“Life in My Eyes” is a series that highlights my favorite things across entertainment, beauty products, and everything in between. Enjoy! And now to March 2018 … Disclaimer – The below content does include some affiliate links and sponsored content, but all thoughts and opinions are my own.
I haven’t written a “Life in My Eyes” post since September 2017. While it’s been a long while in the making, I’ve taken several months to re-evaluate what’s most important to me at this point in my life.
Oddly (at least to me), many aspects are exactly the same in terms of their importance to me as they were one year ago. At this point of the year in 2017, I was moving quickly towards an incredibly negative space in my life – it’s somewhat odd to me how many pieces of my life have not changed at all. I still very much value my relationships with my family and almost all of the same friends, I love my time in the outdoors, my relaxation time is absolutely imperative to my sanity (both alone time and relaxing with my favorite people), my growing career is thriving thanks to an updated focus and deeper prioritization, certain music/movies/shows still speak directly to my heart (“This is Us” cannot be beat), and many other, perhaps seemingly trivial, tidbits have not changed one bit.
But other aspects of my life have become much more important to me, and others have left my life completely. While those pieces of my life that have grown in importance will likely become ever more evident on le blog, they aren’t really pieces that I feel I need to address at this point. (Ironically enough, privacy has become an increasing concern for me, for a variety of reasons.)
Then there’s the final group, the brand new pieces of my life that either left my life for a while and came back, or are brand new to me entirely. Some small things, such as taking one full night a week to just relax by myself (my friends in Denver call it “only child night”), to large base values, such as my relationship with God and religion. I spend way more time in the backcountry than I ever have before – skiing, hiking, fishing. My little, growing pup is my life lately. I crossed another continent off my list and I love my new office and officemates more than I thought to be possible.
I still have a lot of questions that I’m asking myself and I still definitely have subconscious issues to deal with, but I’m in a much better place (putting it lightly.) Life is fun again. 🙂
So, without much further ado, here are five of the fun things I’ve been up to lately:
Life in My Eyes – March 2018
Traveling
From two, one-night trips to Vegas for different reasons, to a trip south of the boarder, to a trip to South Korea for the Olympics, to a trip to Tokyo, I’ve fallen back in love with my proclivity towards traveling across 2018. (Some of these trips are pictured above and in the featured photo and a post on my adventures across Asia is coming soon.)
While I’ve become much more of a homebody over the past few years and adore sleeping in my own, crazy cozy bed, I love the new experiences and welcome the new adventures now more than ever before. These trips, and more that are planned, fill my soul with a new understanding of how tiny I am and how trivial my problems are compared to the greatness that our world has to offer.
In the past, I’ve said that where ever you travel to becomes a part of you somehow, but now I’ve realized that I also travel to make sure that life doesn’t escape me. As John Muir said, “The world is big and I want to have a good look at it before it gets dark.”
Skin Care
One of my old college housemates recently said to me, “When I think about budgeting, my two main priorities are skincare and fitness.” And I see where she has a point.
If you don’t know already, you’ll know soon that you start to see a drastic decline in the quality of your skin and in your physical strength and endurance rather rapidly if you don’t consistently pay attention to both. Living in Denver, I’m typically pretty good when it comes to the fitness aspect of things, getting outside a couple of hours each day, but the skincare piece is where I need all the help I can get.
With the dry air in Denver, there are a few products that have really helped me out more than others. But Neutrogena products, specifically, have been my savior. I apply the two products pictured above almost every day and they’ve kept my skin youthful looking and protected from the sun all ski season long.
Specifically, Neutrogena’s Rapid Wrinkle Repair has been the newest entry into my skincare regimen, and I won’t be looking back. At 31, I’m slowly starting to see signs of aging appearing on my face, but applying this cream twice daily to my face and neck has kept my skin fresh – I noticed a difference within a few days. Pretty amazing at an affordable cost if you ask me!
Puppy Training
Bringing this new little rescue Bernese Mountain Dog into my life has been the greatest decision I’ve made in a while. And, luckily for me, we have a team of people that have been ready and willing to lend a helping hand. With their help, at four months he knows sit, stay, down, heel, is fully crate trained, trained for car rides and airplane flights, and is fully potty trained. Listening to his vet’s recommendations, I also bring him to the office almost everyday and we’re slowly growing his endurance for backcountry hikes and skiing. He is definitely a winter dog and is naturally obsessed with the snow and being outdoors, so his first backcountry hike was probably his favorite activity thus far. Though I’m expecting that may be surpassed when I take him backcountry skiing for the first time this upcoming weekend with some friends. 🙂
Overall, we’ve had some of the puppy issues. He LOVES munching on my Sperry’s (thank goodness they’re durable), but overall, he’s been an incredible little puppy and mascot for my office and my buildings in both Denver and Breckenridge. He’s doubling in size each month and, while I know I’m biased, is absolutely adorable.
For those of you in the Denver area (and one nationally), the training groups that I’ve been working with are as follows:
- Colorado Dog Academy (Broomfield, outside of Denver) – Both the 4 week boarding & training program, as well as ongoing classes.
- The Perfect Dog (video, available nationally) – A very similar method of training to Colorado Dog Academy, but more focused on off-leash. Also helpful as it’s an at-home video program, so it’s ideal if you’ll be having more than one person around that should understand the relevant training methods.
- Noble Beast Dog Training (Denver) – For their puppy socialization classes. As pups shouldn’t be playing much with other dogs until they’re fully vaccinated, these classes allow pups a way to learn to play with other dogs in a way that’s not aggressive and gets them fully socialized in those first, crucial 20 weeks.
Calming My Anxiety
Anyone who knows me knows that I meditate at least once per day. Typically focused in short bursts, I love using my guided meditation app to help me stay relaxed and calm, especially when situations seem out of my control.
And this is primarily because one of the subconscious issues that has arisen from last year.
When everything is going well, I’m constantly scared that everything is going to crash down around me. Brene Brown calls this foreboding joy in her book “Daring Greatly.” And it has led to sporadic, very large and long anxiety attacks where I become completely delusional, the world starts spinning around me, I forget where I am, and the world almost goes entirely black for a few hours.
The most recent attack I had was on the side of the highway just this past Sunday – and I cannot thank a random stranger family (and my +1) enough for literally saving.my.life. I cannot emphasize enough how much it can help to sometimes trust a stranger. Please let me know, either via email or in the comments section below, if you’d find it helpful for me to discuss more of this piece of my life.
Three pieces of my life have kept these random attacks under control – actually speaking the issues I have in my life, either through writing or saying the words to my friends/family, meditation, and spending as much time as possible outside in the mountains (finishing up a picnic, pictured above). In addition, I have started going back to therapy and am planning to see a naturopath here in Denver to get my hormones under control.
Overall, I can say that I’m incredibly happy. Heck, my neighbor in Denver yesterday casually said, “You’re absolutely glowing today.” And, most of the time, I feel like I’m glowing, too.
But we all have issues, and anxiety is what I’m dealing with at this point in my life. And that’s okay.
If you have issues with anxiety or mental issues in any way, know that you are not alone. I am incredibly grateful that I’m able to control most of my issues naturally, but recognize that each case is individual and unique. Please speak with a health professional if you are having mental health issues.
Growing SST
One of the biggest blessings in my life in the past few years was starting to view Semi-Sweet Tooth as a business, rather than as just another personal blog. In the back half of last year, my team and I grew the business by leaps and bounds to be an over six-figure business. But, at this point, I have major goals in sight, and everything is going in the right direction to make them a reality. (In fact, I’ll have another open role here in the next couple of weeks, so stay tuned!)
Because I received several questions about what exactly we do here at SST, there are a variety of different pieces of the business that have all been fitting together in the past year or so.
- The blog/Instagram – If you’ve been following the blog or my Instagram account for a while, then you know that we do include some sponsored content. Please be aware that these products/services are only for things that we have tried ourselves and fully believe in/would recommend. I limit our sponsored content to two posts of any kind per month so that we can be a bit more picky and so that we make sure that we continue to bring you authentically created content that is relevant to YOU.
- Social Media Marketing – The vast majority of our business is focused around our Social Media Marketing services. In this, we manage Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn accounts, blogs, and newsletters for female-owned small business (except for one business that’s male-owned, but he’s super awesome, too.) Our niche is businesses that have 1-3 permanent locations or are online only. And our clients are amazing, empowering, inspirational businesses that I love dearly, as if they were my own. If you know of any businesses that might be great to reach out to, let me know! We’ll have capacity for two more clients in the very near future. 🙂
- Freelance Writing – Consistent to what I’ve been providing from the very beginning, I continue to write for a variety of different publications, primarily in an online capacity.
- Speaking Events – Specific to Denver at this point, I frequently have speaking events that cover topics that I’m passionate about, such as astrology, social media, and women’s empowerment. And since I’m comfortable speaking in front of a bunch of people on a microphone (at least I’m assuming that’s the skillset the planners have been recognizing), I have been MCing events around town more often. In fact, if you’re in Denver, you’ll spot me MCing the Whimsy and Waste fashion show this upcoming weekend as a part of Denver Fashion Week! Please make sure to say hi if you’re there!
Stay connected to our journey! Follow our fun on Instagram as we adventure through 2018, including trips to South Korea, new puppies, and all the fun that this year has to offer!
