 Hey yo, what's up? My name is Sonali. Welcome to a new video and happy new year. I thought I could start off the year with like more of a chatty video and I wanted to talk about just like life updates and also my new year's resolutions because I'm really excited about them this year. If you're new to my channel and this is the first video you're watching, I am Sonali and I'm 26. I live in Austin, Texas, but I'm from Georgia. I was raised in Georgia and then I went to school in Orlando and then right after college, me and my boyfriend moved to Austin for his job. For my career, I do photography and then also influencing YouTube, Instagram, TikTok, all that kind of stuff. For the past six months, I've actually been living alone. I was terrified at first. Like I remember thinking like there's no way I can handle it. There's no way I can do it, but I actually learned that I can do it and I don't mind living alone. Like it's actually kind of nice. I'm a little bit more of a workaholic alone because I don't have my boyfriend being like, hey babe, you need to get some air. You need to get outside. Like let's go on a walk. So that has been a little bit difficult, but also these past few months I've been really trying to focus on growing all my platforms and I feel like I'm doing a really good job at that on TikTok, although it's just like so overwhelming. Everything is overwhelming because there's just so many platforms. So at the end of last year, which is literally like what a couple days ago, I was feeling so so shitty. I had like insane imposter syndrome for like the last month or so. Like I feel like ever since November and I lost a lot of motivation because I did go home for such a long period of time and I feel like that always happens there, but I want to spend as much time as I can with like my family and like in my hometown. And obviously my boyfriend's living back home so I wanted to spend time with him as much as I could. And by the way, we went to the same high school so we literally live like 14 minutes away. Also, tomorrow is Ryan and I's 10 year anniversary. 10 years. That is insane. I cannot wrap my head around like even knowing him for that long. I feel like he knows like more about me than I know about myself. Like he just like remembers all my memories even more than I do. It's just crazy. We met like in middle school and then started dating sophomore year of high school. And in college we did long distance and then of course like I said we moved here right after college. But I feel like whenever I make TikToks and say that like I'm in a 10 year relationship and you know they're like oh where's the ring and I'm like you guys don't understand. Like it's not 10 years right out of college like living together or something like that and I don't have a ring. It's like two years in high school, four years in college long distance and then we've really only lived together for three years and you know been grown-ups for three years or wait is it four years? I don't know. Basically it's just wild to me. Random thought but I also really want to make like a travel scrapbook. I told myself I would do that after we went to Italy this past year and I didn't start that. So I'm gonna add that to my New Year's resolution. I got back to Austin a couple days ago and I feel like I just need like two days to like you know get my shit together. And then the third day I was like okay let's go let's do this. Like I felt so motivated and I just feel like it was because I was in my space. I you know had my things where they're supposed to be. I love being in a routine and I want to talk about that too because I'm really excited about it but I will talk about it when I get to my New Year's resolutions because it kind of relates to that. And I feel like I've said this on vlog before but I feel like this year I realized I don't think I love travel as much as I think I do. I feel like I like the idea of traveling and obviously like I like to do fun things and cool things and see new places and stuff like that. But if it was like the perfect world I would be able to travel and then just like transport myself back to my apartment in the nighttime like so I can go to sleep in my own bed and like do my morning routine in my own apartment. I feel like that is like the major reason why I haven't really loved traveling recently is because I like rely on that routine a little bit. I missed the anniversary of my one year of being self-employed. It was in December when I turned in my two weeks and I have never looked back. I'm so freaking happy that I took the leap and it was definitely scary like leaving a stable income you know that paycheck every two weeks or whatever it was but when I was in that job I was just always thinking like oh what if I had more time to put towards photography or put towards like this youtube instagram stuff like would I make more money? I wanted the what ifs to like stop and I wanted to just experience them and I honestly could not be happier. Let me know if you guys would be interested in like what I've learned through the first year of being self-employed video. I feel like I have a lot to say on that topic. I think it's time to get into my new year's resolutions and I feel like this year is going to be about the habits because I'm realizing that in order to achieve my goals I really have to do those like everyday habits and I also cannot rely on motivation anymore because it is not cutting it let me tell you. I have to be more disciplined this year and I'm really trying to work on that. Number one resolution is waking up at the same time every day. I feel like this is going to be such a game changer and I've already done it for three days and feel amazing and I know three days is not a lot but I'm definitely going to be continuing to do it because I really do feel good about it and I have an alarm on my phone and my hatch alarm which I feel like I could totally just do my hatch alarm but I'll like stop my alarm on my phone and then won't touch my phone until I'm out the door headed to the gym and that kind of just makes me go through my morning routine a little bit faster because I feel like every single morning in the past I would immediately pick up my phone and start scrolling on TikTok, Instagram, everything like that in bed and then I would like finally get out of bed go to the toilet and like brush my teeth and literally still be like watching TikTok scrolling the whole time and I feel like that tripled the time of my morning routine and so by telling myself okay you can only like be on your phone when you like get out of the house to go to the gym I feel like I'm going to like you know move a little bit faster and just like get up faster so that's a little reward and I feel like that's like habit stacking I've heard a lot about that on TikTok recently. Being self-employed I am so grateful that I don't have to be in the office every day and I honestly don't have a specific time to you know be online but that makes it really hard because I don't really have like a certain time to wake up or like something to wake up for so I told myself that I need to be at the gym by 8 a.m every weekday and I literally just work out in my apartment gym because I don't do anything crazy I just want to do like the treadmill for like a long time maybe like an hour or an hour and a half if I'm feeling it but I just really want to be active early in the morning and that's my second resolution is to get movement in every day before starting work hopefully later this year I'll like actually understand what to do at the gym because I feel like I've never understood so that's why I kind of just like go on the treadmill and you know at least I'm being active I'm getting in steps and I feel like a lot of people say treadmill routines really just lean them out and that's what I'm trying to do. My favorite thing to do on the treadmill is just like random little phone tasks I know I said get movement in before starting work but like I also like to do some kind of work tasks while I'm walking because it makes time go by so fast and plus the work that I'm doing is so fun like going on tiktok you know finding trends to do writing down ideas for the day planning out my day if there's any campaigns that need to be filmed coming up with kind of like a rough draft of the script for that and then also something I need to start doing a little bit more often because I just got the storage notification that everything's full is deleting photos and videos while on the treadmill because that takes up so much time and might as well be active while you're doing it. My third resolution is to cook Indian food from scratch once a month and this is definitely going to be a hard one because I said I would do this last year and didn't really cook that much Indian food if anything I found really easy ways to eat Indian food at home aka buying frozen Indian meals I feel like I've done that a lot this past year which definitely made me eat Indian food more because I was just like craving it more but I really do want to learn how to cook even more cuisines other than Indian but we're going to start with Indian because I feel like I just need to do that for me. Also want to limit how many times we eat out this year because when Ryan moves back we are going to try to save you know as much money as we can because we definitely want to buy a house this year or in the next year but I really really hope in this year so we're going to try to save and we eat out a lot especially this past year and that means we've spent a lot of money on food so I want to learn how to cook so I can cook at home more and actually make it fun. This one just needs to happen like I'm so over it I need to declutter my whole apartment because I just feel like every cabinet every drawer is overflowing it has become a little excessive for example like my glassware obsession guys I cannot stop they are so cute I literally just got new glasses for Christmas I I just couldn't help it but it really does need to stop there there's no more space for anything in my apartment and I am kind of nervous because they feel like the houses that we are looking at like they don't really look like they have that much storage so I really want to try to declutter while I'm in the apartment so that when we get to the house and like move into the house it will be organized from the start and yes I am talking like we are going to buy a house this year because manifesting works I also want to buy less this year I need to stop doing these impulsive purchases at night like in the middle of my sleep I don't even I don't even know how it happens and then also I just see something on TikTok for like two seconds of the video I'm like yeah I need that okay I'm gonna go buy it like I need to stop it with the impulsive purchases it's so bad and I'm very very lucky that I do get sent some PR so I don't have to purchase like everything but the things I do purchase it just needs to stop next resolution is a huge thing that I was trying to overcome I feel like these past few months and that is to stop overthinking every social media posts like I said I just had major imposter syndrome I just didn't feel like people really cared about my outfit of the day or like my favorite recipe and I also just started to look at the numbers a little too much when I was out with friends or family or just like out and about I would take photos and want to post them on my instagram story but like I was trying to work on being present so I would post them like a lot later in the day when I was like home or whatever but then even a few hours later I would be like oh this is like stupid like it's irrelevant then I had time to like overthink it because I would do it at home and there was so many cute photos and like cute things I did that I didn't post this year because I was just overthinking it or like looking at the numbers and being like oh like 10 p.m. it's not the right time to post so I'm not going to post it but then it's irrelevant by 10 a.m. I think it's great to have goals and I'm definitely going to have numerical goals this year like I want to hit 100k on tiktok and I've been saying that for the past few months but it's okay we're hitting it in the next two months I believe it but I do want to stop looking at daily numbers I just feel like I get a little worried because obviously brands look at those daily numbers I want to start posting more in the moment and just like my everyday life without like stopping to think oh is this like relevant or are people don't like this like I just don't want to think I don't want to think before I post well I think a little you know but like not too much where I'm just in my head next resolution is to keep my car clean because I feel like currently we use it as a literal storage unit there's like a blow-up paddle board in the back there are like summer pool tubes there is my play-doh's closet bag of clothes that's been sitting there for I don't even know how long there's just like random stuff in here and I need to find a place in my apartment but I need to clutter the apartment before I find a place for that shit so once I do that I'm going to reward myself and go get my car like detailed because it could use some detailing lastly I just want to increase my vocabulary and literally get like an app that tells me a word of the day or something and actually start using it in my vlogs and whenever I'm writing emails I was gonna put on my list to like read two books or something like that but honestly even that was unrealistic for me because I just don't like reading that much I can't even get past two pages without being bored out of my mind or falling asleep because I'm already a really sleepy person so I just need to find a better way of like learning more vocabulary if you guys have any other recommendations for you know expanding vocabulary other than reading let me know because I really do want to work on that this year and just be even better at speaking on camera so that wraps up my life updates and news resolutions and if you guys want to see real-time content you can follow me on instagram and tiktok I post every single day especially on tiktok and if you guys are not already subscribed here definitely hit that subscribe button before you leave this video and I will see y'all in the next video bye