november 1st
normally i journal in a notebook or on my computer so i thought it might be a fun writing exercise to recap my day publicly. obviously i'm not putting everything i would normally write here but it will still be cool to see what kinds of patterns show up. (the title was originally "a boring day in my life" but why be negative?)
my plan for the day was to get out of the house, eat gluten free, spend less time scrolling, do more productive things, go to the ulta near me for the first time just to look around, get some hair dye, and go to starbucks.
waking up
i got about 6 hours of sleep, this has been an issue for a little bit for me. although i didn't really feel like it, i jumped out of bed and went to the gym. in retrospect this was honestly kind of a mistake because i didn't feel good working out on an empty stomach and on less sleep than i like. i thought the normal thing of "if i just push through and go work out i'd feel better and more accomplished" but that wasn't true. i love working out and i literally work at a gym so i don't really require any willpower or time management to work out. it just ticked a box in my head of arbitrary things to do and that's it.
gym
coming from a bodybuilding background (that sounds funny to me but i guess it's objectively true) i struggle to program and progress in non-muscle building things so after literal years of googling how to do this i threw my hands up and just started working on my splits with one of the most popular routines. i've been doing this routine and i am very very close to getting them on my left side. i've been following her recommended programming of 5x a week but i'm not going to lie, i kinda feel like i would recover better and progress better if i did it a bit less. sleep and diet obviously play a part in that as well.
shopping!!!!!
i went to the strip mall area my gym is near and it was so busy, i joke in my head that it's the fifth avenue of my small town. i saw a car almost run over 2 older women too.
ulta honestly sucked, they had so many displays that it was difficult to find somewhere to walk. there's just too much merchandise and new brands out that look like fake aliexpress makeup. and the perfume was all behind glass which gives me no reason to ever spend more than 10 minutes there. i did try out this light pink nars lip gloss which was really nice and a different kind of look for me (i usually go for peachy lip colors) but it's $30.
then i got to sally beauty and picked up hair dye and a hair mask because i forgot i was going to try natural remedies lol, funnily enough they had a hair mask from my favorite housewife of all time kenya moore there on clearance so i got that one.
starbucks
after that i got a matcha with coconut milk at starbucks and sat down to write a little bit. i also got their rice krispie treat because i hadn't eaten that day but it didn't really help me feel better, i was quite shaky from doing the splits routine on an empty stomach. i intended to go there to write notes for a potential youtube video but this doesn't really match the way i work (i like to do that kind of stuff digitally because i can type so fast) so i ended up journaling normally.
home
i went home and after having trouble finding "the right youtube video”, i had the idea to watch documentaries instead. i put on this documentary tickled which was a big deal a few years ago while i made sausage and risotto. i was making risotto because today's imaginary rule was to go gluten free, not dairy free, so why not just make something with a ton of dairy in it? it ended up tasting bland and i only had a few spoonfuls but i'm beginning to like cooking as an act in and of itself. the movie was interesting, and i watched a follow-up to it called the tickle king, but it just put me in a shitty mood honestly. for some reason i started scrolling and looking at things that were pissing me off for a while after this.
i had to fold laundry so i tried to find another documentary to watch. again, for some reason i went on reddit to look for one but ended up finding a lecture about procrastination. it took me a while to find it because all the links had died but i watched it while doing laundry. it was a bit hard to follow but i ended up dyeing my hair (i watched a video by this random drama sloptuber i found when i went on youtube without an account lol) and doing a few other small tasks i had been putting off for no reason.
i joined this site serializd which it's literally letterboxd for tv. i like having a place where i can talk about tv show episodes and the userbase there seems very chill, i spent a while just browsing on there. overall i feel like my internet usage was les scrolling than usual this day but still a lot, i liked my documentary idea and using more generative services like this site and serializd.
i wanted some chocolate (gluten-free) so i had some while watching reality tv. before bed i was still hungry so i ate a bunch of generic ritz crackers (okay).
i guess now that i have it all written out i can definitely see how many arbitrary vague goals i put on myself each day that create a cloud of doom when i'm not doing something that actually matters or hanging out with people. so that's interesting