Saturday, August 29, 2015

I'm back!

Hello, everyone! I'm finally back! It's been a crazy six months (I can't believe it's been that long!), and I've decided that I really need to get back into blogging! Here are some updates of things that have happened since I last posted:

In regard to our living situation: We still live in our warehouse apartment. The intro video went viral overnight, thanks to Will's many subscribers and other people who thought the issue was worth sharing. Since then, we've received a lot of backlash from the management company and other tenants of the building who think we don't belong in this type of place and that we are trying to gentrify the building. The management company who had been here for over four years left in March, and a new company took over. They kept the onsite manager, who continued to fail to do his job. We had to seek out a restraining order over one of the tenants who kept harassing us; he has since left the building. Now, the new management company has hired a different onsite manager, so there's hope. We aren't sure how much longer we'll be here, and that has been a constant stress over the last six months.

In other, more positive news, I graduated from college in May! I'm the first person in my family to have gone to college, and it was an extremely proud moment for them and me. It was (and continues to be) extremely emotional to leave the place I'd spent most of my time over that last four years. This month was particularly hard since it's back to school season. I went to Target and they had all the school supplies out and I got so sad that I didn't need to worry about preparing for the school year.

Right before graduation, I interviewed with a company that manufactures foods and cosmetics for a job in quality control. I got that job, and started one week after graduation. It was awesome to have somewhere to go immediately after graduating, so I didn't feel so, "What do I do now?" The job basically involved me testing raw materials and products to see if they passed basic identification tests, such as moisture, density, color, etc.

After being there for about a month, a position opened up the analytical lab, and they offered it to me. Now I do a lot more wet chemistry to test the same products as I was before. I do a lot of titrations, ICP, HPLC, and GC. It's great to be actually using what I learned in school for something!

What I'm doing now: The last few months have been particularly hard in terms of adjusting to working full-time. I know that it might sound weird, since everyone does it and it seems like something at should be easy, but it's been really hard knowing what to do with the limited free time that I have. For the past four years, I haven't really had to worry about what to fill my time with. My time would either be spent working on school stuff, or procrastinating by doing something that would waste a lot of time. Now, I have such a small amount of free time it's hard to know what to do. I think I've finally found a balance of when I need to be doing productive things, like laundry and basic cleaning. But it's still hard to know what I should be doing to have fun. I don't really have a hobby... I don't play an instrument or sport or really have any activity that I truly love. I watch a lot of TV, but that usually makes me feel pretty guilty since I'm not doing anything for long periods of time.

So, in order to find something that makes me happy and that I can consider a hobby, I've decided to try different things to see what works. Recently, I've started doing yoga every day. In the past I've found that trying to exert myself through running every day was too difficult to keep up with. With yoga, I can decide to either only do it for 15 minutes if I don't feel I have enough time, or I can go for an hour. It's been great to finally keep up with something.

This is also why I've decided to get back into blogging. I really enjoyed posting recipes and reviews in the past, and even though my living situation has been pretty crazy, I need to stop making excuses about why I can't do things and just do them.

So stay tuned for more recipes, reviews, and general updates! Hopefully there will be a lot more of them soon!