Quality over quantity, Y’ALL…
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Oh hello there! Apologies for the non-announced hiatus there. THE DAILY EDIT sort of took over and I had the overwhelming feeling that the posts that I’d planned and were due to write were just a bit pants. Never not wanting to do something by halves, I felt it best to press pause on the blog till today; the daily videos are complete and since I’m having a mini break from uploading videos, it’s time to water my blog a bit. So let’s start things off with a good ol’ monthly highlights post, featuring the five best bits from the past four weeks, along with my upcoming plans for the blog as I take things in a slightly different direction…
The Tour. I mean, of course this was going to be number one, right? March saw the final leg of the ‘An Edited Life‘ U.K book tour; featuring stops at Canterbury, Glasgow, Edinburgh, Newcastle and Manchester. Each completely different to the other, but all of them completely grand. Mark took some time off of work because he is just the nicest person ever, to join me on the road and it felt lush to have this mini work trip/long weekend away visiting both places we’ve visited before individually together for the first time, and stopping off at new cities too. Highlights include the STUNNING rail journey between Edinburgh and Newcastle which veered down the coast and was just absolutely beautiful and lunch at BABA in Edinburgh (gifted), that featured some of the best Lebanese small plates I’ve ever had (I had to stop Mark from licking the plate clean of hummus). Big love to everyone who made it down to one, the kind book store staff for hosting and my PR lady Emily, who kindly put the whole thing together. Next on the list are hopefully two California dates. Keep your fingers crossed for these ones as they aren’t currently confirmed, but if we do manage to pull them off then they’ll be on Monday 13th May in L.A and Thursday 23rd May in San Francisco. I’ll update you as soon as I hear anything!
Home Improvements. We’d completely lost steam with our home renovations after the major things were completed. Turns out that completely gutting a bathroom and having to live without a flushing toilet for two weeks really takes it out of you. What a shocker? We’ve made both minor and major changes to our flat over the four years that we’ve lived here, but most rooms were still not completely ‘finished‘; whether it be needing some coving put up, or some frames hung on the walls. So in March we began to tick things off the list again and made a start, by repainting the office – video on that here. It was so much fun and reignited the flame under our butts for giving our other rooms the finishing treatment too. Next on the list is our bedroom, which Mark has talked me out of painting pink and instead we’re just adding some pink and mustard accents and getting some art up in there to make it feel more homely. It looks better already. Bedroom makeover video coming soon.
A Charity Night-Out. Mid-month Mark and I partook in the YMCA DLG annual SleepEasy event for the second year in the row. The YMCA DownsLink Group does an incredible job down here in Sussex of providing services and assistance to vulnerable young adults; helping them with homing, education, counselling, advice and so much more. So we slept outside to raise awareness of homelessness in Brighton and Hove, with the hope of raising some money for this fantastic cause and because you guys are the absolute BEST, we completely smashed our target and raised over £2,000 which is even more than we raised last year. THANK YOU SO MUCH. It honestly means the world. It certainly wasn’t a comfortable night outside, but it was all worth it to raise such an incredible total for charity. A humbling night all round – thank you.
A Wonderful Weekend. You know when you have one of those months where you haven’t got a free day on any weekend just to sit and stew in your duvet for like an hour or two? A little bit of time to read a book, or stalk Miss Vanjie on Instagram? As a complete and utter homebody I like to factor in at least one weekend a month to be completely plan-free and when it doesn’t work out that way it can leave me feeling a little overwhelmed. However, although this month was busy with my weekends being full of painting, hen planning and book touring, this final weekend was perhaps the best weekend of the year so far. Our friends from Birmingham visited and stayed with us. We filled it with a bike ride to the undercliff path to the east-side of the Brighton coastline, complete with a homemade picnic and dinners at our favourite restaurants. It really felt like we were on holiday. The weather was glorious, the company unparalleled and it ended the month on a true high. Sometimes a plan-filled weekend is just what the Doctor ordered.
THE DAILY EDIT! When I told people that I was planning on making a video everyday for a month, the reaction was almost always ‘WHY?! ARE YOU CRAZY!?’, especially from content creators who’d tried this daily upload thing on for size before. Some were encouraging, others not so much, but the general consensus was that planning was key. Planning? That is my shit. So I planned my little heart out and began recording, editing and banking videos back at the beginning of February so that when March hit I already had some of the 31 videos required to hit my goal, in the bag already. And somehow I managed it. Over the course of March I uploaded 31 videos that went live at 6pm every evening, with only two hairy moments where videos *almost* missed their slot (catch-up with every single video here) Sure it was time consuming and it definitely ate into my ability to work on other projects for the month, but overall I really enjoyed the challenge and connecting with you lot on a daily basis. Cheers for all the support with it – my YouTube mojo has been well and truly dusted off and recharged. Would I do it again? Never say never…
So what am I planning for my blog? Well I feel like I’ve lost the whole ‘quality over quantity’ thing over the past year or so and I really want to claw some of that back. In all honestly I’ve been writing a lot of these posts at 7am in the morning on the day of upload date and I’d really like to fall back in love with writing them again (and not have to write them bleary eyed from bed). I’ve mulled over the options and I think what I need is some time to marinate over ideas a little more and be able to dig more deeply into topics. So I’m planning on putting posts live on a Monday and Friday morning (videos will be going live again on Wednesday and Sunday mornings from 14th April). This time though they’ll go live at 8am, so you’ll be able to read them on your morning commute and I’d really like to cover more personal matters, along with posts that slot into the beauty, style, and travel categories. Is there anything you’d like me to type about? Holler – I’m making a list. See you Friday at the new revised time of 8am, for my story of coming off the contraceptive pill and how I ended up with ‘fire nipples’. What a cliffhanger, eh?
Photos by Emma Croman
‘An Edited Life’ is now available to purchase worldwide HERE
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