An Honest Weekend in my Life in Brooklyn, NY

What is up? How's it going? How's life? Welcome back to my life. It was very cheesy, but it is Friday afternoon. I finished work for the most part, which is very exciting. It's been a very exciting week at work because something that I've been working on for so long is now live. I always start talking and assume everyone cares about my life and knows who I am, but I recognize that's not the case. But if you've never seen me before, my name is Greta. I am a Latina living here in New York City, living here in Brooklyn, and I'm a UX designer slash product designer. I thought it'd be so fun to take you along a weekend in my life in New York City. This is a very eventful weekend because I have a lot of commitments. I have someone's engagement party tonight. Tomorrow, I have boozeless brunch. Boozeless? No, no, no, the opposite, actually. I have bottomless brunch with some friends, which I don't think I'm gonna be participating that much in the bottomless section of it in terms of drinking, but the bottomless sense of it in terms of eating, I will be participating in, of course. So it's gonna be a very fun weekend. So I was just like, you know what? I haven't fully properly vlogged in this new apartment because I just moved like two, three months ago. So I guess you can't really say I just moved anymore, but kind of recently moved. When I moved here, I know, I know. When I moved here, I told myself, I'm gonna vlog so much more because I have a better space. I have a better kitchen. It's gonna be more exciting to film here. And you girl has not been filming. It's definitely my imposter syndrome. Sometimes I feel like I have nothing interesting to talk about. Then I was thinking, I was like, what kind of videos do I like to watch? And I like to watch vlogs. And I'm like, why don't I just make content that I really enjoy consuming myself? I love seeing people just live their lives. Why do we as humans enjoy watching other humans live their life? I don't know. Maybe we're just all extremely nosy about other people's business. I just wanna make it a point. I wanna make it a practice to feel more comfortable in front of the camera because I always get a little nervous before I blog and before I create any kind of content because I always assume it's not gonna be good enough, which is very problematic. But right now what we're doing, obviously I'm making some very, very, very late lunch. It's like way past lunchtime, but I was really busy today with work and I skipped lunch, which is a terrible idea. Don't do that. Because now I'm starving. So I'm just heating up some tofu. I found this really good recipe on TikTok of this like, it's called Kung Pao chicken recipe with rice and broccoli. And it's so good, but it's made with tofu. Not that I have anything against chicken. I would say I'm like a fairly okay cook. Like I've become much more comfortable with cooking since literally since moving to New York City by myself. But when it comes to chicken, cooking chicken, I don't know why I'm so bad at it. I have found some alternatives and tofu is so much easier to cook than chicken. Anyways, I'm having this with some rice and some broccoli. Gotta get our greens in. Okay. Does anyone else, this is probably a sign that my portion of food was too small. Does anyone else eat like a full meal and then you're still hungry? Like girl, I bought these Trader Joe's freeze dried mangoes. And I don't know how I feel about them. They're literally just dried mango. There's no added ingredients, which is what I really liked about it. I'm almost like I should have maybe just bought the regular like fresh mangoes, but it's interesting. I don't know. The first thing I wanted to do, I feel like I'm holding a meeting. Like everybody welcome. I'm very excited to talk to you about this very important subject, which is updates in my life. I do wanna like just chat a little bit, just like a couple of minutes before I head out the door to go to the grocery store. I haven't really filmed or vlogged for YouTube in a while. I've been all over TikTok every single day. In terms of the sounds of the city. So in terms of updates, you might've seen me talk about this once or twice. My low back has been acting up for the past like four years at this point. I got like an MRI on an X-ray and they saw that I have a herniated disc, which to give you kind of a very simplified explanation of what a herniated disc is, you have your spine. And if you are actually in the medical field, I'm so sorry if you are cringing at the way I'm explaining this, but you have your spine and within the spine, you have different discs and they're kind of like cushion between the vertebrae that allows your spine to kind of be flexible, but also allows it so that you don't have like bone on bone because that would be very painful. And the discs are like a jelly donut, which every time I go to a doctor for my back, they always like to explain it this way. A disc is like a jelly donut and within the disc, you have this like jelly-like material, which if you have trauma in your spine, the jelly in the donut can ooze out of the donut. When the jelly oozes out, it can press on a nerve, any number of nerves in your back because you have lots of nerves in your back, which often go down to your legs and into your feet. And that is very painful. No one has asked me what it feels like. I was about to say people have asked me what it feels like, but like no one has asked me what it feels like. But if you want to know, when the nerve is irritated, it also creates some inflammation in your back, which means that you just have generalized back pain, but also you have feeling of a pinched nerve, which is like basically feels like a burning sensation down your leg. Sometimes it feels like an electric shock if I move the wrong way. But girl, it has been a journey. You don't hear a lot of people talk about back pain in their twenties. So when you're dealing with it in your twenties or even like your thirties, sometimes it feels very isolating because you feel like you're the only one and I haven't been able to move and work out like I love to. And that affects my mental health. Speaking of mental health, I've also made another big change in my life in terms of mental health, which is getting off of my anxiety medication. I've been taking SSRI for the past six years. I made a whole TikTok talking about it. It has been very scary because I feel like I'm just kind of like free floating, like in the ocean without any kind of life guard or life vest or lifesaver or anything. I'm just out here. We out here, okay? That is the first life update I wanted to tell you. But in terms of this weekend, one of my really good friends got engaged. Wait, let me, hold up, okay? Everybody is getting engaged. Everybody. What is in the air? What's going on? So I'm going to an engagement party, like I said. Pretty soon, I probably should get ready very soon, but she's doing a pizza party and she asked for us to bring like ingredients to put on the pizza. So I think I'm going to go, no, I am going to go to the grocery store, get some of those ingredients and then head over to her apartment. Yeah, let's go for a walk. It is much later. I obviously am home. I got ready and I'm actually using the Rare Beauty bronzer stick as an eyeshadow for my eyes. And it works pretty well. It's really, really creamy. So I hope it doesn't like transfer or crease. So we'll see. Yeah, I desperately need to get my eyebrows done. So they're a little, good day. I'm wearing this dress. I have had this dress for so long. I brought it home the last time I went to visit Atlanta, my parents in Atlanta. I don't know if other people are like this that live away from home and that they're like in their twenties. I go through my closet at home and I always take things back to New York. I'm not really sure what to wear to this engagement party because it's very casual. We're making pizzas and she said it's very casual. So I assume this is fine. I'm going back and forth between should I walk there or do I take the train? That's always a question in New York City. Cause you're like, okay, it's a 25 minute walk. I could totally walk there. Like that's doable, but will I show up super sweaty? Okay, it's literally, I was right. It's literally a 25 minute walk. Yeah, as this is walking, I'm gonna walk. If you're on TikTok, every time I say let's go, I just think of the guy's voice. Who's like, okay, let's go. Okay, let's go. Also before I head out the door, these shoes, I love them. They're obviously they're new balances, but I will link them down below. I love them because as a girl who's five foot two, I could use any height that I can get. So I like these cause you know, they have a, they have height, but they're also so cute. And when I don't want to wear like my hokas or like running shoes, because I want something a little bit more elevated with something like this. This is really cute because it looks like you tried a little bit more. ♪ Space, you could risk me waiting for the right thing. ♪ ♪ Mistakes that I- ♪ Buenos dias. I'm having a snack before I go to brunch. I don't know if anyone else is like this, but I need to eat something right when I wake up. It's very rare that I wake up not hungry. So if I have a brunch at 1 p.m., you best believe I'm going to have a snack before I go. So I've eaten my little snack. Now I have approximately 15 minutes to get ready. I do this thing where if I don't feel like, you know, fully shampooing and conditioning my hair, I will simply wet it and then I'll brush through it. And then I will put some leave-in conditioner. Lazy girl hack, truly. But the engagement party last night was super fun. It was so, so cute. It was my friend and her fiance, they wore a matching t-shirt with pizzas on it. I actually got back really late from her party. When you get home and no matter how late it is, you gotta do the evening routine. You have to take off your makeup, you have to wash your face, double cleanse. I was on the subway, so I felt extra gross, so I needed to take a shower. By the time I went to sleep, it was really late. I am trying to moisturize my face as much as possible if you can't tell. Because lately, when I put my concealer on, it's been like looking so dry. But I am going to quickly get ready and then I will show you the final result. We are ready, but this is my outfit. I, yeah, I don't know. I've been doing the same makeup. Every single time I'm like, maybe I should try something different and experiment. And then I always end up being in a rush every single time. And then I don't have time. And then this shirt, I put it in a recent reel. I love it. It's from Another Stories. It's so cute. I just love the neckline. It's like very different. I love the sleeves, very cute. And then jeans, because it's literally 58 degrees outside. I'm gonna head over. We're going to Astoria, which I've never been to Astoria. My entire time living here, one of my friends lives there. And she was like, you guys need to come over here for once. So I was like, okay, we'll go over there. And I'm excited. We're going to this place called The Grand. And apparently they have great brunch and lunch and everything, so. Let's go. The Sunday, Feliz Domingo. There's some Sundays that feel extra Sunday-y. And this Sunday feels very Sunday-y. I don't know, I woke up and I had a slow morning. I'm watching YouTube, listening to music. I was originally going to get caught up in the sun, but I'm not. So I'm just going to sit here and watch the sun go down. I'm going to watch the sun go down. I was originally going to get coffee with some friends this morning, but we all collectively decided it's disgusting outside. And we live kind of like in different areas. We're going to end up having to go on the train kind of far. And so we were like, you know what? Let's just wait for the weather to be a little bit better because it is wet. But now that I'm not doing that, I think I'm still going to go to a coffee shop, but near my apartment. I try to leave my apartment once a day. I have it on my phone. Literally on my phone, I have a habit tracker, which by the way, I have been loving. Let me show you. Okay, I had to make myself really dark so that you can see this, but it's basically just an app called Habit Tracker. And I love it because I love the colors, first of all, because you can customize it to whatever you want. So you can basically decide what counts as completing the habit. So for me going outside, all I need to do is like go outside. You could say like, oh, I want to go outside for 15 minutes and that can be your metric or whatever you want to do to determine whether or not you fulfill the habit. And like for working out, it's 45 minutes for me instead of, it used to be an hour, but I was like, I don't need to do a full hour if I don't want to. I just need to do 45 minutes. And the reason I brought this up is because I try to go outside every single day. It's just good for my mental health. So I also want to cross that off for my habit tracker today. So that's why we're going to do it. I might go to the coffee shop and then from the coffee shop, go to the gym, question mark, if the weather gets better, because it is kind of a journey to get to my gym now because it used to be close to my old apartment, but now I'm a little further away. Do I have any other updates? Oh my gosh, one random thing. For some reason, my anxiety was so bad during the half of yesterday. And it just goes to show that when you are on a mental health journey, which literally we all are because we all have a mental health. It just shows that it's not linear. I mentioned that I got off of Lexapro and I was beating myself up because I was like, I felt like I was ready to get off of it. Why was I? And I was thinking yesterday, maybe I'm not ready because I feel anxious. That means like, maybe I shouldn't have gone off of it. Maybe I should stay on it. But I have to remember that I am going to feel anxious. Like, it's not like I feel like one day I'm going to wake up and I'm going to be like, that's it. No more anxiety because that is not life. So, I need to remember that on days where I don't feel my best with my anxiety. So, let's go to the coffee shop.