Life As of Late

It’s been six months since I came on here, so I figured I should give y’all an update on my life.

Let’s start with personal updates! I have been living in El Paso for six months and will be here with my boyfriend until April 2023. I have since completed my “mourning phase,” if you will, and have become pretty acclimated to living in El Paso. The desert still continues to challenge my hair, my skin, and my social skills, but overall, I’m enjoying exploring the city and the somewhat cheaper cost of living. In more recent months, we have added a third member to our household–a cute little Terrier mix named Arlo:

Arlo is a rescued stray and estimated to be about four years old. These last two months, he has really started to develop a personality compared to our first week with him. Definitely dealing with some slight behavioral issues, but hoping to see some improvement over the coming months. For those who don’t know, I have never had a pet in my life (excluding fish at a very young age), so this has been a major life change for me. I have learned some valuable lessons in this short amount of time with him, but I am glad that I am not experiencing this change on my own!

Speaking of additions to households…I will also be an aunt later this summer to twin girls! Last weekend, I went home to Dallas to attend my brother’s girlfriend’s baby shower and that made it all the more real for me. Though I won’t be in close proximity in the first six or so months of their lives, I look forward to seeing the twins grow up and seeing my brother mature into an awesome father. Around the time that I found out about the pregnancy, my boyfriend’s sister gave birth to her daughter, so it’s amazing to see my family growing on both sides. 🙂

Finally, on the note of family, the baby shower provided an opportunity for me to reunite with my extended family after about four/five years and I feel like it was perfectly timed in my life. Besides just the genuine joy it brought me to catch up with everyone and spend that quality time, I had some great conversations filled with encouragement for me to start creating content again. I have been going back and forth about it ever since I stopped everything back in spring of 2021. Many of my videos on YouTube are now private, I removed my business profiles on Instagram and Pinterest, and we all saw how I basically disappeared from my blog with the exception of a couple of personal posts.
I’m sure I’ve written about this before, but I took it very hard to see all the work I was putting into content creation not paying off. It wasn’t a matter of desiring overnight success, but I wasn’t feeling that support from my inner circles–aside from my boyfriend and a couple of friends–so I was running out of steam trying to pull that from myself every week. I burned myself out obsessing over making sure every platform matched the same level of quality, and the devil of it all: analytics. Eventually, I stopped enjoying it and it just felt like self-sabotage. Every time I’ve attempted to get back into it, I felt that overwhelming feeling come over my body of not being sure I’m in a headspace to take on that level of work again with no promise of things being better than the first time around. I wasn’t and I’m still not sure if I can separate the enjoyment of content creation from the focus of reaching certain goals with it. But I feel I’ve been seeing more signs than ever to creep my way back in.

I’ve backlogged some content from some travel over the last year, but it hasn’t been consistent. As I’m getting my footing again, I am practicing showing myself grace as I’ve already had moments of self-deprecation when I haven’t captured a shred of content, despite having my phone and camera on me daily. I have no idea where to start or what people would want to see from me. On top of the blog and YouTube stuff, I’ve been having a complex about my age now that I’m 28 and competing with Gen Z. I’m not even sure I know what my ‘brand’ would be. That’s an area I’ve always struggled with because I’m not a niche person. I know in order to grow at a faster rate, you have to have an identifier: “I follow Alexa because…” Is it luxury or budget travel? What is it when I’m not traveling? I’m not a student, so what can I offer those who are younger than me? How can I inspire those older than me who feel they’re too old to start something they love? Who knows! I guess this is another aspect of it that I’m training my brain to not obsess about. To feel the fear and do it anyway. If there’s anything I’ve learned from life as of late, it’s to stop caring so much what others think and prioritize your peace. Although I’m not sure in what capacity it will be, it still feels good to be back.

If you made it to the end of this post, please do me a favor and leave me a comment on what you’d like to see from me in phase two!

xx, AE