Productive days living in NYC 🌱 in my single era, faceTime chit chat, self care & healthy habits!

Just finished getting my lashes done! So good. Hello vlog! Welcome back to my channel. Another day, another vlog. So right now your girl's headed to pick up a shirt. Because I need a specific shirt. Tomorrow I'm going to be watching the World Cup game. Korea vs Mexico. And I need a Korea shirt. I ordered for pick up this one at Uniqlo. I literally had to hunt for this shirt. Like I'm literally going to Soho just to pick it up. So that's when you know. Also like I kind of love my fit right now. Should we do a little fit check really quick? It's a beautiful summer day in New York City. Let's go! Oh my god guys they have so many World Cup countries right now. So your girl picked up her order. I think I told you guys Uniqlo. It's actually Levi's. I don't know how I got them mixed up. But I wanted to show you what I got. It's just one shirt but then I also left with something else. So this is the shirt. Korea! So I'm going to wear this and then while I was at the Levi's store I saw that they had pins. This cute little Mexico pin. I'm honestly rooting for both teams. I want Korea to win. I also want Mexico to win. I love Mexico so I thought it would be cute if I do Korea and Mexico. Support them both. They're actually versing each other tomorrow for the World Cup. I'm excited for the game tomorrow. Wait this angle is fire guys. Wait do you see this? This camera is one of my favorite vlogging cameras. It's the Insta360 Go Ultra. I have a little discount link for you guys. I'll leave it in the description. This video isn't sponsored. I've been sponsored by them but I genuinely love their camera. I use it all the time. Clearly because you can get cool angles like this. Stick it on the wall. Okay. Let's get out of here. People are looking at me like I'm crazy. So guys I came to this specific corner store because I was looking for this specific water and they have it. I'm telling you guys this specific water, Lulunen still is so good. If you know, you know. If you love water like me this water tastes so crisp and so good. So I don't even know if you can see on my TV back there but I was just watching Gossip Girl. I probably re-watch Gossip Girl like I can't even count how many times now. Probably more than 10 times. It's so bad. But it's just one of my comfort shows and I like to leave it in the background. If you don't know, Gossip Girl is like based in New York City so it makes me kind of romanticize my New York City life. I know I look a little crazy right now but we are about to get ready. I'm watching the World Cup. Korea is playing against Mexico. I've been letting it sit like this for like the past hour because otherwise my hair will not stay in a curl. At all. At all. But yeah anyway how are you guys? How are you doing? How is your summer going? I'm not even gonna lie this summer it's giving 2016 vibes. If you know, you know. 2016 was one of the best summers and I feel like the vibes in New York are just amazing. The World Cup is going on over here but also the Knicks just won. If you're not a huge sports fan you probably have zero idea what I'm talking about. Okay they came out cute. By the way look what I have guys. It's a bunch of hairpins. I just had a bunch because I'm always losing my hairpins and I also wanted more options of colors. It just brings the joy back into my life. Summer just started and it has been I'm not gonna lie it has been a vibe. I just feel like whenever the weather starts getting warm in New York everyone is just in a way better mood because everyone's just outside like the weather is nice the sun is out. By the way I've been really into bronzer lately. I know who is she. I used to never use bronzer because I never really knew how to use it and I felt like it made me kind of look crazy sometimes. I started really getting into it so I just got this new bronzer it's from Knicks. It's the butter melt bronzer. This is what happened to me while getting ready. I think this is broken. It's supposed to be solid. It's not supposed to be a powder like this but all of it basically spilled out. Sometimes you just gotta laugh. You just gotta laugh. You guys can see it is all over my makeup now. Alright let me clean this up. It's all over my room right now. Oh my goodness. I realized I'm actually someone that always wanted control. For example I was always someone that wanted to be married by a certain time. I wanted to have kids by a certain time. I wanted to make a certain amount of money. Basically I had this 5-10 year life plan for myself. I was on that path and I was like I'm gonna do this no matter what. Sometimes I think that because of my need to control outcomes I stayed in relationships I definitely shouldn't have been in. I over forgave people. I kept people in my life that I shouldn't have. My need to have a certain outcome come out and play out in my life is the cause of a lot of my stress. It's also been the cause of a lot of my success I would say because it's not all bad. Definitely my desire to have a certain outcome in my life help financially support my family who's struggled my whole life. Live in my dream apartment in New York City. Have this community of amazing like minded girlies and guys too. I know some of you guys are out there too who want to become the best version of themselves. Retire and take care of my mom. All these things I was able to achieve because obviously God's blessing but also because I'm someone that really tries my best to control outcomes You know I've learned that it comes from trauma. Like a lot of things in our lives. It comes from trauma because when you come from a unstable household like I have. You're so used to things being so unstable. Like up and down up and down. Like not knowing the future. Not knowing what's going to happen. Being in survival mode your whole life. So then when you can control outcomes you try your best to do that you know. And it's brought me success but it's also been the cause of a lot of my downfall too. And that's something I had to kind of realize about myself. But once I realized that about myself. I've been trying to do better and trying to just like go with the flow. A perfect example about this is my apartment lease. Like this apartment. I actually just re-signed it for one more year so Yay! Yes we're going to be here for another year I just could not bother with the apartment hunting and thinking about moving again and just. I had looked for a little bit and the apartment guys in New York City right now Diabolical. Expensive. But then my apartment. This apartment. They raised me a thousand dollars in rent. I know guys look I know but old me would have crashed out. I would have cried and been so stressed out and been like spiraling like I don't want to spend this much on rent. Like I have family to take care of. Like what's gonna happen. I'm so nervous. Like so stressed out. This and that. I have so many things to take care of. I'm kind of just learning to trust God and release the outcome like I re-signed because I had to ask myself is it worth it for me to stress myself out and try to find an apartment. You know move out like deal with that stress rather than just re-sign my lease. You know eat the cost because honestly it's really worth it. Like this apartment is amazing. I love it. I honestly am not ready to move out of this apartment and I can continue stressing out about it or I can just release it and release the outcome and decide what's best for me. Not be emotional about it and just release it. You know I have this deep fear of instability and that's part of why I was in the relationship that I was in for five years which is a very long time. It's like my entire 20s because I had this like vision for myself like I am going to have a stable life. Like I'm going to get married. You know I'm going to not repeat things that my parents have repeated. In doing so I made some wrong decisions. So now that I know that I'm like oop no. I'm just trying to enjoy the journey and enjoy the ride. Not stress out so much. Living gratitude everyday obviously. I like how this was supposed to be a get ready with me and I'm literally just like sitting here cleaning. This is what happens when I get distracted and things happen. It looks like hot chocolate powder vomited all over my makeup. You know what this is a later Lena problem. I'm sitting here cleaning like I have all the time in the world to get ready. I don't. So we will resume this cleaning when I come back or something. This bronzer though it looks like it stays on because it's been stained the crap out of my makeup so that means it's going to stay put on your face. Another thing in my life that I was like trying to take control over was my dating life. You guys know like the last 6-7 months I've been healing and I've been very serious about my healing and I told myself like I'm not going to go on any dates or like try to talk to anybody until like the end of this year or like next year you know like I'm so focused on my healing but you know because of that black and white mentality of like things need to happen at a certain time for me I've definitely said no to like quite a few people that I didn't really need to say no to but I just the whole controlling outcomes thing. So update this is funny because my family watches my videos. I'm at that phase of healing right now where I am genuinely just enjoying time by myself. Like the other day I went by myself to this Vietnamese restaurant because I was craving pho by myself at the bar and I was enjoying myself and normally I'm someone that I wait for a friend I'm like do you want to grab pho? And if no one answers me I'm like okay I'll just wait until next week when someone's free. Now I'm like what do I want? You know what do I want to do today? I'm like you know what I'm craving some pho I'm going to go get it. And before I think I was you know really insecure about being seen alone I always would rather be around people than be by myself and now I'm someone that loves being by myself. I'm at that phase of healing where I just genuinely enjoy being single because I'm like learning to enjoy my own company. Like I'm letting go of outcomes okay I'm really letting go of outcomes I'm trying not to put a time on things but like right now I'm just genuinely enjoying my time by myself. I have a lot of things to focus on and worry about but yeah you know while I was in LA I was at a party you know I've been going out more I've been hanging out with my friends more I've been socializing more you know being outside more you're meeting more people and I've been getting to know different types of people different personalities like I'm telling you my personality before was very much like I'm going out with a purpose. I'm dating for a purpose. This is either my future husband or not don't talk to me. Like I was very black and white but now I'm kind of just like look I'm living my life. You're either part of it or you're not. Maybe you're just like a fun conversation or you're not. Like that's kind of my mindset right now. So yeah at that party there was a couple guys talking to me and I was like okay I'm like working on my muscle a little bit because I sometimes get kind of nervous when guys talk to me when I talk to guys like it makes me a little nervous. I don't even it's not even about the guy I just think that I get in my head a lot um like I start sweating a little bit it's funny like I'm very extrovert I can talk to anybody when it's not in that dating context but when suddenly I feel somebody's interested in me I'm like this is a lot like it's a lot of pressure I don't know what to do like I'm second guessing my words like oh by the way um I saw in one of my last videos somebody commented and asked what inner corner highlight that I use. Girl I read all my comments I heard you. This is the inner corner highlight I use this is the best okay this is the Dior Backstage Glow Maximizer