(upbeat music)
- Hey designers,
how you doin' today?
Been a couple of weeks with no vlog,
because, well, I didn't feel like it,
that's the truth.
I don't know, man,
this pandemic goes in ebbs and flows.
It's really funny looking back at my previous vlogs
and you can very clearly see
these ebbs and flows in action,
where one blog I'm like,
"This is a great week, I had a great day,
"I love my job!"
And then other vlogs
I'm just trying to make it through sort of thing,
and this is definitely one of the
trying to make it through sort of weeks
that I'm in right now.
I actually feel like it's been going on
for at least two weeks,
really ready for it to end now.
Please don't worry about me or anything,
I think it's perfectly normal
to be going through ebbs and flows like this.
We all deal with it in different ways,
or don't deal with it,
sometimes, as the case may be.
But yeah, this week's been better than last,
which is why I felt like vlogging, I guess,
last week was our company retreat,
another virtual one,
so I think that's why I've kind of been feeling down,
'cause it's like every year, twice a year,
we get together in person for team retreats,
and this is the second team retreat
that we've had to have virtually instead of in person,
so it's kind of like a reminder
of the state of the world, I guess,
and I was just sad that we couldn't
all be together in person for it.
I didn't vlog throughout the retreat this time,
but I did the last time,
so I'll link that on a card
if you wanna go and check that out,
to see how we do virtual retreats.
Basically it's a lot of meetings and stuff,
but there's also,
half the meetings are fun activities
for bonding with the team.
And during the retreat days,
you're not expected to also do your regular work,
so I had more time off in the mornings,
which was very much needed and very nice!
I also didn't stay up late,
I had a lot of activities too.
So it balanced out.
But yeah, that's what happened last week,
and as part of it,
one of the activities that I did on retreat
was a coffee tasting class,
where it was really cool,
we do these AirBnB experience things.
A lot of people have been so creative in the pandemic,
I'm in awe of the way that small businesses
have found ways to provide value in different ways,
and provide value online during the pandemic.
We had this person in Columbia,
and she was teaching us about how to taste coffee,
and how to make a really good cup of coffee
with the equipment that we have.
And so now I'm taking
my coffee making in the mornings more seriously
and I'm actually using a scale
to weigh the amount of beans and water
and stuff that I'm putting in.
It's good, I mean, it tastes delicious.
Something else I've been doing is writing everyday,
I think I've talked about this in a previous vlog,
but I started a writing habit
at the start of the year on January 1st,
I was like, "This is what I'm gonna do this year"
and I just decided I was gonna do it every day,
and I have, it's February 3rd
and so far I have not skipped a day,
which is very exciting,
you would have heard me talk about that
in my bullet journal video, I believe.
I need to mark off that I did indeed do
today's writing session.
It was a light five, ten minutes of writing,
but anything counts,
it's just the practice, the habit of it
is what's important.
What else has been going on?
I've been building a website in Webflow,
which is what I'm gonna get on to doing more of today.
I have been streaming it on Twitch,
I know I keep talking about Twitch in these blogs,
but it's seriously so fun, I've been loving it a lot,
it's been feeling sort of like a coworking session,
to stream my screen as I work.
So you should follow me on Twitch,
I say that all the time,
but please go ahead and do it.
And if you missed some of the streams,
I do have a separate YouTube channel
I'm uploading them all to,
just to have it like a backup,
and I'm also gonna be editing together
some cutdown versions as well,
if you don't want to watch me make a website
for like three hours at a time,
'cause fair enough!
So we're gonna get into,
what else do I have to update you on?
The rules here in Spain have changed for the pandemic,
so I guess that's also why
I've been feeling down about everything.
They're just stricter,
we can still leave our house, though, which is nice
'cause that's the part I really struggled with
in the early days of the pandemic.
So let's get into the work day,
I have a very busy afternoon of meetings
which will be basically from 3:00 to 8:00,
but that means that there's a lot I need to get done
in the next few hours before lunch and those meetings start,
and I'm gonna get into building some shit in WebFlow,
it's gonna be fun.
(upbeat music)
Something very exciting arrived,
let's do a little mail opening.
I probably should have got the scissors.
Ready?
Ta da!
Oh my gosh, it looks so cool!
Let me lay it out so you can see it properly.
So for some context,
this was part of our retreat gift.
Usually every retreat, we get given a gift,
which is really nice,
it sort of feels like Christmas,
is what we call it.
And part of it is,
something that I had a hand in helping create,
is this flag banner that has
"The future belongs to creators" graphic on it.
This was designed by the very talented Terence Tang,
who is Tinlun over on Instagram.
It's screenprinted onto this handmade felt flag,
it's the same company that made this one
that I absolutely love,
that hangs on my wall very proudly,
and so I'm really excited,
I now get to add this one to it,
I think that I'm gonna hang it up here,
let me try and put the camera down,
so we can see if we can visualize it.
Are you even gonna be able to see?
If it's here, I think that'll look cool,
I don't think you can really tell on camera,
but just trust me!
There's that microphone getting in the way again.
Just to show you a few other things
that were part of my retreat gift this time round,
we got to choose whether we wanted
a snack gift, a chill gift or a create gift,
and I chose create,
and some of the main things in it were,
first of all this candle here,
which smells like the ocean, it's delicious,
it's really nice.
Is that how the beauty bloggers do it?
I also got these three little coloring books,
filled with mindfulness creativity activities,
and a set of colored pencils,
all the colors you could want,
how do I show you without dropping them?
So many pencils to color with,
which is really cool!
A few more things as well
that are sort of scattered around my house
because I've been using them,
stuff like this journal,
which is an accompaniment to Michelle Obama's book,
it features a prompt
and then you write your version of the story about it,
so that's really cool,
another nice mindful thing to do.
Super thoughtful gifts, super generous, love them.
Another thing that was part of it,
in the package when I first opened it I was like
"What am I getting a koosh ball for?"
Throwback to the 90s much?
And I thought that this would be something that
I would have to find someone to pass it on to,
but it has been so surprising
how calming it is to have this little fidget toy,
so this is what I am often found doing during meetings now,
playing with a koosh ball
and realizing that I'm very uncoordinated
when it comes to catching with my left hand.
But very nice gift, I feel very lucky,
very, very lucky indeed to work for a company
that does this sort of thing.
But I have to say, I'm most excited about that flag,
because look at my walls!
(upbeat music)
There we go!
I think it probably needs to be ironed or something,
but I just wanted to get it up as soon as possible.
And as per usual, using my favorite trusty command strips.
My whole wall is hung up through command strips.
And so far they've served me well,
but this in particular is super light
so definitely easy to stick up.
It looks so cool!
It's really exciting seeing this wall be more filled out,
there's a piece of art I wanna make myself to fill that gap
and then I have a few others that I can hang up
to start inching closer to the side,
and then I guess it's time
to go onto this wall here.
Yay gallery wall!
(upbeat music)
Okay, I'm about to enter my afternoon meetings.
I have not gotten as much done
on the website building as I wanted,
but what else is new?
I think it's going okay though,
I'm looking forward to having
a larger chunk of time tomorrow to work through it,
but what can I show you?
This is what it's looking like right now,
let me just load this.
See how this line extends down when you load,
how fun is that?
Like I said,
there's still a lot of placeholder content in here.
But I'm super excited with the
stuff I've managed to do so far,
I wanna add more interactions,
just subtle stuff but a few things.
Right now I'm focusing first on making sure that
the pages look good on each device size,
so this, it could do with some fixing.
Anyway, that's all I'll get to on this today.
Time for meetings, and then recording as well,
yeah, busy afternoon ahead.
(upbeat music)
So what else is new?
I did not finish the vlog on Wednesday,
it is now Saturday.
Still in the same place, probably look very similar.
So it turned out to be a very good week this week,
I am really liking,
let me just bring it up and show you,
the direction that I've gotten to
with this I'm A Creator website.
I managed to do some fun stuff,
watch this line here as you scroll down,
it scrolls down with you.
This is really cool,
you click 'copy caption' and it copies it,
I need to fix these a little bit but still, it's nice.
I did a three and a half hour stream on Friday
as I got to some of the finishing stages of this site.
And yeah, I am really happy with it.
I think it's turned out to be just the project I needed,
something that I could be really proud of, you know?
So that's good.
Something I've been working on this morning
is a new site,
which tab do I have it in?
So myself and these wonderful women
who you might also be subscribed to on YouTube
'cause they all have YouTube channels,
we've got Alexa, Fem, Maddie and Sarah,
I'll leave links to all their channels below.
We're gonna do a livestream event together
called Content Creation For Designers,
and as you might have guessed,
it's gonna be about creating content as a designer.
There's loads more designers wanting to get into
creating design content these days,
so we thought it'd be fun to get together
and share on a ticketed livestream event
all the things that we've learned
from producing content over the years.
So I'm excited for it, it's gonna be fun to do
this little collab project,
and I just made this page for it this morning
in ConvertKit of course,
and we're using ConvertKit commerce
to sell the tickets for it as well,
so that's fun,
I always love a reason to use the product that I work on.
So if you wanna join us,
you should head to creatingdesigncontent.com,
'cause I also bought a URL.
Check out the page, get your ticket,
it's happening on February 12th,
so we'd love to have you there for that,
not sure when this vlog will be going up
but that's probably very soon,
so yeah.
Hopefully we'll see you there!
Right now I think that,
'cause I'm planning on having quite a working day,
there's a lot of stuff I need to do
that I didn't get done during the week,
I feel like I might,
can you hear that helicopter?
(helicopter whirring)
I feel like I'm gonna go to Starbucks
because I want to,
I know Starbucks is trashy as fuck,
and there's much better coffee,
but I feel like an outing,
I can ride there on my scooter
and get myself a nice drink and some nice food
to work through the afternoon on some stuff
so that tomorrow can be a total relaxation day.
I don't think I showed you on Wednesday,
on Wednesday we finished the puzzle we'd been working on
and we've just started sorting out the edge pieces
for a new one,
it's a 3000 piece puzzle.
So this is probably gonna be my Sunday,
which means I need to get
all the work bits and pieces done that I want to today.
I'm gonna go have a shower
and get on my scooter and go to Starbucks.
(upbeat music)
Well, it has been a productive Saturday
and I'm gonna sign off the blog now
'cause from now on I'm going to move into relaxing mode
for the weekend.
Got a lot done,
most of the things I needed to do,
not all of them, to be honest,
but that hardly ever happens.
By the time you see this vlog,
there'll be two things that I would love for you to do next.
One is head to creatingdesigncontent.com
where you can sign up to
join that live event that we're doing
if you would enjoy doing that,
if it's before February 12th when you're watching this.
The second thing, head to iamacreator.co,
where you can check out the site that I've been building
in this vlog over the past few weeks,
and hopefully you might wanna take part in the giveaway
by nominating a creative that you believe in
to receive a free copy of the book!
But there'll be more details on that on the site,
so go check it out and let me know what you think
of the design of both of those things as well!
All right, hope you have a good week
and I will see you in the next vlog.
Bye!
(upbeat music)