
Oh yeah.
This is like it's called the city of art and sciences.
Did I say that already?
This is an IMAX.
This is an opera house.
We walked past like the music hall as well.
But yeah, they're just beautiful, beautiful buildings
Calatrava buildings kind of looped down and head back.
We're doing a movement challenge at work at the moment.
I probably should have stopped my watch
while I sit down for a second, like tracking my walk
we're doing a movement challenge.
Cause like ConvertKit like to arrange
these sort of wellness challenges, which is really fun.
This one's a team one, you're paired up with someone
and combined you need to do 40 minutes of movement per day.
And if you do and you do that for like the full two weeks
in a row or whatever it is,
then there's like prices and stuff like that.
And it's a really different challenge
because like we've had them before,
when it's just been like
you trying not eat sugar for two weeks
I try and do this for two weeks or whatever.
But when there's someone else like on your team
and I'm like, I don't want to let my teammate Mark down
by not doing my exercise for the day.
And so it's working, it's working well
this whole like team competition thing
to get us moving, I think, which is great.
Oh look, here we are.
This is as much as touristy as I can do lately.
(bouncy music)
put this back on now.
Lets keep walking.
(bouncy music)
I talked about it in my bullet journal video
which I think you will have seen by now
but I am challenging myself this year
to make time to write every day.
Just a lot of the projects
and like things I wanna do.
Writing helps with them or like writing needs to be done
in order to make them happen.
And so I've been trying to develop that habit.
Last week my writing sessions were definitely longer
than they have been this week.
Like probably only done like a five minute writing session
Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday this week, but that's okay
because the point is to make it habit and to do every day
even if it is only for a short amount of time.
So yeah, just marked those off in the bullet journal.
And now it's time to open up Slack
and check in on things and sort out what I need to do today.
(bouncy music)
just had a big long meeting.
Going through our current design government process
with our new designer and Cory.
And that was really fun to sort of like
offload all that information.
And it's just so exciting to have someone else on the team
to be working on our marketing website with me
and Corey after all this time.
Yeah. I have a very short break between meetings now,
before yeah, getting into the last few for the day.
Something that I'm doing a bit later on
and it's probably gonna be the next clip you see honestly,
is I am hosting a new podcast.
This is gonna be my third podcast
for my portfolio repertoire.
I don't know what word you use there
but I'm taking over hosting.
The future belongs to creators
which is a podcast that Nathan and Barrett started
back when the pandemic first hit
and they just like wanted to be creating more.
They started out as a daily live show
dropped down to a twice a week live show
and now I'm going to be hosting it alongside Haley
and Miguel from the ConvertKit team
and we're gonna be doing it once a week
live on Wednesdays at 1230 Eastern time.
So if you ever wanna come hang out in the live chat
while we do that, I would love to see you there.
It's over on the ConvertKit YouTube channel,
youtube.com/convertkit.
I will put a link on a card
trying to think about which corner the card goes in.
I'm gonna point there, but I think I'm wrong.
We'll see.
Anyway, you should subscribe and come join us.
Yeah. On Wednesdays for those, there'll be all episodes
about like the creative economy, the creative industry.
What it is means to be a creator, we'll have interviews
and project deep dives and discussions
and it's gonna be a fun time.
So that's what I'm doing later on tonight.
I'm feeling nervous because it's her first like live one
but to host it, I've been testing out the software
called stremio that I think is gonna enable us.
This is just an example of me up right now
to do some cool things.
Like for example, I can play a countdown
at the start of the episode.
We can play like this video here at the end.
Let me turn off.
This is another thing you can do is you can like quickly
just add a comment from your live chat onto screen.
You can add banners and stuff as well.
I don't know.
I think it's going to be good.
So we're going to test it out for the first time today
and see how it goes live.
We've used it before for recording, but not for live.
(bouncy music)
welcome everyone to first live episode (indistinct)
(bouncy music)
and we'll see you back here the same time next week. Bye.
Okay. So it's the next day.
And while I didn't film it
I actually did stop and do a mindfulness session after work
which was really good.
I use the calm app, we just pull it up.
So they have like a daily calm that it's like a yeah.
A new meditation thing each day.
And so I just clicked on that
and did it, and it was really nice.
I think it's gonna take practice to like actually
get out of my own thoughts a lot more
but think it's something I should continue doing
to attempt to break free from like stress
and thinking about work when I'm not working.
That's the hard part about working at home.
You're always at work technically,
so you gotta be careful with that stuff.
Anyway. Thanks for watching the vlog.
I'm not sure this one was overly interesting
but I mean, I don't know.
I showed you stuff I was doing in my week
and that's just what I was doing this week.
And I'll see you back next week for a new vlog.
Thanks for watching.
Bye.
(upbeat music)