1) A boring week
When I’ve done Week in the Life in the past, I tried to choose a more “interesting” week in my life. This was a way to trick everyone into thinking I had a really exciting social life, when in reality, most weeks are like the one I just documented. This was a slower week than normal, but not too out of the ordinary. And I like it that way! The busy weeks are good, but the quiet weeks energize me.
2) A terrible week of sleep
Oy vey, my sleep was so very bad last week. I’m unsure if my sleep was bad because of my own nighttime habits (i.e., not getting to bed at a decent hour) or starting my period or all of the physical pain I’m in. Or maybe it’s a function of NaBloPoMo and just not getting as much sleep as I normally do because of all the extra blogging I’m doing. It’s probably a combination of all of the above. I’m currently averaging around 6 hours of sleep per night and that is not enough sleep!
3) The unending scroll
It’s not a surprise to me that I spend a lot of time on my phone (my screen time average would disgust most of you), but it was really apparent while I was cataloging my time for this experiment. I love to zone out and scroll! This time of year, I’m scrolling even more as I research Christmas gift ideas for other people. Sometimes, I zone out with Instagram and sometimes, I just want to play Happy Color and half-listen to a podcast. I tend to need a “transition” period like this between activities—it’s hard for me to go straight from working to making dinner. I just want 10 minutes on the couch to dissociate with my phone before I turn my attention to the next thing on my to-do list.
4) San’s photo trick
I can’t believe it took me way too long to realize I could upload photos from my phone right to my Media Library via the WordPress app, and they’d be right there for me to grab and insert into my posts! It wasn’t until the second-to-last day of Week in the Life that I read San’s very helpful post about her favorite apps, and good lord, this is going to save me SO MUCH TIME. At one point, I was emailing myself the photos I wanted to put in my blog posts, but could only email 2-3 photos at a time due to file sizes, so it could take forever to work through all the photos I wanted to upload. Then, I discovered I could use Google Photos on my Chromebook to easily download photos, but that meant I’d have to constantly back up Google Photos on my phone to make sure they were synced on my laptop’s Google Photos. And even then, sometimes I’d download a photo and it wouldn’t save correctly, so then I would still have to email photos to myself. It was an arduous process!
Thank heavens for San. She mentioned using the Jetpack app, but I decided to try it first using the WordPress app that’s already installed on my phone, and voila. Success! I am beside myself with how much time I’m going to save!
5) Nine years of Week in the Life
It’s wild that I have nine whole years of Week in the Life to look back on. (Well, I started the series in 2014, but missed documenting 2018, 2019, and 2021.) Whenever I do this series, I usually pick a year and read that day’s entry after publishing the post. This time around, I chose 2015 since that’s a whole decade ago! It’s wild how much different my life was:
- Grandma had just died a month ago, so I was still deep in my grief over losing her.
- I was living in Tampa with Bri! She had just started dating her now-husband.
- I had Dutch! And oh boy, was he a little monster. I think I had blocked out how many times I used to have to take him out for potty breaks as he got older.
- I was doing NaNoWriMo. I don’t even know what book I was working on at this point, but there’s a part of me that misses those busy nights of writing as much as possible to hit my word count goal.
Next year will be Year #10. I wonder how I should celebrate!
How is your life different from a decade ago?
Ugh sleep woes. I’m right there with you, sister. My Oura ring tells me I have a moderate sleep debt of 3 hours right now. I had a couple of good nights of sleep where I slept until my alarm went off but now I’m back to waking at 5 am or earlier and it SUCKS. I am so tired but not tired enough to sleep like 7 hours. But really my ideal is 7.5 hours. And that is just not happening. Sigh.
The better question for me is what ISN’T different from 10 years ago! Ha. In Nov of 2015, I had recently ran my last marathon and was starting to have some serious pain in my hip area which resulted in needing a hip repair surgery in May 2016 (Phil loves to joke and tell people I had my hip replaced. Ha ha.) I was dating Phil and we were living in the house he purchased when I lived in Charlotte. I was working at the same job but did not travel AT ALL as I was just months into starting at the company I work at now. Now, I’m married, live in a different house, have 2 children, my RA is not super well-managed and resulted in needing surgery, I do 20+ work trips/year, I’ve changed faith communities and political affiliations, and friendships have shifted a bit. Most of these changes are for the better, like having my sweet boys in my life. Some of the changes are NOT for the better, like the RA issues.
Sheesh. This is a bummer of a comment so let me turn things around. I am very grateful for the life I have now, I just mourn the simpler stage of life of 2015 – specifically having my RA easily managed. And I am better able to handle the challenges life throws at me in my 40s than I was in my 30s. And I’m kind of under a cloud of frustration from my RA being so sh*tty the last 2 years so it’s hard to see past that since it impacts my daily life so much, and then throw in the traumatic experience of being set on fire at a work event, and whelp… it’s a lot… Thank God for therapy and supportive family and friends!
I love WITL! I’ve thought about doing it again but as you know, it’s a lot of work.
10 years ago was right before Hubs and I moved in together! The boys were so little! I had just started a new job that would end up being great, but it hadn’t quite jelled yet.
I like your Week in the Life! I like how honest you are when you let us peek into your world.
Most of my weeks are “boring weeks.” Unless I’m travelling, I guess.
That is a good hack for photos! I usually just snip them from my SM accounts, or email them to myself.
Well, I’m sad that WITL is ending. I find myself wishing that you would do it all the time (ha ha.. and then I’m thinking that’s a little creepy, like I want to know how you spend every day, forever???) I think I love it so much because our lives are very different- but we have a lot of similarities. i’m an introvert, need lots of alone time, love reading, love my cats, etc. It’s fascinating to me to see how I could be spending my days if my circumstances were different.
It’s probably really interesting for you to go back and read previous weeks!
I enjoyed your WITL posts! It’s so fun to see what your life is like, and yes, I’m nosy, but I love all the little details!
Oh gosh, a decade ago. My life is good right now, but I miss 2015. So many relatives were still alive. We didn’t know anything about a pandemic. I was physically fit, not injured, not wrinkly, not dealing with the trauma of my eye. We did some traveling. I enjoyed going shopping, to movies, and to speaking events. I was an introvert, but I still enjoyed some socializing. It was such a good time in my life.
A decade ago we still lived in an apartment and didn’t have the dog yet. I had a different job and I had a lot of time for sewing. All of that is according to my blog! I posted four times in November 2015 and two of those were about sewing projects.
I am so sorry that you’ve been having sleep issues. Sleep is so essential to our well-being!
WITL posts are so fun. I always love to get a glimpse in other people’s lives and by doing it for a whole week, it’s a better glimpse than just selecting a single day… so thanks for always sharing these weeks with us! 😉
Also, I am super-stoked that my photo tip was so helpful to you. I feel like sometimes we have to share these tips, that we think most people know about, only to find out that they didn’t…. but sharing is caring. I have another photo tip which I will share on my Five Things Friday post tomorrow, so make sure you come check it out 🙂
Wow you really did 9 years. It must be so so fun to go back and look at it.
You could make that into a book.
I only have days I can go back to be reading your week I was wondering if I should give this a try at some point – documenting a whole week. I am not sure I feel up to the task though. It is a lot of tracking.
I think I am in the phase of my life that is the same. Everything was the same 10 years ago except Ben worked at a different college, and we had Beatrix instead of Annabel and no Minnie. Same house. Same job. Bah, middle age.