- Good morning everyone, today I'm gonna bring you along
for a day off in my life.
I normally vlog workdays and today is Monday, actually
but it's a holiday in the US
and as an international contractor
for the US company that I work for,
I get to choose which holidays I take throughout the year,
so you know, we can take the holidays for our own country,
not the US ones but what I basically did was pick,
I think it's eight days a year we get,
I just looked through the Spanish calendar,
some of the holidays I was used to from the UK
and some of the US ones as well
and picked a nice even spread of holidays
throughout the year and today is one of them.
I think it's Labor Day or something in the US
but I don't know, all I know is I've got the day off
and the rest of my team does too, which is nice
'cause it means when I go back tomorrow, there won't be
a bunch of stuff to catch up on that everyone else was
working on while I was out.
Anyway, like I said, I thought it'd be fun
to bring you along for a day off in my life today.
I don't know how many differences there actually will
seem like there are because even though it's a day off,
I still have a to-do list of stuff I need to do
and I'm still gonna be spending some time on my computer,
working on a few things
but yeah, I thought it'd be interesting to just show
this side of things as well.
It is 10 o'clock, I had a bit of a sleep in today
but now I'm up and on the computer,
sorting a few things out.
I've just sent off some vlog footage to my editor to edit,
so shout out to Nancy who edits these videos
and does a wonderful job of it.
In about an hour, I have an appointment
to get my nails done, which is gonna be fun.
Getting my nails done is like, I don't know,
it's like a nice little self-care thing
that I do for myself.
I really missed it while we were in lockdown
and all of the beauty places were closed,
so yeah, gonna go get my nails done, it's been a while,
it's about time.
Need to do a couple of errand-y bits
and then what else have I got to do today?
I've got to film a video today actually,
so that'll be fun.
Also gonna have a call with a friend
and I don't know, there's just a lot of fun stuff happening,
so yeah, we're gonna vlog it.
Right now though, I think I'm gonna actually go
and put some makeup on, which is not something I usually do
as part of my daily routine, as you may have noticed
if you've watched these vlogs before,
but I like to wear makeup for filming
what I think of as a sit-down video,
like a proper one where I'm sitting
talking to my fancy camera
and I might as well have it on for when I go out
and get my nails done, so I can feel
all fancy, you know?
Also I cut my hair, I don't know if you can tell,
on the weekend and yeah, I'm really liking it.
It annoys me when my hair gets to shoulder length
or a bit below and I feel like I have to tie it up
'cause I really like having my hair down
but comfort is key and when it gets annoying,
I always tie it up.
So yeah, at this length, I can just leave it down
and it's fine.
I'll leave a link in the description
to a video tutorial that I followed this time,
'cause I did literally cut it myself.
It's a tutorial by Brad Mondo, who's a hairdresser
based in New York and I really like watching his videos
and he made this very helpful tutorial
when it was the lockdown and everyone was
cutting their own hair, you know?
He wanted to save us from ourselves, basically.
- Help me, Obi-Wan Kenobi.
You're my only hope.
- Anyway, let's go and put some makeup on.
(upbeat music)
(melancholy strings)
(gentle electronic music)
(water splashing)
Just got back from getting my nails done,
she did this really cute little leaf print nail art thing
on it, which was her suggestion, which I really liked,
that was fun.
Also picked up some
soil, very exciting purchases
and some plastic container and some sandpaper,
just you know, bits and pieces.
Now before I do anything else, I'm really hungry,
so I think I'm gonna eat lunch a little bit early today
and then get into filming.
I'll get my tripod and camera set up.
I've gotta film a video that'll be the last episode
of Inside Marketing Design Podcast,
I'm doing a wrap up of the season
with some, I don't know, things I've learned and overview
and common threads that I heard
throughout all of the interviews that I did
as part of the season, so I think that'll be good
and I'm also gonna film a Q&A, to get back into posting
regular sit down videos on my channel.
So first food, then filming.
(upbeat music)
Okay, what you missed that I didn't film was,
well first of all, I filmed two videos,
so that was good, feel very productive to have
gotten those both done today and then Mark and I went
on a little walk.
When I say little, it was almost four kilometers,
so not super little but yeah, it was really fun.
Good to get out and get some fresh air and exercise,
even if the fresh air has to be breathed
through a mask at the moment
and then I just had a call with my friend Steven,
who's a fellow YouTuber, he makes videos about magic
and busking and we used to be in a Mastermind group,
back when I lived in London,
which sort of like, I don't know,
we all got busy and stopped meeting up
but yeah, he's just launched a new membership thing
and we wanted to just have a chat
and talk about email marketing
and some other nerdy stuff like that, which was really fun,
so we had a talk and then Mark just helped me fill out
a form thing with the Post Office
to accept a package my parents have sent me
that's been held up in Customs.
One of the videos that I filmed was a Q&A and I put out
the call on Twitter and Instagram asking for questions
and one that I didn't answer in that video
but I thought I might answer here was
someone very kindly asked me how I'm settling in now
and how life as an expat has been,
living in a country where I don't speak the language
and yeah, how have I got on with that,
with all the paperwork and stuff like that.
Which, first of all, thank you, kind person, for asking
'cause that was something that I definitely struggled with
a lot last year because soon after we moved,
we knew that Brexit was going into effect.
Not wanting to get kicked out of the country,
we wanted to make sure that I was set up as a resident here
and it was yeah, it was a lot of work to get that done
and it really took over my life for a while.
We still aren't completely safe here, you know
and not knowing what the government's gonna do
when the Brexit Agreement or non-agreement
or whatever finally happens with that,
I don't know, it's very confusing,
I haven't been paying attention lately honestly.
All in all, I'm just sort of living life as normal here now.
I feel like I've just gotten used to living in a country
where I don't speak the language,
is maybe is a good way to describe it
but the past few months in particular,
I've been inside a lot
and it's not really felt like I live in a foreign country
because I'm never around other people very often
but yeah, every now and then there's a thing that comes
and it's like, a letter from the Post Office
and I'm like I don't, I know a bit of Spanish
but I do not know
complicated Post Office Spanish apparently,
so definitely need help understanding this letter
and what I'm supposed to do.
It's definitely still a work in progress there.
I don't know, it definitely adds
this extra layer of difficulty to everything
that you might want to do, like we're thinking about
buying a new sofa and it's like okay, then we've gotta talk
to someone about how to take the old sofa away
and figure all that out
and just, all the stuff that wouldn't cross my mind
as a difficult thing to deal with,
living in the UK or in New Zealand, where I speak
the national language fluently
but here I don't and so it just makes things more difficult
but yeah, I think it's a good challenge
and I definitely do wanna learn how to speak more fluently.
I can understand a lot more Spanish than I speak,
that's for sure, so I've gotta do
a lot more practice speaking.
Someone asked when I'm gonna make a vlog speaking in Spanish
and the answer is probably no time soon
'cause that would be embarrassing.
Speaking of Spanish though, I have class in five minutes
because even though it's been a day off for me from work,
it's not a holiday here in Spain
and so classes are still on.
So I'm gonna go grab a drink of water
and go to Spanish class.
(upbeat music)
(sighing)
Okay, class over, that was a tough one.
Everyone had really low energy, including me.
So we weren't talking a whole lot, I don't know,
I feel like because class is effectively on Zoom,
I'm not getting as much out of them as maybe if we were
in person, I think people would be speaking more.
I don't know, everyone sits with their cameras off too,
I feel like I'm the only one who has it on,
which is kind of annoying but anyways, still learning a lot,
just not practicing outside of classes
as much as I should perhaps.
Anyway, that is the end of today.
I did not get done everything
that I wanted to do on my to-do list.
I wasn't planning on originally going for a walk
but when Mark suggested it and the weather was nice,
of course I wanted to do that instead
but that's okay, sometimes plans gotta change.
Thanks for hanging out with me for a day off in my life.
I know it probably seemed like I did a lot of sitting
at the computer, just like I do on my work days
but it's a pretty honest representation of how I spend
my time off, honestly.
Back to work tomorrow, I think I might tidy up my desk
a little bit before I fully end up for the day,
so that I start tomorrow fresh
but yeah, thanks for being here.
Hope you had a good day off as well,
if this was a holiday for you as well
and if not, hope you've had a good week
in the week that you're watching this
and I'll see you in the next vlog, bye!
(upbeat music)