Hi people.
It's time I share a day my life here in Mexico City.
I've been wanting to do this for the longest time,
but I haven't until now and I'll tell you why.
When people post this kind of thing online
it's usually pretty polished which is perfectly understandable.
Everyone seems to have their sh*t together
and I kind of felt a pressure to have my own sh*t together before making something like this.
But you know what? I don't buy it.
No one has their sh*t together.
Okay, life is theatre.
We're all perpetually in a state of struggle,
be it fear, doubt, confusion, you know, whatever.
I say embrace it. Right?
You think at 21 I have things figured out? Give me a break.
Don't let this fancy footage fool you, okay?
You are not seeing all the unsexy moments where I'm freaking out or whatever.
So I'm gonna do my best to be as honest as possible about what my days look like,
but no fake humility here.
I feel very lucky to have the life that I have.
I think it's pretty awesome.
It's a lifestyle that I've been working towards over the last four years
and cliché or not,
you guys are helping me make this happen.
I'm gonna break this up into five parts:
Morning, afternoon, evening,
things I dislike and finally things I love about living here.
Let's begin.
Good morning,
or "buenos días" as they say here in Mexico.
How you doing?
That's a rhetorical question considering this is a video that you're watching.
I sleep with a mic, apparently. That's realistic.
This is a really honest start to this day in the life video.
So I've been hard at work this year building habits that I think will improve my life.
I've been treating absolutely everything in life like a series of experiments
and I find that this takes the pressure off,
and it also allows me to take something out of every situation.
It's not so much about you know, success and failure.
Instead of chasing girls, partying, and doing backflips in blue-ass water,
I'm really just interested in learning about myself right now,
and figuring out what I'm capable of.
So usually I wake up between 7:00 and 8:00 a.m.
For a long time I tried to build a habit of waking up at five or even six.
"Productivity!" they say, "Start things off right!", "Grab your day by the balls!".
Well, look I tried.
All right, I can pull it off maybe one or two days a week,
but that's just not how I naturally operate.
I don't feel like like doing something like that really improves my life.
I like evenings and nighttime,
plus I'm trying to sleep a lot.
Like eight and a half hours a night if possible.
It's a lot, I know. If I were to be waking up that early I'd be having to go to bed at something like 9 p.m,
which for me is borderline humanly impossible.
Who knows maybe that'll change but for right now that's how it is and it works pretty well.
All right.
There's a quote that I absolutely love.
It goes: "Be regular and orderly in your life, so that you can be violent and original in your work."
I really like that, I mean I promise you my life looks super boring from the outside.
Just ask my roommates.
Hey, am I boring?
The secret is to pair drone footage with dramatic music and you're good.
Okay, so...
morning routine.
Do I have one? And the answer to that is no.
I do not. I know, insane.
I think that having a morning routine is fantastic, especially if it works for you.
But again, that level of structure for me just feels unnecessary.
Instead, what I try to do is I try to focus on habits that really anchor me.
There's no specific order. You know, there's no strict methodology about this.
It's all just about doing stuff that feels meaningful to me.
So I know this topic of morning routines has been spoken about extensively already,
so we're just gonna speed right through this.
So the things that I usually try to do within the first, let's say two to three hours of the day
are to stretch, bullet journal,
write down things I'm grateful for,
some form of exercise, that's usually running.
If I do workout,
I'll follow it up with a cold shower and a meditation.
It's really rare that I actually get to all these things in any given morning.
But if I'm doing let's say like 75% of it
75% of the time, then I'm doing really well.
I have no doubt in my mind that doing these things makes me a better human being.
There's just less angst,
and I have a better sense of direction,
and focus on what I want to do.
If you've been following my digital minimalism series then you know that I do my very best to
try not to check social media or email until noon.
I do this because mornings are mine.
You know, I don't want to start the day off reactively.
It kind of takes me a while to get into the zone, and
if I'm giving you grandpa vibes right now, it's okay. I've mostly accepted it.
I'm calling this next stage in my day afternoon because it's just easier that way,
but really this starts at 10:00 a.m. give or take an hour.
For those of you that are wondering, yes
I am committing my time fully and entirely to content creation online.
And I can't say it enough
I feel extremely fortunate and this is thanks to you guys.
The trick was that I acted as if I was a broke college student,
and I was lucky enough to have parents who were cool enough to let me live with them,
and be able to save up money and work during a several year period.
It's kind of a separate story,
but to give a little bit of context of how this is possible.
So 10 a.m. comes around and guess what?
This is where structure for me goes out the window.
I have tried scheduling things on Google Calendar,
time blocking,
building a routine.
It just does not work for me.
My time management skills are on par with like a toddler's.
I find that level of organization just suffocating.
Here's the bottom line,
I just don't procrastinate when it comes to creating videos and storytelling.
You know, I'm borderline obsessed with it.
I can only speak from my experience here, but I find that
procrastination is only really a problem for me
when I'm faced with a task that I really don't want to do.
Again, story telling is just something that I've naturally gravitated towards
in a very intentional way since I was like 12.
So now what I do is I try to give myself this
massive 10-hour block of time
to do the things that are most important to me.
And for me having that time, is the dream,.
That is more valuable than having a sports car, or a mansion, or any of those things.
I worked in the film industry on and off for four years
and while I was an aimless production assistant
that ran around buying props at Target or coffee for the crew,
I couldn't stop thinking about the ways I wished I was able to use my time.
So those things that are most important to me are usually creating,
learning, and reflecting.
And most important of all is that I can go at my own pace.
This is so important to me because I'm just not good under pressure
and I'm pretty slow, honestly, when it comes to creating.
Every project takes me longer than I expect
and I'm a little bit of a perfectionist.
So having that freedom is just essential for me.
Really all I need to do is start every day,
and then the rest just happens by itself.
To give kind of an example my videos usually take around 30 hours to make,
but that varies widely, you know, if I'm doing something on a topic, I really love
like food or books,
it can be a lot longer than that.
What I've realized is that this is the work that I'm meant to do right now.
So it is going to take the time that it takes.
There's just no shortcuts, no rushing things.
Part of my philosophy is that quality always beats quantity.
This is gonna sound a little bit egotistical,
which fair enough. I mean you clicked on a video about my life, right?
But I'm treating this whole process as my craft,
and I want to become one of the best in the world.
So I'm willing to do what it takes.
And yes, that does mean I'm a little bit crazy,
and I spend a lot of time alone
usually at this desk right here editing.
It's funny because from the outside it probably looks like this:
But when I'm in it, you know, it's like it's it's a little bit better than that.
I have trouble pacing myself.
When I'm excited about a project there's basically nothing else I want to do,
and that's a little bit problematic.
So I try to take breaks, you know to eat or to run.
Or exercise if I didn't do so in the morning.
I find that when I'm "at it" a little bit too much that sense of joy and enthusiasm
starts to feel under threat and when that happens I know that I need to take a break.
Finally this is the part of the day that I struggle with by far the most.
What I'm trying to do right now
is sort of cut things off by 9 p.m.
so that I have time to eat dinner,
reflect, wind down,
and be in bed by like, I don't know 11 p.m.
Again, that's sort of the ideal scenario,
but I really struggle and I've always struggled with
ending the day and cutting things off.
This is something that I'm continually working towards.
As I look for a lifestyle that helps me realize my potential.
However silly that sounds I think that's what we're all trying to do.
And I find that whenever I'm lacking like in an emotional sense,
this part of the day becomes so much more difficult.
You know, that the idea of just end of the day and going to bed.
And again, I'm kind of describing a typical day in my life,
but if ever the opportunity arises to have dinner with really good friends
and talk late into the night, I will take it.
Alright, I'll be honest. There are a few things that I don't like about living here.
Absolutely nothing goes according to plan in this city,
which in truth, is part of the magic of this place.
I'm not super pumped about the pollution here, so I run with air filtration masks sometimes
Also, I came to Mexico to escape the Portland rain and it turns out that summer is the rainy season here.
So joke's on me, I guess.
The city is super creative.
I love the trees here.
I love running in the morning before chaos has descended.
I love that my rent isn't even 500 bucks a month.
I also love that my apartment is extremely crooked.
Let me show you what I'm talking about.
All of the Mexicans are hardworking people.
I love that they say "buen provecho" when they see you eating.
I love chilaquiles with the green sauce because the red sauce would incinerate my tongue and throat.
And I love "café de olla".
Don't believe the bullsh*t that you see on the news.
Mexico is an amazing country.
Yeah, so that is I guess my best attempt at sharing a day in my life.
Guaranteed, a lot of this is going to change and I'm perfectly okay with that.
I have this feeling that people a hundred years from now
would kill to know what it's like to live in this time period.
Like I mentioned briefly at the beginning of this video
I just don't really like when I see on social media
people showing their incredible lives and their incredible lifestyles,
but then they give absolutely no explanation on how they make it happen.
This entire channel, this entire project that I've been working on,
has been my best attempt to do the exact opposite.
I've talked about things like,
how much money I'm making and how I'm making it,
and I plan to continue to do so in the future.
I'm also trying to talk about like fears and doubts that I have
because even though it's uncomfortable to talk about these things,
and despite the fact that it's not as glamorous to talk about these things,
I think it's important.
The Internet has made it incredibly easy to
criticize people that live in walks of life
or in ways that are foreign to you or they don't align with your values.
I understand that fear of receiving criticism.
It definitely doesn't feel good,
but it's a part of life,
and I think that it should never ever stop you from putting yourself out there.
Alright, I think that's enough from me.
I did a behind-the-scenes video.
It's available on my Patreon page.
If you're interested in kind of how I made this happen
and some funny moments and bloopers.
Let's begin
Oh my God!
I also have an Instagram that you can follow to see some of my photography
and the things that I'm shooting here in Mexico City.
And finally, I have a newsletter
so that I'm not 100% dependent on the algorithms of different social media platforms.
Thank you for watching and I'll see you soon.