Life Lately // 02 – Slowly
Oh wow, I don’t even know where to start. It’s already March and I’m still on my second entry for this series. My goal was to update here once or twice a month. But now we are already done with March. If 2022 was fast for me, I don’t even want to compare it to 2023 at this rate.
But, where do I start? I guess it’s safe to say that 2023 has been really slow for me. I’m not quite sure if I like it or not. I definitely have a lot of ideas and things that I want to make but I have not been able to execute any of them yet. For now, I will try my best to embrace the slowness of everything.
I’m not really good at remembering things but thankfully I have my journal with me to help me reflect and remember the past few weeks/month.
Book Corner
I guess we will start with the books that I am currently reading. I have been struggling to keep up with my reading recently but I am very happy to say that I am slowly chipping away through the pages and I cannot wait to finish reading them. I am currently reading 2 books: Why We Sleep by Matthew Walker and Anxious People by Fredrik Backman
Why We Sleep
I love how informational this books is, it is lengthy and sometimes it makes me anxious reading about all of the findings but I just try to remind myself that it is good to know all of these things so that I am aware of how important sleep is and how it greatly affects our health. Since reading this book, one of my goals each week is to get as much sleep as I can.
Anxious People
I don’t really know how to feel about this book. I think it’s the style of writing that I don’t really like. So far, I find the story unique, I don’t have a fave character yet, all of them annoys me. Sometimes I feel like what I’m reading doesn’t really add any value to the entire story. I find myself rolling my eyes more than sympathizing with the characters. I will still finish this book though, I am already more than 50%, too late to stop now.
Commissions
One of the things that I wanted to do more this year is to accept more commission work if I am given the opportunity. So far, I have worked for 2 clients — for a friend and for another one which I am not sure I am allowed to share yet but once it gets launched, I’ll be sure to share them here or on my social media accounts.
Working out
I’ve been doing really well with keeping up with my workout ring late last year but ever since 2023 started, I have been struggling to get up early for a run and a bit of workout. So far, I’ve only been able to do one to two workouts per week.
Despite knowing it’s positive effects on my mood and my mental health, I seem to choose to put it off a lot this year. It’s like my body just wants to stay in that low, sad, anxious mood.
Gouache paintings, coffee and Instagram
Not loving my paintings recently but I am trying to take my time and paint as much as I can. Hoping to share some of my paintings here soon.
New rule for myself: Never drink caffeine in the evening. And yes, Matthew Walker made me decide this for myself.
Scheduling content has been a great help for me so far. I tend to overthink things when it comes to posting but having it scheduled helps me just forget about it and come back once I am ready to face the app again.
Searched for other productivity tools: Obsidian and Asana
I’ve been using Notion for everything and it’s been great but there are times that I feel like there’s just so much going on that it’s actually distracting me.
So I tried to use other tools for managing my project tasks.
I tried Asana, again. I’ve used this before for work and it was a really good tool however advanced functions are only for the paid plan and I do not have the budget to pay for it (lol) so I stopped using it as soon as my Pro trial was over.
Next tool I tried is Obsidian, this is not really built for productivity but it is a really great tool for note taking. I have been taking down notes from the books that I read and notes from work using this tool but when it comes to storing data and managing my tasks, Notion was still the best at it.
So yes, I eventually came running back to Notion, changed things a bit and moved my note taking to Obsidian. If you are interested to learning how to use Obsidian, here is a channel that I find very useful: FromSergio. I do think that this app has a lot of potential so I am very interested in seeing it grow in the next couple of years.
Free printable file soon
I have been working on a free printable for this month but I have not finished it yet. I had to stop working on it for a while because I needed to focus my time on some client work so I am hoping I can get back to it and share it here soon.
I think that is all for now. I still have other things I want to share but this post is already getting too long so I am saving my other stories for the next post. Thank you so much for taking the time to read and if you want to leave a comment, you’ll need to be logged in to do so.
Love and light to you my dear reader! Have a great rest of your day!
