You know how sometimes you haven’t seen a friend in a while so you have coffee but before you can discuss anything you have to give a super high-level recap of everything that has happened so you can give them some context to your life? Yeah? Great! Let’s pretend that you and I are getting coffee and we need to do some catching up so I’m going to spitfire a bunch of stuff and then we are going to be semi-caught up. Sound good?

For your reading pleasure, I’ve broken it up according to category so you can skip over the boring parts.

Exercise + Nutrition

I feel like in the first few months of the year I didn’t really rock my personal life. I did get a lot better about working out consistently and now I am working on my nutrition. I am not a *total* emotional eater, but I love sugar and I love a good 3 pm snack. Thankfully I don’t drink very much alcohol so I don’t have extra calories I have to cut out. I refuse to give up my Vanilla Coke Zero in the morning but I am wondering if that would help get rid of some bloat so I’m trying to drink more water and decrease my soda intake. Even if it’s zero calories so in my mind it seems like a freebie.

I currently pay wayyyyyy too much for my bootcamp gym and I think I am going to end my contract with them. As much as I love that the cost motivates me, it’s essentially a student loan payment and I may have bitten off too much. Due to possibly quitting my gym, I need to find another solution other than the Y. I cannot stand the Y for so many reasons, but most of all, I despise that I don’t feel like I can really work out how I want and not have a child interrupting me. I’m currently exploring my options and doing a bunch of gym 1:1 visits which feel like I’m interviewing them.

Personal Life

My best friend is about to give birth to a baby girl and I am so excited. I need to stop buying her things, but honestly you make something small and I’m like sure, I’ll pay double! That swaddle blanket is totally necessary and she must have it. However, I am crossing my fingers that she doesn’t give birth in the next 11 days because I will be in Mexico and I don’t want to miss any updates. Also, that darn giraffe gave birth before she did and I definitely did not call that.

My favorite date pretty much of all time was last week when we went to the symphony (drinks beforehand) and then afterwards we went for a late-night dinner. I ADORE getting to dress up for occasions! But the one thing I adore more is being surprised and it was a complete surprise. It was absolutely the best.

I threw a surprise party for another best friend! This is worthy of it’s own blog post to be honest, but let me give you the summary: I spent $40 on balloons that popped an hour before the party sending me into a complete tailspin. I bought Jimmy John’s sandwiches which is the best party hack ever for not having to make food. I had a minor internal meltdown about 30 seconds before she arrived. It was a good thing I had extra wine on hand for sangria. I got 3 bug bites, 2 bruises, the boyfriend threw out his back picking up furniture and I realized I have a firm 10 pm Sunday night bedtime. The end.

I have turned into a plant lady. I find myself on weekend mornings just browsing plant nurseries thinking of all the wonderful plants that I wish I could have. Currently the Fiddle Leaf Fig plant is my favorite and I’ve worked really hard to make this guy comfortable and adapt to my home. Also, while trying to solidify being 90, I have started learning about re-potting and soil. I thought that I was the only crazy one, but Instagram confirms basically everyone my age is now spending time looking at glorious plants and admiring pots. This is the new 26.

I started counseling and it’s helped me so much! I genuinely enjoy going and I appreciate the way that my counselor works with me so I have my own guided discoveries. One of the biggest issues I have is anxiety which impacts me very differently across my life. I’ve experience a great reduction in anxiety and when I do have it, I am much better equipped to know how to deal with it. I can’t recommend counseling enough for anyone who is having anxiety or just needs someone to talk to about dealing with life issues.

If you ever have a chance to see The Lumineers, DO IT! I absolutely LOVED their concert and they did the most incredible job of making a sold-out arena feel like they were at a small, intimate concert.

Shopping

I haven’t done a ton of shopping, (see why HERE) but I’ve gotten the shopping bug the past few weeks. I’m trying to focus on statement pieces that expand my professional work clothing. Aka, stuff is costing more so I can’t buy as much of it. Turns out that is the secret to quality. You only own 10 pieces of really nice clothing because that all you can afford. I wish I was smart enough to make enough money to afford my expensive taste. Sheesh.

Items on my wishlist/current purchases:

• Jenny Bird – I want alll the earrings, but especially these, these and these! I found out about this from Jessica and I just love the classy statement pieces.
• I want this dress! The moment Madwell has a sale, I’m getting it!
• I bought this in green for an upcoming work trip in Mexico
• If you have to wear flip flips, wear these. You won’t regret it.
• I bought this amazing dress for cocktail hour on a work trip!

Items I keep wearing:

• This dress, which is now on sale, but it was totally worth the full price. (See also me wearing it here.)
• These SMILE shoes which well, make me smile. (Also extremely comfortable!)
• This was my Easter dress and it’s definitely making it to Mexico with me!

Work

I officially had my work year anniversary and right after I found I was getting a promotion! I did my best to act very chill about it, but I was SO excited that I wanted to scream. Promotions aren’t just handed out and I really have worked and tried to prove my worth every single second I am at work. The moment that I got the promotion I started thinking about ways to show my worth for the next title. I know it’s a long way off to get the next title, but I am excited to prove that I can get it and I am going to continue to work enthusiastically and diligently.

Here’s some other highlights:

• I would like to repeat. I got a promotion! For the first time in my career, I got a promotion! I am now a Senior Marketing Communications Specialist for ADT! Since I was so chill at work about it, I need to be a little giddy here.
• I got to present to a huge group of my peers, my boss, the CMO and CEO this week and it went well! Really, really well.  I didn’t say “so, like, essentially” or any other of my awkward words. Oh and I made strong eye contact across the room. I’m still on a little high from it!
• I am currently working on making sure my tone on conference calls and other meetings sounds genuinely enthusiastic, but also professional.

Travel

If you’re wondering why things have been so sporadic around here, it’s because I am constantly traveling. It’s to the point that I don’t even unpack my bag, I just get out the dirty clothes, leave the clean clothes in and then basically just hope that you made good choices when you grab your suitcase for the next trip. I used to travel every couple of months for work, but since my company has been integrated with ADT, my travel schedule has picked up quite a bit! Like, a lot. In order to try and make traveling so much more fun, I’ve tried to gamify everything. Right now I am super excited because after my trip next week, I will have Gold status and then I get to start working on a new status. It’s the little things in life.

Also I am now a travel pro at packing a week’s worth of my life into a carry-on. This was much harder than it seems as I type this out.

Here’s the rundown of work trips for the first quarter of the year:

• Boca Raton, Florida (6 trips, see photo to see my view)
• Dallas (1 trip)
• Saint Louis (1 trip)
• Total: 8 trips
• Upcoming work travel:
  • Cabo San Lucas

• Upcoming personal travel:
  • Chicago (U2 concert! More on that soon!)
    I could really go for some chicago recommendations! I haven’t been for fun as an adult and my last trip there barely counted. Tell me all the places I need to hit up and duh, all the food that I need to eat!

Quote I’m Living By

“Know yourself, know your worth.” – Drake

Phew! I’m glad that we got caught up, although I can already feel a life update coming up. But, sometimes you just have to get things like this out of the way. As you can tell, things have been a little well, busy around here, so I hope you forgive the silence! I promise you I won’t keep abandoning you, part of the reason I’m doing more posts like this is to eliminate the pressure of having a killer post with the perfect photos and content. I want to get back to what I did when I first started blogging.

So what about you? What’s your life update? I wanna knowwwww!