When I was deciding to write a life update post I was shock to see that it was the 3rd one I’ve written and my last one was published in February 2020, then I remembered that my other updates were lockdown related back when we were in the thick of things in 2020. Even though this one will have some lockdown updates it’s sort of gone back to pre-pandemic when I updated on random life stuff. So, here we go!

Lockdown and leave
When the President announced Level 3 adjusted I was still on leave and still had a bit more than a week before I had to go back to work. Living in a current COVID-19 hotspot I decided to #stayathome as much as I can, the most fun outdoor thing we did was go to a drive-thru for ice-cream, lol! The upside of this time was spending so much slow days QT with my daughter; we played, coloured, sang and baked – it was a special time.

The year of less
I am a recovering impulsive buyer, I buy things without thinking, end up wasting so much money and filling the house up with things I didn’t really need, so I have decided to change this. Late 2020 I read the book The Year of Less by Cait Flanders and I am applying some of the concepts in 2021. One of the rules that I’m putting into action is that I’m not buying the following items in 2021: books, plants, stationery, home decor, trinkets etc. I have also started up a wishlist of items that I want to buy, the reasoning behind it and a rule that I have to wait 30 days before buying items on my wishlist. It’s only been a few weeks and I am super proud of myself!

Pulling back on content creation
I’ve been seriously thinking about pulling back on the amount of content that I create. I’ve been creating content since 2015 and I’m tired, I want to have my time back on the weekend and on the evenings. It started with me temporarily disabling my Instagram account in November 2020 and not churning out regular content in 2021. One of my goals for this year is actually to create content that feels good to me and when I want to instead of chasing schedules that I have created for myself. At one point I was publishing 2 blogposts and 1 YouTube video a week!! This blog is my first love and I still see myself creating on here for a while to come and I’ve been really loving creating videos for my skincare series on my YouTube channel. Everything else is up in the air at the moment and I’m totally fine with that. If you want to catch up with me, Twitter is where I’m at most of the time 

Mpilo Life Update
Mpilo’s vocabulary and speaking skills have noticeably improved in the last few months, it’s so amazing to see. The funniest thing is that her English is almost as good as her Zulu even though we exclusively speak to her in Zulu at home. She’s picked up all the English she knows from all the cartoons she watches. Kids are the ultimate sponges.

She also had her first ever haircut at the beginning of the year. Her hair had been growing unevenly since birth because she was born almost bald on the sides and at the back of her head so even though her hair was long, it was extremely uneven. This haircut had me thinking to the type of things I want to teach her about beauty and it not depending on the length of her hair. Just like any kid she loved when we put a few braids in her hair (in a phondo like fashion) and you couldn’t tell her anything, so her love for long hair is already there, now it’s all about how to balance that. It’s something I’m going to have to think about because it will be mainly my job because her dad can’t relate .