9-5 WFH DAYS | getting into a routine, january goals, finding balance

Hey friends, welcome back to another vlog. I'm so excited. It's the beginning of a new work week and let's just say I really need to get back into a routine. So that's gonna kind of be the focus of this vlog, getting back into a routine for my 9-5 work week and just taking it one day at a time. This isn't gonna be like any type of perfected routine because it is technically like my first week fully back at work and we'll be starting our busy period. Before we get into it, I just wanted to introduce myself. So if you're new here, my name is Selena. I'm an economist in the Washington, D.C. area. I create a bunch of lifestyle, productivity, and wellness journey vlogs. So if you're into that sort of thing and if you haven't already, consider subscribing. But real quick, let's do a little outfit of the day. I am still currently working from home, so loungewear it is. So I have my gold hoops on from Ana Luisa. I also have this really comfy crew neck sweater from Adidas that I bought while I was back home in Oregon for the holidays. Super cute, super cozy. I'll try to find it and link it below. I really recommend. And then I'm just wearing some Nike leggings and of course my comfy moccasins, which I wear in my apartment all day long because they're so comfy. But with that said, I already started my work day. I already had a meeting this morning, sent out my notes, and did all of that. I just wanted to do a quick little two-minute check-in, but I will see you all at my next break. So first things first, to get back into a routine, I need to make sure that I get organized. It is currently the beginning of the new quarter, so if you're new here, as an economist, my job is to do analysis on labor and wages for establishments across the U.S. And there's a lot of competing deadlines and a lot of competing competing due dates to kind of keep together. So at the very beginning of the quarter, I like to go into our production calendar that we have with all of the different competing deadlines in one place. I like to add them to my outlook calendar with reminders for myself personally, for the things that are related to me. The production calendar can be a little bit confusing because it has deadlines for every single person on our team, and different people on our team have different roles. So I want to kind of extract those related to me, put it in my outlook so I can get, you know, those reminders to make sure that I meet my deadlines and hopefully beat my deadlines. So I'm going to do that right now. I'm just going to kind of walk you all through and share step by and share little pieces like this throughout my day to kind of give you maybe some some inspiration, but also to hold myself accountable because the beginning of the quarter can be really rough, and the only way to combat it is to try to be as organized as possible. So let's do this. Just wanted to show you all how I have different colored categories for different items or appointments that I might add to my calendar. This just makes it easier to kind of see visually what I have coming up and what my week entails. So it's currently almost 1 p.m. I want to get in some midday movement because one of my goals for this year is to move four times a week, whatever that might be, whether it's like lifting, doing my Alive by Whitney workouts, just going for a 30-minute walk, going for a jog because I also want to become a runner. So I feel like I want to incorporate running into my movement as much as possible since I would kind of kill two birds with one stone, you know, getting in a run aka becoming a runner as well as getting in my movement. So real quick, I wanted to share with you all during my lunch the goals that I set out for January because if you haven't watched my 2022 reset, make sure to go check out that video after you finish watching this video and you can kind of see how I organize all of my 2022 goals, finances, and budgets, everything that I plan to share with you all in my monthly, but I didn't share with you all specifically the January goals because I didn't want to have a 2022 reset and a January reset back to back since I felt like it would be a little bit redundant. So I'm gonna pull out my Excel spreadsheet and go over those with you all real quick. So the way that I set up my January goals goes along with how I set up my 2022 goals as a whole. So I have it split into health and wellness, personal and professional, and financial goals. So again, I want to stress that these are my intentions for January and what I hope, what I aspire to, what I want to have in the back of my mind when I'm conducting my day-to-day habits if that makes sense because the focus of my year is really healing, growth, and purpose, but underneath all of that will always be self-care, self-love, mental health, and balancing it all. Like that's the essence of what I want to accomplish always. So with all that said, in my health and wellness goals, my goal is to run slash walk one time per week, sign up for a new therapist sometime this month because I got new insurance. I want to walk 5,000 steps a day because my ultimate goal for 2022 is to walk 7,500 steps a day on average, but I know myself and I truly believe in baby steps and also in setting a goal that's like under your aspiration so that way you're more likely to complete it and feel like you were successful. So I'm setting myself up for success. I also want to get seven hours of sleep a night this month, so I feel like we can do that. Personal and professional, I just want to continue to post two videos a week, hit 17k on YouTube. That would be nice, but again just an aspiration. I want to go to church every Sunday starting this Sunday. I want to read at least one book. I'm actually almost done with my first book. It's a thriller and I'm so freaking excited. I'm starting to enjoy reading again, so if you have any book recommendations make sure to leave them down below. And then financial goals, I want to have one no spend week this month. I wanted to do no spend January with my friend Rachel. That's what she's doing over on her channel, but because January is my birthday, so I know we're gonna be celebrating. Like I don't want to restrict myself on my birthday month, you know what I mean? So I'm definitely gonna do a no spend month in the future, but for this month I just want to do one no spend work week. I'm limiting my eating out, hopefully, to one date night per week, but we haven't really been taking date nights, so we've kind of been swapping date nights for like a fast food meal, like eating a chicken wrap from Chick-fil-a because it's so cheap and affordable. So whichever one works, essentially spending like 40 bucks a week on eating out is kind of the goal. I have a couple of other goals that I'm not really going to share with you all because I can go over those in my monthly reset, but I just wanted to give you an idea of where I'm at with my January goals so that, you know, you can kind of see like what it is that I'm trying to work on this month. With all that said, one of my goals is health and wellness. One of the section of my goals is health and wellness. So I have not been moving y'all, like once I left for the holidays, it was like, movement who? I really need to get back into it because it really affects my mental health, it affects my confidence when I'm not moving regularly, and it just overall affects how I feel physically as well. So we're gonna, we're gonna get it together. It's never too late to start. That's my theme for 2022, it's never too late. So I'm gonna go put on a workout outfit, try to get motivated. I don't know what I'm gonna do, I'm gonna do whatever feels good because today's technically like day one of trying to get it together with my health and wellness. So I'm just gonna be kind to myself, give myself grace, maybe go for a walk, who knows, we'll see. But let me go get changed real quick. So I decided that I'm gonna do an Alive by Whitney workout today. So wish me luck, I'm taking my pre-workout, which let me show you which one this is because it's my new favorite, it's so good. So I've definitely tried Alani New many times, so that's not what's new, but this flavor is definitely my new favorite. It's freaking delicious, I love it. So I'm gonna drink my pre-workout, put on my tennis shoes and head downstairs to the gym to try to get like a quick 40-minute workout in. I just need to get off my butt, you know, I want to make it a habit to choose movement. So today is going to be the first day of the four days for this week. Quick little outfit of the day, I have this new cream crop top from Adidas. When I was in Oregon, we had a pass to the employee store, so everything was half off. And they got this really cute top, it has like this open back, and I really love it. And I'm also wearing my Girlfriend Collective set, I think it's the Dylan bra or the Paloma bra in Agave. I really love it, I love this color, I think it's so cute and it matches very well. And then I think I'm gonna wear my new Hoka One One running shoes, since I plan to run at least like five minutes to warm up. It's day one and I have been a cross country runner, long distance runner for a big part of my life through college. And I know that in order to be a runner, you don't have to run any specific speed. As long as you go for a run and you become consistent with it, it doesn't matter how slow you go, it doesn't matter how far you go, you are a runner. And so that is my goal for this year, is to be a runner. And as someone who ran half marathons and done all of that in the past, I know that I can be so hard with myself. So that's why my goal is just to be a runner, to give myself grace, not to look at the time, how long it takes me to run a mile or any of that. That stuff is so fun, don't get me wrong. First, I think the most important part is to get consistent with it, then to focus on the metrics. So that's my goal. I'm gonna try to run five minutes today without stopping, but if I feel any discomfort or pain for my knee injury, I'm obviously gonna walk and run just to like not put too much stress on my knee. Because you have to listen to your body, you know? Listening to your body doesn't mean just not working out when you feel exhausted, it also means pacing your workouts. So anyway, I'm gonna do that and I'll check in with you all when I get back. Wish me luck. Hey friends, I'm back. Oh, the sun is out. Hold on a second. I'm back. I just finished up my workout. I'm dead, like what can I say? My back kind of feels weird, but I always have back pain, so nothing new there. I did order a chipotle bowl, mainly because I did use up my whole lunch by working out, so now I'm gonna eat this while I finish off my work day. Oh my gosh, I'm so sorry, the lighting is terrible. The sun just keeps coming and going. Now I'm just gonna finish up my chipotle bowl and finish up my work day and I will check in with you all after because since it is Monday, today's the day I usually plan out my entire rest of the week, Monday through Friday or Monday through Saturday, so I'm probably gonna do that either Sundays or Mondays during the work day is usually when I do like my work week reset, aka like planning my week. Since I work a nine to five, I have to work around my nine to five work schedule, so any of my goals or my plans or intentions, I try to write them out, keeping my work week in mind. With that said, I'm gonna eat and I'll see you all later. Hey friends, what's up? Happy Tuesday. It is currently 10 o'clock in the morning. I started my work day around an hour ago, but I haven't had my coffee yet, so I'm gonna do that. I still have a few of these gingerbread seasonal Nespresso pods and they're so good, but I feel bad because I don't tend to finish these. It's a lot of coffee for me right now. For whatever reason, I went on a long streak without drinking any coffee every single day and then now that I want to go back to drinking my coffee for some reason, I don't know why, it's been really hard for me to finish a cup of coffee. I think I might need to play around with different creamers and stuff. I'm kind of getting tired of always having just some oat milk and maybe a little splash of syrup. I think I want to play around with my coffee, but that requires me to go grocery shopping, which I haven't done. But anyway, I'm gonna make my coffee right now and I will check in with you all at lunch to go over my weekly plan and kind of a weekly overview, which is what I usually make either Sunday nights or usually on Mondays, but I wasn't able to share it with you all yesterday, so I will share it with you all today. But first, coffee. Okay, so I just started my lunch a couple of minutes ago. I always set a timer for my lunch to make sure that I don't go over it and honestly, especially during my busy periods, I usually only take like a 30-minute lunch, but because we're not in the very heat of the busy period yet, I'm still taking a little bit of a longer lunch. I wanted to share with you all the weekly overview that I kind of just put together, so I'm gonna be completely honest with you all. I really like planning out monthly and kind of daily, but I don't know that I love planning out my week in this specific format. Like, I'm not super used to this planner. This is a new planner that I was gifted from Papier and it's beautiful. Don't get me wrong. Like, I think it looks so good. I shared it with you all in another vlog and the inside might be exactly what you want and need in your life, so I'm gonna share it with you all and I'm gonna try it out for a couple of weeks. So, this is the weekly overview section and you do it before every week and then on the next page, there's a section for a shopping list as well as a section for you to plan out your meals for the week and then there comes the daily planner, so I'll show you that. My only issue with this is that when I go grocery shopping or when I have a list of to-dos, I either like to write my to-do list for the day out myself in like a bullet journal. I just prefer it because I can customize it. I can doodle on it. It's kind of therapeutic for me, so having it already like written out for me, it doesn't feel the most productive for me. It's just not how I usually do things, so like I said, a beautiful planner. If you want to check it out, I'll definitely link them down below. With my code, you can get 15% off. This isn't sponsored or anything, but I know a lot of you like these planners and again, I love them. It's just not the usual workflow for me. Typically, what I do whenever I go grocery shopping, for example, is I literally have a section in my notes called grocery list and then here, I will literally just go off of a previous grocery list depending on what store I went to and then I'll just add or revise that grocery list for that day, so it's pretty convenient. As you can see, I already have like one. This is the one that I used the last time I went to Whole Foods and it's really convenient because it's sort of like a template on my phone and I have it everywhere I go, so that's kind of what I mean. Like this whole entire section of what's on the menu this week for me isn't like super helpful. I'm just trying to be honest, but it is a reminder that I do need to get better at planning what I'm going to eat and planning out my meals and basing my grocery list off of that, so I think I need to try to make it more regular. I need to add it to my routine. I think I'm going to use this section to plan out like videos that I'm filming, when I want to schedule time for editing or any like big events that might come up which won't be happening very often because of how the world is right now. There's also a section here for my top three priorities and my top three priorities for this week are to finish reading this book that I'm reading. It's like a free thriller book that was on the books app and so far I actually really like it. I think it's a good introduction into thriller books, but I do think that there are better books out there, so I'm really excited to try some of them out and then there's a section here for a habit tracker which is actually pretty useful. So in the habit tracker I just added a section for five thousand steps that I want to walk this week every single day tracking my water which is to my goal is to drink at least 40 ounces a day. I know that's not a lot but for me that's like a step up and also tracking that I sleep seven hours a night. So that's what I'm going to be tracking this week and then my goal is that this will help me kind of keep track of my goal process, my intentions that I'm meeting or not meeting every single week. So then when I do my monthly reset routine I kind of have something documented to look back on, but again I'm not sure if I'm going to stick to this planner for this year because I'm truly a believer in you can only be as productive as your mindset and the tools that you have as well as your workflow and the systems that you have in place and while I do believe that part of productivity and just like living a healthy and balanced life has to do with some self-discipline, you know like making yourself do things, making yourself create healthy habits, like that's totally totally totally valid. At the same time I think that you should enjoy the process, you should enjoy the systems and you kind of have to find like what works for you. So again this might be perfect for some of you. I don't know I might want to try out some digital planners. I personally have been really liking using less paper, not having the extra clutter around. I'm someone who's really trying to embrace minimalism more and I just love a clutter free life and for me it's just like pulling something out digitally on my phone or on the computer is just so much more convenient and I'm much more likely to remember it because I can just pull it up really quickly versus like a notebook that I'll have to carry around or that I might have to just remind myself to look at it and that's like a whole extra step that kind of takes away from my productivity workflow. So we'll see, point is I'm just sharing with you all the process because I know that for some of you, you prefer putting pen to paper and this might be the planner for you so definitely check it out. I think they have a bunch of different options at Papier so definitely check them out. I also have this other planner that I was using for a while. I think I might prefer this one personally. It's this pink one called One Day at a Time and I got this one from the Lamar on Etsy and I really like it and there's still quite a bit left so I definitely plan on using this up and or giving it to someone. I'm just a big believer in not necessarily throwing things away but like regifting them or making sure that I at least use it until it's completely used because otherwise that's just wasteful and we already waste too much in the U.S. So with that said, I'm gonna enjoy the rest of my lunch. That is my plan for today. After work, I think I'm gonna go grocery shopping but until then, I will see you all later. Hey friends, kind of a heavy pour because I was trying to take a photo for the thumbnail but we'll see how that went. It's 6 p.m. I just signed out of work. I'm trying to work a little bit extra Monday through Thursday so that way Friday I can hopefully get off work a little bit early since I have a couple of friends visiting from out of town since it is my birthday this month and it's also one of my closest friend's birthdays this month so she's gonna come over to celebrate our birthdays together and I'm really excited for that. I already feel so tired and the busy period at work just started but anyway, I had a pretty busy day today. I'm sorry I didn't like really have time to check in more the past couple of days. Soon I'll probably vlog like a whole work week but I feel like I'm still trying to get in the groove and I shared with you all that I mainly like to vlog with you all when I'm in a good headspace meaning that I don't like to force myself if I'm not having the best or if I'm having a bad mental health day then I don't feel like forcing myself to vlog if you know what I mean because while I always want to be honest with you all, I also want to be able to be authentic with you all while also making sure that I'm taking care of me first you know because I'm someone who truly thinks that you can't pour out of an empty cup and so I have to make sure that I put myself first and keep my cup full and then after that I can actually share with you all what's inside the cup you know. Anyway, that's all I have for you right now. I feel really really tired and I feel like it's going to be a busy week and weekend. You look good. He always looks good but anyway. Ew, I'm chewing gum. We just got back from the grocery store. This time I didn't go to Whole Foods. We went to Aldi's which honestly we prefer to go to but we always have to like find a time that he and I can go together because he drives me. Got these groceries and I wanted to do a quick grocery haul to show you all the food you can get for $100. I think the last grocery haul I did on my channel a couple of videos back it was from Whole Foods and for that amount of food I think we paid like $175. Yeah yeah like $175 for like half the food. So quick little Aldi's haul. I'm really excited because this is the move. This is the move for 2022 right babe? Yeah. Okay so if you've never been to Aldi's they have like these boxes that you have to use. Oh my gosh. They have these boxes that you can use to like get your groceries and then you have to bring your own reusable bags because they don't really have bags there which is good because it's better for the environment but anyway. So this is what I got from Aldi's. We got two bags of these kettle barbecue chips, a bag of kettle jalapeno chips, some blueberry bagels, my favorite. I was gonna get two of these but I'm like okay I better not. We also got some whole grain bread, some dark chocolate with hazelnuts, a bunch of gum because we just didn't have any so we wanted some, three cartons of eggs. I have a couple of friends coming this weekend so I figured it's better to be safe than sorry. David and I love eggs so can't go wrong. Got some corn flakes because I love to have this with some sliced bananas and sprinkle of sugar and then some razz cranberry LaCroix. Like just the fact that, yeah, anyway I'm just gonna stop. And then there's still this whole bag of food. We got some garlic butter croutons for salads. We also got all of this. Some herb chicken tortellini. Some herb chicken tortellini. Got two of those. Did we get two of these? Oh yeah we did. Two of these turkey breasts because sandwiches is the move this year for me for lunch because I want to have lunches at home. Some shredded cheese for quesadillas. We got two of these. David's currently making a sandwich. Two of these pepper jack for sandwiches. Gouda to have with crackers. Cream cheese for the bagels. Brie to have with crackers and wine and also some extra crackers. Damn it. I can't even. Some extra crackers yeah to have with wine and cheese. And yeah we got oh and then two strip steaks which honestly this was a big chunk of the money because it was like $15 each but we've had steak from there before and it's actually really good. Right babe? And then we also got some batteries which is super random but I just needed some. So anyway so all of that for a hundred dollars. So like I was saying I hope that you enjoyed this vlog. If you did don't forget to give it a thumbs up. Make sure to comment down below. Let me know how your week is going. I love to hear from you all. I know a lot of you like to watch these during your work day. That's honestly what I do as well. So just let me know how your day is going. Let's check in. Let's chat. And don't forget to subscribe if you haven't already. I post new videos twice a week. I think I'm gonna stick with Sundays and Wednesdays or I might change it to Sundays and Thursdays. But with all that said I love you all so much and I'll see you all in the next video.