- Good morning everyone, welcome to a new vlog.
I'm vlogging on a Monday today,
which is not something I usually do.
I usually end up filming these vlogs later on in the week,
don't know why, just that's what's been happening
but today I woke up and I felt like I wanna document today,
I wanna vlog today.
Last week was just overall not a good week.
I don't have any particular reason why,
it's just, I don't know.
I saw a tweet from Jessica Hische the other week
and let me just put it up on my screen
so I can like, say it properly as I read it to you
but I really related to it
and this is what I was feeling too.
In fact, I'm gonna insert a screenshot over here
where she says that she goes through
somewhat pleasurable boredom to creative inspiration
to creative mania, where you're being overly productive
and like, "ah, make all the things,"
then it turns into an anxious mania,
then anxiety depression grief party, depressed boredom,
which turns into somewhat pleasurable boredom, repeat,
like, on and on.
Yeah, highly relate to that.
I have weeks where I just feel so low
and don't get anything done, weeks where I enjoy
the not having anything to do and not getting anything done,
weeks where I just feel so incredibly inspired
and wanna make use of this time
and you know, be doing things, working on my side hustles,
yeah, it's a unique, I don't know, it's exhausting
and I know that a lot of you are probably feeling this too
so I don't know if you relate to that cycle at all
but yeah, last week I was
definitely in the low point for sure
and I just found that I couldn't snap out of it.
The weekend helped, it helped having time off
to do my own thing and to just do whatever I felt like,
not being at work, which tells me
that I probably should've taken a mental health day off
at some point last week, probably would've really helped
but yeah, Friday, which was the day I vlogged last week,
I was actually feeling more accomplished 'cause I was
just finishing off the homepage
so you probably wouldn't have been able to tell in that vlog
that I was having such a low week but I was.
I woke up today just feeling so much better though.
I've talked before about how I love Mondays
because they're a fresh start, start of a new week
and I feel like this Monday in particular
is the epitome of why I love it, where I can be like,
"okay, that was last week, last week was a low week"
and I obviously need to work on the way I'm framing things
in my brain because just 'cause I have one low day,
doesn't mean the whole week has to be like that
but that's like, a separate issue
but yes, I want this Monday to be the start of a good week,
so this morning I decided as I woke up,
checked the time, laying in bed,
I was not gonna pick up my phone and scroll social media
because I know that that is an unhealthy habit.
I'm gonna try, this week, to keep up with
not checking before lunchtime, not having a look,
although I did just pull up Twitter
to check out Jessica Hische's tweet, didn't I?
So let me close that time right now
before I go into my notifications.
I went for a walk this morning.
Let me insert some clips from the river bed,
here in Valencia.
It was a lot less busy today than it was on Saturday,
which was the first day we were allowed out for a walk.
Adults can go out between 6AM and 10AM,
is when we're allowed to be out for exercise.
They've got all these different time slots
for different age groups and vulnerabilities
to keep things split up.
That was just great to start my day with a walk.
I had a nice long walk listening to a podcast,
it's a podcast that I have talked to you about before
but I'm gonna bring it up again
'cause this was such a good episode,
it was just what I needed to hear today.
You know when you click play on something
and, I don't know, actually listen to it or watch it
or whatever the medium is, read it,
you're like "yes, this is what I needed to be seeing,
"hearing, in this moment."
It was an episode of the Deeper Life podcast,
which is hosted by my friend, Alexis,
and in it she's interviewing
another colleague of ours, Benjamin.
He is, well used to be, a hypnotist
and he, on our team retreats, will lead meditation sessions,
he actually works for our customer success team now,
but yeah, he's a great guy with really good tips
for mindfulness and they're having a great conversation
in this show about how you talk to yourself.
They cover a lot of things like friendships as well
but the stuff about how you talk to yourself
and how you frame things in your mind was like,
obviously, what I needed to hear today
as I'm setting out to try and have a good week.
So yes, fantastic episode, it is episode three I believe,
"Benjamin and Alexis on turning your mind into an ally."
So I'll leave a link to this episode in the description,
I almost said show notes
'cause we're talking about a podcast,
if you feel like you could benefit from listening
to that too 'cause it is super, super good.
Anyway, Monday, Monday morning, turning on the computer
to start work.
Gonna start with the usual catch up, going through Slack
and Basecamp and also making my plan for the week.
So, 'cause I sort of wrapped up a project last week
and there's another one that's in its final stages too,
that means this week I get to be starting a new project
and I feel excited about that today
so I'm gonna dive in wire framing
for a new page on our site, which we'll talk about later on
when we get into it and yeah, I'm gonna make
my plan for the week and set out to have a good one.
Let's do this.
(upbeat electronic music)
Just had a really successful session,
sitting outside wire framing using Concepts, that's the app,
for everyone who always asks, on my iPad.
It's for this new project that I'm gonna be working on,
a new page for our video training,
so it's gonna promote the upcoming live workshops
and also any pre-recorded ones that we have there
as well as some of our quick tips videos
that are more technical tips and less strategy,
which is what the workshops are.
Yeah, right now it's just a plain default page in WordPress
that the team add to manually
anytime there's a new workshop coming up,
so obviously, there's a lot we can do to improve
the user experience for our team and automating that
but also in like, visually, just making it look better.
So yeah, I've got some ideas which is cool.
I love the wire frame process, I need to make
another updated video about it.
I think I've said that before
but I really need to make that happen
because you start out sketching
what you already had in your head,
that's the most obvious solution,
you're like "duh, yeah, this is probably
"what we're gonna go with"
but then you force yourself to come up with other ideas
and yeah, through the process you discover
things that maybe you didn't think of before.
That's definitely what happened for me during this process,
so that feels really good.
I feel like it is, it's nearly one o'clock now,
I thought it was noon, I'm an hour behind.
It's one o'clock on a Monday and I've already had
a win for the week in getting this project kicked off,
so that feels really good and definitely helps along
with my trying to make this a good week theme.
I'm gonna take a break now, do some personal email stuff
and then have lunch
and then when I come back this afternoon,
I'm going to work on
putting some of these designs into Figma,
this is a bit of a closer look
at what my wire frames are looking like.
I like to put a little, well it's meant to be a star
but it ends up being a squiggle, on the ones that I think
I want to mock up on the computer and explore further
on those ideas so, yep, this is what we've got.
Good session.
(upbeat pop music)
You're on the vlog, Cory.
- Hey, the Cory that I work with,
the developer that I work with.
I wanted to be heard!
- [Charli] You might have seen him in the chat,
when I do premiers or something, I don't know.
This is Cory, everyone.
- It's the best place to be,
welcome to Charli Marie TV, fade in intro.
(upbeat electronic music)
- Great, thank you.
(laughing)
I have to report that I've started this afternoon
to not feel great again, which is really frustrating
'cause I feel like I've done everything right today
and that I should be in a really good mood.
I started the day off great
but yeah, it's slowly going downhill, let's just say that.
So my plan for the next half hour
'cause I only have half an hour left of my work day
before my Spanish class, which is happening online.
I am quite excited about that, that's gonna be fun.
But I'm gonna pick an album, this is my pick me up,
what I do when I need to focus and get something done
but my brain just isn't in the right space for it,
I pick an album that I know I love
and music that I'm gonna really enjoy listening to
and I set my forest timer that you've heard me talk about
in many other videos.
So I'm gonna set a timer right now for, oh I think
I can only fit in 25 minutes before needing
to go to Spanish class.
So 25 minutes, I'm gonna play Enter Shikari's new album
because I'm loving it recently
and let's see what I can get done.
(rock music)
Okay, that turned out to be
a good productive last 25 minutes of the work day.
I definitely didn't clock enough working hours today
as I would've liked to and as I was hoping to
when I started the day off on a good note
but hey, I've moved forward the project
and I'm reminding myself that that's what's important.
At the start of the day I hadn't even started
on this new training page and now I've done some sketches,
I've got four of my favorite designs into Figma
and more ideas have been coming from that
and thinking about how to structure the content of the page
and what sort of experience we want to make.
So, that's good.
You want a little sneak peek of what we've got so far?
Let me show you.
So yeah, these are the four options that I've done.
When I'm moving from this, I have my iPad set beside me
with the sketches on the screen,
moving from there to here, I'm super messy.
Like, things are very off grid, if I turn on the grid,
oop, you can see nothing is perfect
and yeah, I don't know, I'm just basically sketching
in Figma here but I'm getting the ideas out.
So yeah, I'm really happy with where I've ended up.
None of these are the winner yet, I don't think
but we've got plenty of different ideas.
I know these all look very similar
but I promise you, there is big differences
within how the content is organized in them.
I guess this will be the next project
that I'm walking you through in future vlogs
when I get further in the design process.
Yeah, it's gonna be a page where it's got all about,
I don't know if I explained it already,
it'll have all of our live upcoming workshops,
as well as links to the pre-recorded ones
that you can watch any time, some quick tip videos,
basically it's like a video training hub for our website,
'cause we, right now, don't have that
and it needs to exist.
Anyway, it is 6:30 which means that I need to go
and join my Spanish class, which means finding the link
in my email and opening it and being on Zoom for two hours.
That sounded really sassy, it is actually really fun to,
I don't know, the teacher's really good.
He makes you try and speak in Spanish
and I don't know, helps you through mistakes
and things like that and is just a really good teacher
and it's a pleasure to learn from someone
who's a good teacher, you know when you do,
I mean, I'm not a teacher
but I've taught workshops and stuff
and you really notice bad teaching when you've attempted
to teach other people things
and you also really notice and appreciate good teaching
and yeah, my Spanish teacher is exceptionally good.
So yeah, let me go and do that before I'm late.
(rock music)
Spanish class over, that was really fun as per usual.
We were learning about the imperative,
if anyone cares to know what stage I'm at.
It is a very beginner's stage.
(laughing)
I feel like, I don't know, with Spanish I can understand
surprisingly a lot of it,
considering I don't know everything.
I can understand a lot of Spanish,
it's just that I have a really hard time speaking it,
like, pronouncing it 'cause I just don't have
enough practice speaking it
and coming up with the words in my head on the spot,
if that makes sense.
So like, you know, knowing how to say something
without having to stop and think for ages about the word,
which I have to do in English sometimes anyway,
so it's even harder in Spanish.
Yeah, that is the end of my day now,
that is the end of this vlog.
I have no idea if it was a much shorter one than usual,
I have a feeling it was
but yeah, thanks for hanging out with me.
I'm a little disappointed, I thought that it was gonna be
a much more positive vlog than I think
it ended up being because yeah, just the afternoon
really went downhill for me unfortunately
but I'm gonna try again tomorrow
because I don't wanna let this be
setting the tone of the whole week, like it did last week,
so I'm very determined.
Tomorrow I'm gonna get up, go for another walk,
listen to a podcast, ooh actually, Cory,
who you just met, on camera before I know you hear
me talk about him all the time, he and his friend Kyle
launched a new podcast called Commuteless
which is all about remote work,
which is obviously very, very relevant at this time.
Both him and Kyle, the hosts,
have been working remote for years so, yeah,
they're gonna have a lot of good advice to give.
I'm gonna listen to that tomorrow I think,
while I'm on my walk.
I'm gonna leave a link to it in the show notes as well,
if you wanna check out his podcast, good to support
and if yeah, you're working from home,
even for the first time during this quarantine,
during the pandemic, maybe you'll find some use in it.
Yeah, all right, thank you for watching this vlog.
I hope that it's been a good week for you
and I hope you have a good weekend 'cause it'll be
the weekend by the time you're seeing this
and I will see you in the next vlog, bye.
(upbeat music)