MORNING | My alarm goes off at 7 a.m. and I lounge in bed for another 30 minutes. I have really been enjoying lazy, relaxing mornings on the weekdays. Eventually, I get up and feed the girls. I take a shower and then sit on the couch for 20 minutes reading my book. Bliss. Then, I do my morning skincare routine, blow-dry and straighten my hair, make my bed, take my meds, and make breakfast. My current holy grail is raw batana oil. I also try to do some tidying around my apartment in between all of my morning tasks. (I left it a bit messy last night, oops.) I finally sit down in front of my work computer to start my workday at 9:30. I spend the first hour of my workday embroiled in answering emails. I try to keep a very clean email inbox throughout the day because one filled with emails I need to answer just stresses me out. Once my inbox is in order, I tackle one of my to-do’s for the day: putting together a few content strategy plans for some of our clients. Typically, this isn’t part of my job but we’re understaffed and I offered to jump in and help out our strategy team. It’s a pretty easy task for me, so I don’t mind it!
AFTERNOON | I thought I had a meeting at 11:30, but it’s actually at 12:30, and I know I’ll need to eat lunch beforehand so I’m not starving during the meeting. So I stop working around noon and make lunch. I eat while scrolling through a Reddit forum and then it’s time to log into my meeting! Our organization is currently moving away from our current project management system (Monday) and into Salesforce, which will be wonderful when it’s all done, but right now, there are a lot of moving parts and process questions. Since I handle all of the content assignments, it’s going to be a major shift in the way I do things. This meeting is with the team managing this transition to talk through some of the questions we have about process issues that may arise. It’s a productive meeting and afterward, my boss calls me to debrief. Then, I decide it’s time for some sunshine so I lace up my shoes and take a walk. The rest of my day was rather uneventful! I manage our contractor program, so I spend the afternoon working through tasks associated with them: editing content, doing QA of posted content, answering emails, etc. I finish up my last task of the day a little after 5pm. I’m not usually finishing up that early (since I get started later in the morning), but I have plans tonight!
NIGHT | My goal was to be out the door by 5:15 but that is not going to happen. I feed the girls, get dressed in real people clothes, and grab my book. And then I make the drive over to Tampa to attend this month’s Silent Book Club event. I order a drink (guava cider – so good!) and dinner (a flatbread pepperoni pizza) and then chat with the women who are seated at my table. Small talk is not my favorite, but thankfully, I can always bring the convo back to books and that’s an easy subject for me to chat about. Eventually, it’s time for an hour of silent reading. I read 75 pages of my book. Yay! Afterward, there is more chatting before I head out. I get home a little after 8:30 and I Facetime with my mom for a bit. And then I do my nighttime routine, work on this post, and realize that I haven’t put together the Instagram graphic for our podcast episode that’s releasing tomorrow. Chaos! Eventually, I get it all done and it’s so very late when I’m finally ready for bed. (11:30, ugh) It’s going to be one of those nights where I cue up an ASMR video on YouTube and go right to sleep!
monday in the life: 2022, 2020, 2017, 2016, 2015. and 2014
Small talk with someone I know/love = bliss
Small talk with someone I don’t know/dislike = torture
Your bed setup is GORGEOUS!
Hooray! Week in the life is here! I love these posts.
I hate to say it because it sounds so boring, but if people have kids that’s an instant conversation starter. Even if we have nothing else in common, kids gives you all sorts of things to talk about- what grade are they in? Where do they go to school? I don’t know what I”ll do when both my kids are grown up and on their own… i guess I’ll talk about grandchildren!
I love how excited you get for these posts. <3 They are fun to put together and especially to look back on through the years!
I am loving these post. It is so interesting to see how other peoples life looks like.
Usually I am no fan of small talk. It is somewhat pointless for me. However every once in a while when I am heading to a networking event I explicitly hype myself up to make the most of it and then – for some reason – I can do small talk. But it is very energy draining.
I think small talk with a bunch of book people would be easy.
Small talk! I love to talk about pets and books. If you can’t engage with me on any of those topics, I will default to the weather, jobs, or road construction, but I hate to stoop to such low topics.
Also, Salesforce was the bane of my existence at my last job and I secretly hope I never have to log in to it ever again. Will my dream come true? I sure hope so! Good luck with the transition. It’s never easy.
Do you blow dry and straighten your hair every time you wash it?
I hope Salesforce works well for you all! We use it at work but not to its full potential so I don’t really get it.
I don’t mind small talk at all when appropriate. I despise small talk with people I feel I should have deeper convos with, LOL. Hmm, what always gets me talking… lately… travel, working out, food, the cats, Steven’s flying 🙂
No – most of the time I let my hair air-dry. But if I have meetings where I need to be on camera or evening plans, I’ll do the ole blow-dry/straighten routine. But I try to only do that once or twice a week at MOST.
Next time I need to do small talk, I need to channel my inner Kim. “What would Kim ask about?!” HA.
I’m intrigued by silent book club. I’m not 100% clear on how it works but there is a chapter near me and I feel like I should check it out.
The thing that drives me nuts about small talk is when I can’t progress it. I’ve been saying hi to another dog walker in the neighborhood for 9 years now…we’ve never gotten beyond our names, our dogs’ names, and the weather. It’s like there has to be a way to move this forward but so help me I don’t know what it is.
I have to have a clean inbox for work or I lose my mind. I can’t quite do inbox zero but I can at least do “inbox with only 10 emails in it”.
You should definitely check out your local Silent Book Club! It’s so much fun. We spend the first 30 minutes getting situated and chit-chatting and then we all read silently for an hour. And then you can keep chit-chatting for however long you want to afterward! It’s a simple concept, and I just love it. 🙂
I don’t mind small talk when it’s really small — like chatting about the weather with the mail carrier or asking how a teacher’s weekend was. But having extended small talk — like with the hairstylist or the dental hygienist — is NOT my favorite. Books are always a good topic, and I love discussing TV shows, too.
Love your kitty pictures. 🙂 Good luck with the transition to Salesforce! I hope it goes smoothly!
Ughhhh… the extended small talk with the hairstylist is my LEAST favorite thing. Luckily, my new stylist is SO CHATTY and she can keep the convo going with very little input from me, which I’m A-OK with.
YEAH GIRL I LOVE THE PHOTOS OF YOUR PRODS.
I was excited to see some of my faves in there too! I love these posts because I AM NOSY and I love seeing everyone’s life.
Because I am nosy, I am the queen of small talk (see this week’s post) and sometimes SHIT GETS REAL (i.e., I end up talking about death to my cashier). Actually I was at the library today and I was looking at the staff picks display, and a lady had Cloud Cuckoo Land, and we ended up talking about All The Light We Cannot See, and she had gone to France JUST to tour every place in the book, and also that it’s a new Netflix series but I probably cannot bring myself to watch it. But MAYBE I will. We’ll see.
Off to download your pod!
I love your new bed, and knowing that you put it together so thoughtfully and are enjoying it makes it even better. I had never heard of silent book club before reading your blog. I should probably join one, because the only time I sit down and read a physical book is when I go to bed, which means it lasts about 15 minutes and then I fall asleep. Unless I’ve had some wine, and then the reading lasts 5 minutes. HA!
It does help that I have to be upright in a chair during Silent Book Club! Keeps the sleepiness at bay. Haha. I, too, tend to fall asleep quickly when I’m reading!
Loved this peak into your life!
I am so intrigued by the Silent Book Club – what an interesting and cool idea! Small talk is tough, but I could talk about books all day.
Your hair is so pretty, and I need to privilege my skin care routine this way– it needs its own couple of MOMENTS in my day. Silent book club is so awesome.
You know I love these posts – so cool to get a glimpse of someone else’s life 🙂
I have to schedule one of these during NaBloPoMo myself.
I am super-impressed with your skin care routine – day and night. I think I could learn a thing or two. I mean I have a routine but it’s more minimalistic.
I told you before that I love the idea of a silent book club. I really need to make an effort to get into some kind of social group again… the knitting group I was part of fell apart during the pandemic.
You should see if there’s a Silent Book Club chapter near you! What I love about this book club is that the social pressure is lessened because you’re spending MOST of the time silently reading, which is nice.
We use salesforce at work. It was a huge project to convert to it 3 years ago so I don’t envy you for being in the midst of that!
I don’t love small talk either, especially if it’s people I will never see again! But books and travel are 2 things I will always be happy to talk about!
This migration is killing my soul, ahhhhh. We’ll get there, but it won’t be fun.
LOVE these types of posts!! Is that canva? I love it, I used it all the time for work.
How do you feel about small talk? GOD SAVE ME. Anyone, anyone should be excused from small talk. I’ll participate but will secretly hope it’ll be over soon.
What’s a subject that will get you talking no matter what? Cats!! Teaching!! Parenting!! lol
Yes, that’s Canva! I love Canva so much!!
Days in the life are so fascinating – we are all so different! When you were going to bed I was probably having my first or second wake-up of the night. 🙂 (Also, do you seriously blow dry your hair *every day*? If so, wow… just, wow.)
Oh, absolutely NOT. Most days I let it air-dry. But it looks better when I blow it dry/straighten it so I try to do that if I want my hair to look good – since I had evening plans on Monday, I wanted it to look good!