HELLO 2021🌱✨ getting my life together, how i track expenses, setting goals

Hello friends and good morning. This feels kind of awkward talking to a camera again because I haven't turned the camera on for about two and a half weeks, so I don't know, this whole talking to myself just seems kind of foreign again. But anyways, it is a new year and not much has changed. I basically lost the first week of January to a bad case of food poisoning. I ordered some Thai food off of Uber Eats that did me real dirty and I was sick in bed for the entire week, which was not fun. And since then I've just been doing some stuff around the house to declutter and reset for the new year and somehow also reverted back to my middle school weeb self and I've just been binging a bunch of animes and I've also gone back into TikTok and yeah, I just completely trashed my sleeping schedule. So, you know, we're starting off the new year real strong. But I thought that I would take some time to reflect and go over my goals for 2021 with you guys. I've been using the Lavendaire Artist of Life Workbook and I really like the prompts that it has, so I guess I'll start with things that I learned in 2020. So, I think the biggest one for me was it's okay to not be okay because yeah, 2020 was a pretty rough year and I think just from being constantly stuck at home and marinating in my thoughts, I noticed my mental health really started to decline towards the second half of 2020 and it became really hard to be on camera and vlog and just pretend like everything was okay. I don't know, I think I'm still trying to find that right balance between being open and honest with you guys but at the same time, I know we all watch YouTube as an escape and I never want to drag someone's mood down by moping or complaining in my videos. While I am so incredibly grateful that I'm able to do this as my job, I realized that being a YouTuber requires you to always be on and when you're not on, it's super hard to do your job and for the longest time, I didn't know whether I was just being lazy or unproductive or if I was just depressed and I started to feel guilty for not wanting to be on camera and I would get anxious if I didn't upload a video every week or every other week but I'm trying to not be too hard on myself and just accept that I am at a rather low point in my life but it's okay and things will get better. There's a vaccine out now and I guess it also ties in with another point which is rest is productive. I feel like I've always known that but at the same time, I was just never able to like productively rest because I would just always feel guilty for resting so I would never truly feel rested and it was just this negative toxic cycle that I was in but I think this year it really taught me to just slow down and it's okay to be selfish sometimes and prioritize your well-being. Some other things that 2020 taught me were to live in the moment, appreciate the small things, and to check in on loved ones. I think living in the moment is definitely going to be one of my main goals for 2021. Honestly, 2020 was a blur. There was a prompt where I had to write down all the moments of pure joy I experienced in 2020 and I couldn't even recall what had happened in 2020. I literally had to scroll through my phone and look at all my photos and videos of what even happened each month and I think that's because I just was never living in the moment. I was always focused on getting content for the vlogs and then shooting it at different angles and how I was going to edit it later. Like in my head, I was constantly just living from video to video and I wasn't taking the time to really take in the moment because I was just too focused on documenting it whether it be for YouTube or for Instagram and yeah I just I don't want to continue living my life like that. Okay so moving on to 2021, my theme for the new year is consistency which is something that I have always struggled with my entire life but I really want to strive to have more of for this new year so some of the things that I can do to embody my theme in 2021 is to wake up early. I used to wake up between 5 to 6 a.m back when I had my full-time job to work out and then go to work but ideally I would like to start waking up around like 7 a.m so I'm going to try to just work my way up there because right now I'm waking up around like 9 to 10 a.m. Next is to set up a realistic morning routine and I emphasized realistic because knowing myself if I try to do this super extravagant morning routine every single morning I'm never going to actually stick with it so I just want to have like a few things that I do every single morning whether it's making my bed, ideally meditating, I really want to get into meditation, journaling, making a morning matcha or coffee, just little things that I can look forward to in the morning. I also wrote down find a therapist, journal often, less scrolling, oh my god my screen time has been atrocious lately, try new things, eat primarily plant-based, exercise regularly and I'm saying exercise instead of working out because I have not like properly worked out since I think September and at this point I just don't think that home these home workout videos are for me, I don't know I just I can't get into it but at the very least I just want to get some sort of exercise and movement and lately I've been going on walks and that's been really helping me and then the last one is connecting with friends and family. So the next prompt is how do I want to feel in 2021 and instead of just saying happy and positive I wrote down confident, grateful, and curious and I picked these three because I think if I feel confident in myself and grateful for the life that I have that in itself will make me feel happy and I also put down curious because I really miss getting an education and learning and I'm hoping that if I feel curious it will inspire me to read more, learn a new language, and just overall be a more knowledgeable and interesting person. Next is how do I want to evolve in 2021 and I think the biggest one for me is I want to become more confident in my own skin. I also want to become more unbothered and what I mean by that is just to stop caring so much about what other people think of me, find my why or I guess my purpose. I don't know I think that's why I'm kind of having a quarter life crisis and feel so lost because I kind of lost track of like why I'm doing YouTube or what I even want out of life. So yeah I feel like I have a lot of soul searching to do in 2021. Next I want to discover a new or old hobby slash passion that's solely for me. I feel like I don't really have any hobbies anymore like YouTube was my hobby but then I turned it into my job so I just feel like I don't really have any hobbies that are solely for me that I can just do and I don't even feel the need to document it. And lastly I want to find my style. Despite going to a fashion school I honestly feel like I don't really have a style and that may be because I've just lived in my pjs for the past year. Yeah I just want to find my own style and just really wear whatever the **** I want to wear and be confident in the clothes that I'm wearing. My battery died so I thought that we could just change up the position but the last prompt is what do I want to release in 2021 and the biggest one for me was social media comparison slash attaching my worth to a number. This is something that I really struggled with this past year. I think just from the fact that I was stuck at home just having a lot more time to be on my phone I found myself falling back into the very very toxic habit of just comparing myself to others and to my past self whether it be looks, productivity, and just really obsessing over the numbers. I think my relationship with social media really changed ever since I started doing YouTube full-time instead of just a hobby because thinking back when it was just a hobby I really didn't focus too much on the numbers and analytics but now that it is my job I kind of have to to a certain extent. So I think as a result I just started to attach a sense of worth and like validation based on numbers whether it be engagement, performance, how fast I'm growing, all that type of stuff which is completely out of my control but that is something that I'm trying to change my mindset on because it was just taking the fun out of doing YouTube and I really just want to focus on creating content that I genuinely genuinely am proud of and love and just focusing on being grateful for the things that I do have rather than the things that I don't. I have been thinking about getting back into freelancing or potentially even finding another job just because I feel like that would help alleviate all this pressure that I'm feeling from doing YouTube but yeah I don't know that's still just like a thought on my head I don't even know what I would even want to do. I also wrote down caring about what others think, my horrible procrastination habits, and the last one I wasn't sure if I was going to share on camera just because it can sound a bit triggering and I really don't want to trigger or offend anyone but I just want to be super real with you guys. I wrote down feeling guilty for looking healthy so I'm sure most of you guys probably found my channel through either my workout or what I eat in a week videos when I was super into health and wellness but I kind of just all went down the train during quarantine. You know I have gained weight I think this is like the heaviest I've ever been even though I knew that I still am on the petite side but I have gained weight I don't have my abs anymore and like my arms and my thighs have gotten like bigger and squishier but at the same time like I'm still healthy I'm just not as fit as I used to be. I remember when I first started to see those changes in my body I was pretty hard on myself and I felt very guilty for I guess kind of letting myself go and losing all of the hard work and progress that I had made and on top of that I feel like I kind of built my channel off of health and fitness so there was a part of me that was scared that people were going to stop watching me if I didn't have this like ideal body or like my abs which I know sounds crazy but then when I started to see like a few comments here and there saying that oh it looks like she's gained weight where did your abs go yeah that definitely didn't help with my confidence even though I know I shouldn't focus on those comments but when you're not feeling the most confident sometimes sometimes they get to you but I can honestly say that right now even though I'm not as fit and toned as I once was and I'm definitely not eating as clean as I once was I feel like my relationship with food and just like my body is probably the healthiest that it has ever been in a very long time I mean I may not have my abs but at least my tummy has been pretty happy throughout this quarantine and you know I'm still well and healthy and you know at the end of the day that's all that really matters so yeah those were some of my goals for 2021 I hope I didn't bore you guys with all my talking and rambling but I would honestly love to know what some of your guys's goals and resolutions are so if you want to leave them in the comments I feel like it could be a cool like conversation starter and hopefully we can all encourage each other to actually follow through with our goals because I don't know about you but I feel like I'm someone who starts off the year strong and lacks consistency so hopefully we'll have more of that this year so I'm about to go grocery shopping but I wanted to show you guys some new earrings that I just got this portion of the video is in collaboration with Ori I've been really into ear cuffs lately I think they just look super cool so I got this thin one and then also a thicker one it's pretty simple to put on you just pop it on like this and you don't have to worry about it falling off throughout the day and I just really like how it looks and I also got these tiny heart hoops to put in my second piercing since everything is made with real gold I can shower sleep even work out with these pieces on and I don't have to worry about them tarnishing or turning my skin green it's just quality that lasts and all of their pieces come with a lifetime warranty they recently just launched their lioness collection with Kerry Washington who I love I actually just re-watched scandal a few months ago collection is absolutely beautiful and is meant to celebrate sisterhood and empower women everywhere all of their jewelry is ethically made in New York so if you guys are interested in checking them out then you can go to or8newyork.com slash zoe not zoe and use my promo code zoe not zoe to get 15% off your first order that's a-u-r-a-t-e newyork.com and use my promo code zoe not zoe to get 15% off your first purchase he was the titan before he disappeared I posted a photo of my new expense sheet on my Instagram because I'm so proud of her she's so pretty um but surprisingly a lot of you guys wanted to know where I got the template and also how I keep track of my expenses so I thought that I would just do a little overview for you guys because I'm actually quite into like personal finance like saving investing and all of that um I got it from Simon because he's really into that and he's taught me a lot of stuff so I actually found this template from a TikTok I know I find surprisingly a lot of stuff from TikTok but this girl I believe her name's Deborah she made this amazing spreadsheet that I probably would never be able to make on my own so I just spent like an hour to customizing the colors to make it more cute and fun so that I'm more motivated to use it throughout the year and I'm just so excited to use this oh my god I am obsessed so this is what she looks like you have all the categories on the top and you can even set individual budgets for each category so that if you go over the cell will turn red and then on the bottom we have yearly and category breakdowns and I like having the graphs there because not only does it make the spreadsheet more aesthetic but it also gives you a nice breakdown as to where all your money is going and the best part is that it's super easy to log your expenses because the template actually comes with this google form like survey or like expense form so you can just fill in all the questions like the amount the date and the category and it automatically adds the data into your spreadsheet I just saved the shortcut onto my home screen so that whenever I spend money I can easily just click into it and record so I hope that answers some of your guys' questions on how I keep track of my expenses and I'll leave a link to the expense sheet in the description if you guys want to download it you seriously seriously should because I'm just so obsessed with it so just do yourself a favor for the new year and download this template