It’s been a crazy couple of weeks both professionally and personally. I’ve tried a couple times now to sit down and write about real life for Friday Favorites and admittedly kept putting it off. Honestly, I didn’t feel like I had a grasp on my feelings and I haaaaate putting pen to paper, metaphorically speaking, before I’ve fully grasped on everything. Keep reading today’s Monday Musings for more behind the scenes and some personal talk.
March Madness & Magazines: Life Lately & Monday Musings Click To Tweet{This post may contain affiliate and/or referral links. I may receive a small commission at no extra cost to you if you make a purchase through a link in this post. Thank you for your support of What Nicole Wore.}
March Madness & Magazines: Life Lately & Monday Musings | Wakeup and Makeup
I’ve gotten a TON of new makeup in the past month or so and in an effort to prepare for a big beauty post, I’ve been digging through old favorites and working my way through a ton of new products. I’m due to write a “new beauty” type post to review some new items, but I’ve been thinking about writing a post about destashing and some of the products I haven’t loved. What do y’all think?
RELATED: Shop My Beauty Faves
March Madness & Magazines: Life Lately & Monday Musings | Makeup I’m Eyeing
- Anastasia Beverly Hills Soft Glam Palette // My old boss/current friend, Katie, is a HUGE fan of the Modern Renaissance palette. I was shocked when she told me the palette may tie with the MR palette for her.
- Urban Decay Backtalk palette // I have the lipstick that inspired this palette {& love it!} so I’m super intrigued. The blushes & highlighters that I’ve seen in unboxing and swatches look amazing too. I don’t have any blushes from Urban Decay so it’d be cool to try some out.
- Dose of Colors // This much talked about independent brand is now available in select Ulta locations and online. While I never need a new lipstick, I love to try different brands out.
- Urban Decay Naked Petite Heat // This warm tone palette has five matte eyeshadow shades plus one highlighter; I have a couple trips on the books for this summer and think this would be a great compact palette to be able to pack.
RELATED: Best Beauty Products of All Time: What’s Worth Your Money
March Madness & Magazines: Life Lately & Sunday Starts | Blog Stuff
Obviously the blogging highlight of the past few weeks is my Southern Living feature! On top of that, if you read Thursday’s blog post or follow along on Facebook, you may know that I’m also on the March cover of Today’s Woman. While this has been SO exciting, I’ve been feeling a tad rundown trying to keep up with all the behind the scenes aspects of What Nicole Wore. Luckily, not forcing things seemed to be the answer for me and the past week I’ve been back to ALL the behind the scenes things trying to get ready for this year’s WNW does Derby series as well as a couple other projects.
Sometimes you have to cut yourself some slack. // Click To TweetRELATED: What a Day of Blogging Looks Like
March Madness & Magazines: Life Lately & Sunday Starts | Personal Life
Being honest, I’ve been all over the place in my personal life over the past month or so. I’m not sure why that can be so hard to admit on social media but the unedited, honest truth is I’ve been dealing with a lot personally. Truthfully, I’m one of those perfectionists so admitting that I have a lot going on can be tough even with friends and acquaintances but here we are! While I lovelovelove blogging and am so proud of the accomplishments I make as a content creator and influencer, I’m admittedly a workaholic and {can at times be} a perfectionist. Because of this when work gets crazy, that struggle sometimes bleeds into my personal life. I wrote a little bit about working from home last month, but finding the balance and figuring out how to leave work in your office hours can be really hard for me. {Personal note: admitting my own weaknesses is really hard for me, but I’ll be the first to tell you that I don’t respect the boundary between my work life and personal life.}
The unedited, honest truth about my personal life. Click To TweetRELATED: Behind the Scenes of Blogging: What Goes Into a Blog Post
So while February was SO exciting: Southern Living released, shot the cover of Today’s Woman Now, took part in a shoot for Style Blueprint Louisville, campaign work, a blogger meet up in Louisville; it also was a lot of behind the scenes work: working until 3 or 4 in the morning, constantly feeling behind schedule, feeling guilty when I missed regular blog posts.
RELATED: Social Media + Mental Health
Normally, if blogging is calling for this much of my attention, I just sacrifice some of my personal time and carry on. Strangely, my personal life demanded more of my time last month. I’m pretty open about being more of a social hermit; I appreciate {and seek out} friendships that don’t require seeing each other every week or even every month, my main social commitment over the past two years has been sorority advising.
March Madness & Magazines: Life Lately & Monday Musings | Advising Blues
Advising is always an up and down ride, but last month felt more down. Questioning yourself is a big portion of any journey, but I’ve dealt a lot with feeling like my expertise isn’t valued which quite frankly sucks. I’ve spent a lot of time reminding myself of what I was like at 18-21 and that I probably wouldn’t have taken kindly to someone telling me what to post and not post to social media. {It’s been a month where I’ve felt very grateful for the bond I have with the sisters I volunteer with on advisory board; both for the way they reassure me and the way they encourage me.}
RELATED: How to Impact Young Women: Being Active as a Sorority Alumna
March Madness & Magazines: Life Lately & Monday Musings | Dating
I struggle with how much of my personal life to share, but while I’m doing this long dive into how my personal and work life clashed, I have to say that one of the things that caused me to stress was dating. I’ve found that I don’t want to always dip into my personal time to finish work, go through my inbox, catch up on Instagram comments…the list goes on. While it’s been surprising but fun to find someone that I want to spend time with, I also am still figuring out how much time to “budget” that really is my personal time.
RELATED: First Date Behavior + Go To Date Night Look
March Madness & Magazines: Life Lately & Monday Musings | Grief
And finally, the metaphorical elephant in the room. Two years ago, I got an email from a local Instagram follower named Morgan. She blogged from time to time, but we’d grab dinner every few months and I could always look forward to Morgan’s texts during TGIT. Last month, Morgan passed away unexpectedly. While Morgan wasn’t a close friend, her death shook me up. I had just talked to her a couple of days before she passed because she wasn’t able to make the blogger meet up we had in town & we’d made plans to meet up for dinner.
I’ve been fortunate to have not had a friend pass away before this, but dealing with all the accompanying emotions, sadness, guilt, empathy for her family and friends, has taken me a bit. Morgan dreamed so big, always was chasing a new goal, and really believed she could do anything she set her mind to. Dealing with her death has really led me to believe that I should try as hard as I can to embrace those great qualities of hers.
Loved hearing your thoughts on the new makeup products!! I am so, so sorry about the loss of your friend. <3 Thinking of you and her family in this time!
xoxo A
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