hot girl summer is hard

💌 life in van (the highlights & lowlights)

so, life last month has been a hot minute of overloading my scheduling and then decompressing and feeling guilty for it 🥺 does anyone else ever feel guilty for being unproductive? or practicing self-care in whatever form it may appear? it feels like a lifetime ago (but in reality only a month ago) when i was waking up at 5:30am to run on mondays and fridays, and 5am on tuesdays and thursdays to take a boxing class, so i could squeeze someee exercise before my 7:30am client meetings (it only lasted two weeks lol). i ended up burning out pretty badly, with a few weeks of missed runs because my body felt exhausted and i couldn’t find the motivation to do it anymore. the issue wasn’t the time i was waking up but that i wasn’t sleeping earlier to compensate the early mornings. i was still sleeping at like midnight or 1am (so i could jam in a couple hours of working/seeing friends) but expecting to wake up at 5am feeling completely fine (i was not fine). all in all, it felt like i was just extending day and therefore would feel more tired.

anyways, i’ve talked to mabelle about this and she said “lol girl u need to chill; ur body is EXHAUSTED” so for the past couple weeks, i’ve paused running, took the monday and friday mornings to sleep in and continued boxing on tues/thurs and started sleeping earlier on monday and wednesday nights.

to be completely honest, i’ve been feeling pretty guilty about it. does anyone else feel guilty about not being “as productive” as you could be? idk, like physiologically i feel SO much better and so much more energetic and awake but i just feel so unproductive.

anyways, i’ve been feeling so guilty about it i might start running again this week (depending on how motivated i feel). i just want that body-ody-ody for the summer. ya get me?

for those of you in consulting with like 7am - 6pm (perhaps onwards) hours, how do you manage to squeeze time to exercise while having a social life? it feels like i can only pick one and i don’t like that feeling of living to work.

💘 some gratitudes this month:

• cute homie roadtrip to vancouver island with jiekai and joanna 💌 

• a close friend from edmonton taking the time to come visit me (and yap) hehe

• 5:50am classes with charlotte @ griffin’s boxing bc her classes are SO HARD and it feels like such an efficient way to cram exercise in

• hotpot and boardgame nights with the boss girls & friends 🫶 so so grateful to have found such a lovely group of homies in vancouver!

• catching up with close old friends @ the beach ❤️ i feel so grateful to live in such a beautiful (but expensive) place heh

• GETTING TICKETS TO PORTER ROBINSON!!

🚫 some anti-gratitudes this month:

• feeling either tired or guilty all the time 🥱 

• niall being in the eu/uk for three weeks (jk; i’ve been doing a SUPER job of keeping the house clean… or have i….)

• waking up with a sore neck for a week because i slept on an air mattress in my livingroom because my parents came to visit

👩🏻‍💼 corporate girlbossing without girlbossing too hard

corporate girlbossing has been slightly paying off this month, and no i did not find a new job or get a promotion unfortunately. so i’ve been working under this partner in calgary for a couple projects back to back (all part-time projects or internal gigs) which has somewhat paid off, since when we had a conversation about feedback and performance last last week, he asked if i was open to being mentored by him.

i think this just made me feel so appreciated and that someone was actually willing to take time to help me grow in the corporate space. to be fair, he did say that a reason was that he wanted me to grow so he could staff me on more of his projects (heh have NOT told him yet that i am moving to london in a year but whatever).

anyways i have been researching furiously over the past week to find out what exactly a career mentorship does (like… i’ve heard we should be looking for one especially if we don’t have parents/know people who work in the business but i don’t really know what you do in it….). like is this a career therapy session? i’ve identified some career goals, but like how is this partner supposed to help me reach them?

if anyone has any insight into this, PLEASE let me know, pls & thank u 🥺 

💭 lessons therapy has taught me (thx mabelle 🫶)

mabelle and i have had reallly good therapy sessions lately, and something she pointed out as a constant theme across the problems i tell her (even the minute ones haha) is that i display a pattern of avoidance behaviours, which leads me to anxiety and everything else.

she told me to reflect on where this avoidance comes from, and after a week of thinking, i think i’ve come to a conclusion on why i tend to be on the avoidance side. as an introvert, i find that a lot of my energy is recharged by either being by myself, or in environments where my emotions aren’t maxed out on either side (so like, a relatively chill environment). when i think of conflict, i also have associated it with being very emotionally draining (maybe it's from my upbringing??) and overwhelming (where my emotions are maxed out). perhaps, since that was how i interpreted conflict from a young age, i hold a false belief that “conflict is emotionally draining and overwhelming”, and therefore try to avoid it since i don’t recharge from maxing my emotions out.

anyways, that’s just a theory but a reflection i had this month. i feel like next steps forward might just be to unlearn that false belief i hold, and re-teach myself that conflict isn’t always bad, and doesn’t have to end dramatically.

🥤 sipping joos

i’ve watched the first episode of bridgerton (omg penelope’s boobs are HUGE) and might continue watching?? i’m unsure so far. i’ve also been listening to SO MUCH johnny chay, especially his omg and easy remixes. also, now that porter’s coming to vancouver to play, it’s just been sad boi edm on repeat with a touch of indie music.

📈 personal stats i want to track