A day in my exciting life lol

I had a whole spreadsheet of ideas for things to film, and none of them interested me that week. So, in August 2021, I picked up the camera and filmed bits of ordinary life in Kent instead. Waiting for a parcel, going to the gym and sitting at my desk were all part of it.

My life was very quiet, and honestly, I liked the quiet. There wasn’t much drama to report. The footage wandered from a working day at home to a gloomy weekend morning with cold brew coffee and plans to play Skyrim. That was what I was up to, even if it wasn’t terribly glamorous.

Waiting around in gym clothes

I wanted to go to the gym, which I usually did about three times a week, but a parcel was due. It was coming with Hermes, and I joked that there was a fifty-fifty chance of it arriving. That was my opinion of the delivery situation, not a statistic. For the moment, I was standing around the house in my gym clothes, waiting.

I was also trying contact lenses. I’d recently had an eye test and a contact-lens consultation at Specsavers, and I had a new prescription. The trial lenses weren’t quite right for me, so they were ordering some different ones. I hoped to wear contacts for much of the day while keeping my glasses for when I wanted or needed them.

The prospect of going to the gym without glasses was exciting. Getting the lenses into my eyes was less exciting. The idea of putting my finger near my eye made me feel sick, and I’d spent a couple of weeks watching other people put contacts in and take them out before my appointment. It helped make the whole thing less scary to me.

The parcel did arrive. I could finally go to the gym, and afterwards I was very sweaty, with my arms shaking as I tried to hold the camera up. Filming little updates about an ordinary day made me wonder how people managed to vlog all the time. I wanted a shower, and then I had work to do.

Back at my desk

After the shower, I settled at the desk where I worked. I was finishing a cooking video for the following Tuesday, which had a sponsored segment. That meant getting the finished video to the company for approval ahead of publication. With my Tuesday posting schedule, that work had to happen during the previous week.

At the time, I’d given myself a rule of no more than one sponsored video a month. I wanted to work with companies I thought offered something useful or interesting, or companies I’d used before. I got plenty of approaches that weren’t for me, including requests for entire videos about standing desks, strip lights or children’s toys. I tried to be picky.

The money explained why I did any sponsorship at all. A ninety-second sponsored segment paid me more than a whole month of YouTube advertising revenue. That was my situation then. I knew people didn’t love watching sponsorships, and I was trying to make the sponsored bits a little silly and funny. I thought the cooking video was funny, but I was nervous about whether other people would agree.

I had also bought two pairs of glasses online while I worked out the contact lenses. One pair was green with thin gold arms; the other was larger, with blue fading into a peachy, pinkish colour and plastic arms. I liked them. Smudges on glasses drove me nuts, so clearer vision without dirty lenses was one of the things I enjoyed about contacts.

Cold brew for a grey morning

The weekend morning was overcast after a huge thunderstorm the night before. I was groggy and ready for coffee. In summer, I liked cold brew, although the English weather was doing very little to announce the season. I started with a glass of ice and one pump of sugar-free vanilla syrup.

Then I poured in coffee from my cold-brew jug. A jug lasted me roughly five days before I made another batch. I bought the container online, and I liked being able to make that much at once. This was my morning drink, rather than a carefully measured coffee recipe: I decided how much I wanted as I poured.

I added semi-skimmed milk, tasted it and thought it was perfect. Delicious. I also filled my water bottle so I would have water once the coffee was finished. Between the drink and the weather, I was quite ready for my quiet plan for the morning.

I wanted to curl up on the couch and play Skyrim. I’d played it from beginning to end perhaps four times, and it was probably my all-time favourite game. I thought it was silly and very broken, and absolutely wonderful. Taking my cold brew and water over to the couch sounded like a good way to spend a stormy weekend.

My time at home included waiting for a delivery, doing my work and making coffee. I joked about how thrilling it all was, but this was what I liked. I was happy with a quiet life, and on that grey morning I wanted coffee and Skyrim.

Watch my quiet days at home in Kent.