Happy Fibro Friday! I’m in the midst of updating my routine to reflect the inevitable season change that is right around the corner (and that I’m feeling already!) so I’ve been laying low. That being said, I created a video a while ago about telework. I’ve meant to write about telework over here before, but I never quite had the words . . . Then I realized that some stories are best told via video. So that’s what I did.
As someone who had fragile mental and physical conditions, I did feel a bit of discomfort sharing how vulnerable I felt during the worst of my fibro experience. But if my story can help someone else feel less ashamed of their journey, then I’m glad to share it.
That’s all for today. Continue taking care of yourselves, and enjoy your weekend!
The first tool Rita mentions is keywords. Keywords allow us to laser focus on the elements of the essence, without getting lost in minutia. These also function as a compass of sorts, constantly guiding users to the heart of the effect they are trying to create through style. The keywords for my essence are as follows:
For Right women: Dreamy, Radiant, Inspiring, Luminous, Refined, The Sun, The Ice Queen
For Up women: Intimidating, Effort, Extravagant, Persona, Glamorous, Mysterious
The words that resonate with me were Luminous, Refined, The Sun, Effort, Persona and (in my mind) Glamorous. I started comparing these words against some of the things that I own, and whatever doesn’t make the cut, was placed into a giveaway (charity) bag. It was a simple metric for seeing which items suited me, and which ones are not harmonious with my style vision.
There are a lot of great keywords mentioned in the video that can help calibrate your style approach, so you can make choices that resonate with your core style ID. I loved experimenting with the many ways that keywords show up in my style. It also exposed ways that I’m falling short of my style vision, too.
That’s all my friends! What keywords from the video suit your style?
Yes, you read that right: the Beem Box is no more. The owner of Beem Box decided to cease operations back in June, and I’ll be the first to say that I’m so sad to see them go. I hope that the owner eventually brings back the brand and starts doing subscription boxes again. Until then, I’ll just smile at the wonderful memories of learning about brands that I’ve never used, and trying products that I never knew existed. So long Beem Box: I hope to enjoy you again soon! Here are some of my previous Beem Box reviews from the past year:
As an aspiring polyglot, I’m always reviewing language tools and resources that can help me fast track my mastery. Naturally, I dove first into Duolingo, YouTube and various podcasts. But, there are limitations with those resources, and sometimes you just want to try something different.
If you’ve been trying to learn a language but you want to go beyond YouTube videos, podcasts and Duolingo, then this is the post for you! I’ve located five other language learning resources that can help fast track your language learning, give you some much needed variety, and are all completely FREE! I discuss these options in a YouTube video (the link to the video below).
Amazon Kindle ebooks – This gives you a great source of free ebooks in various languages, as well as some free instruction books, too. To find them, search for books in a particular language, then filter by price (lowest to highest). Filtering by price shows the lowest priced books first, so you can quickly identify free publications.
MIT OpenCourseware – If you’re interested in college-level language instruction, this site is excellent. Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) archives resources from courses taught during prior semesters. The courses include syllabi, worksheets, exercises, and links to other great resources. To find these courses, look under the Global Studies and Languages department.
Foreign Service Institute (FSI) Free online course material – This page speaks for itself: it’s the material developed by the Foreign Service Institute (FSI) to instruct diplomats before assigning them to foreign posts. These classes are developed to quickly acquire mastery at the highest levels of language. The link has lots of languages available, especially some that are somewhat rarer and harder to study online.
Alison & FutureLearn – Both Alison and FutureLearn offer language classes that are paced and offer certificates of completion at the end of the course (the documentation of completion has a cost). This also gives you the advantage of participating in group discussion and other ways of interacting with other learners.
Internet Archive – There is a host of free archived materials on this website, including movies, music, books and newspapers. Find the kind of material you want and filter it by the language that interests you.
Here’s my video, discussing the ways to use these resources:
Those are the five free resources I can recommend for language learning, outside of the most popular recs. Do you have any language resources that work for you? I’d love to hear about it in the comments below!
Happy Fibro Friday! I hope that you’ve had a great week and a fantastic weekend ahead! Today, I’m sharing with you all a turmeric supplement that I recently started using, and the many benefits that this particular supplement has. To be clear, I’m sharing this because I believe in more bang for your buck: if I find something that is more effective at a great price, I’ll be sure to share the details so that you all can do your research and see if it works for you.
I did a video comparing the two turmeric supplements I currently have. I’m including that video below, but for those that don’t have the time, the key points here are that, ingredient wise, the formulas are fairly similar, but the inclusion of collagen and boswellia give this product a little more of an advantage. Here’s the video:
My interest in the product really came from being curious about including more collagen in my diet, especially now that I eat a mostly plant-based diet. While there are certain percentages in the Doctors Recipes that are less than the VitaBreeze formulation, I think that Doctors Recipes is a more comprehensive product, due to the additional ingredients in their formula. I will continue using it and see if I notice a difference. Look out for a video on that in the near future.
That’s it for today! I hope you all have a great weekend, and I’ll talk to you all next week. Take care!
Hey friends! I hope you all are doing well and enjoying your week. I haven’t written about my writing goals and practices in a while, but I did a couple of videos about my goals over on my YouTube. Here is the first video, outlining my May goals:
And this is the second video near the end of the month, where I describe how things went with my goals:
Considering that this is about 17 minutes of video content, here is the TLDW (too long, didn’t watch) version of the videos above:
Start working on the template for a workbook (that is a companion to a book that I’m currently editing) – I did begin the process of working on that template and seeing it come together has been great. I still have a lot to do, but I’m very happy that I began the process.
Begin working on the next couple of children books – I have selected the countries that will be profiled in the next couple of children’s books, and I’ll be releasing those over the summer. I originally planned to put the finishing touches on the books over the Memorial Day weekend, but life happened and I had to delay the work until a few weeks from now.
Designing a July to December planner – I found a planner that works for the remainder of the year: no need to design one!
That’s it for my writing goals and what I accomplished in May! I’m looking forward to sharing some great accomplishments in the weeks to come!
Hey everyone! It’s been a few weeks since my last post: I’ve been busy with the Vlog-A-Day-In-May challenge. I completed the challenge (yay!) which means I can finally devote more time to blogging again. If you want to check out those videos, you can click here.
How I was living in May – filming daily (Photo by cottonbro on Pexels.com)
It feels good to be back, and, even better, I have a TON of ideas for my writing. I won’t be straying too far from the expectations I set for this blog year, but I have some fresh perspective after making 31 videos in the month of May.
How have you all been? I hope the past few weeks have been good to y’all and that you’ve been set up for a fantastic summer! I’ll talk to you all tomorrow.
Happy Fibro Friday! I hope you all are doing well! I apologize for the premature postings this week: I’ve been concentrating on Vlog-A-Day-In-May and hadn’t gotten a chance to do much writing over here. Rest assured, the prematurely posted blog will be fleshed out and reposted soon.
Today, I’m sharing a vlog that I posted several weeks ago. In this video, I discussed why it’s important to “speak up” when it comes to your health, especially those that are dealing with fibromyalgia. So many times, our voices are silenced because many medical professionals misunderstand or minimize our experiences. Also, when you suffer from chronic pain, it can be difficult to accurately relay your experiences to medical professionals, which makes it challenging to get diagnoses and treatments.
However, we should always continue to “make a fuss”, sharing how we feel with our care providers and the specialists that we work with. We must persist until our concerns are heard, and we get the treatment that we need.
In a word, yes. I’m a little crazy, considering how busy my schedule is ordinarily. But that won’t stop me: I’ll be filming a bunch of videos (think anywhere from 15 to 20) over the next 4 days, so I can have a healthy cushion of videos before the month starts.
Yes, that means that most of these videos won’t technically be “vlogs” – I’m under the impression that the idea of a “vlog” is about having daily quick check-ins. But I don’t want to spend all month getting video-ready every day (so much time involved!) nor do I want to fall short of my vlogging goal by skipping a day when things are hectic. It’s better for me to have some material ready to fill in the gaps, and even if I’m able to do quick vlogs daily in May, I’ll still need those pre-filmed videos for the upcoming months, when I travel or have other obligations.
So yes, there will be vlogs every day during the month of May. I’ll try to keep you all updated with the video topics as these are posted, but I can’t make any promises. Pray for me, y’all!
Happy Monday, lovelies! I hope you all had an amazing weekend. We had some great weather (a spring precursor, if you will) and today is even warmer (though we do have a bit of rain). I’m still smiling from this fantastic weekend!
Last week, I shared a new video reviewing some products that I got a few weeks ago. I bought some products from LYS (Love Your Self) Beauty after I tried one of of their products that was featured in the Beem Box (I’ll post a link to that video shortly).
This is a clean, vegan, Black woman owned brand, and I love the stuff that I got! I got introduced to the product through the LYS Beauty Matte Bronzer in Strength (Dark). After perusing their website, I realize there were a LOT more products that I wanted to try. So I splurged on some foundation samples (LYS Beauty Mini Triple Fix Serum Foundation in the shades DN5, DN6 and DP5). I was really impressed by the company’s color range: the foundation is available in 35 different shades! So I got the three shades that seemed closest to my complexion. In my video, I swatched the colors (no worries: the video will be posted below).
I also decided to try the LYS Beauty Higher Standard Satin Matte Cream Blush in Empower (a deep berry plum shade). The formulation is soft and buildable: I’ve used it twice and I love it! I’m excited to try Inspire (a vibrant terracotta hue) and Passion (a vivid fuchsia pink shade). For those that don’t know, blush is probably my favorite color cosmetic to apply: it adds life to your face and instantly gives you brightness and dimension. I pretty much always throw on blush, even when I don’t do a full face of makeup. So finding a cream blush that I love is a real treat!
I decided, on a whim, to try some of the skin care offered by LYS Beauty, too. The LYS Beauty Think Bright Glow + Hydrate Serum with Vitamin C & Hyaluronic Acid is a reasonably priced product that promises to “a succulent glow and long-lasting hydration”. I’m doing an in-depth video and write-up about this product separately, but I wanted to mention it, since it’s part of my purchase. I have . . . Thoughts! But again, that’ll be coming your way soon.
Finally, the company graciously threw in a freebie for purchasing over a certain dollar amount, namely, the LYS Beauty Mini Speak Love Glossy Lip Treatment Oil. This is such a great lip product that is perfect for adding moisture and shine without weighing your lips down or feeling sticky/tacky. I love it!
Bronze Butterfly 