 Hello and welcome back to my channel. My name is Jackie if you're new here and it is now 6.30 a.m. I am at the train station in Lausanne because I'm heading to the airport because fellow author tube in Nicole Wilbur is in Europe so we thought we'd catch up while we're both on the same continent and do like a mini riding retreat. So today I'm heading to Nice. So I just checked into our Airbnb. I spent a couple of hours this morning at a cafe waiting to be able to check in and this place is huge like look how look this is just like the living area so there were all of these couches and then like this open kitchen behind me and then there are two separate bedrooms as well so I feel like I feel like this is way too big for Nicole and I so we're not actually going to have a party but I feel like we should be having a party here to use the space properly but as you can see I'm a bit tired so she just sent me a message saying she'd landed I'm like do I have time to go out and get a sheet mask before she gets here because you know meeting like internet friends in person for the first time is always like I don't know I don't even know what I'm worrying about but I'm like I feel tired and old so I want to do something about it. So Nicole has had to step aside to do a work call so I thought I would catch up on some videos because as you know I haven't been doing them much lately so the first one is my Q3 reading which shouldn't take long because I didn't read a lot and then I'm thinking about doing a rambly one on publishing goals so we'll see how that goes. I am in bed and I can see that the lighting isn't good and I'm debating whether I can bother to get up and turn on the light for this footage. I think I think we'll manage so I filmed my Q3 reading vlog and then I thought I'm going to do my next one about like goals and things and my camera overheated which it does every 25 to 30 minutes so that stopped and when it stopped I went okay I'm going to lie down for a bit because that was my original plan. Nicole had her meetings so I was like okay I'm going to have a shower and maybe I'll try having a nap or something before dinner because life's been so busy for the past. Basically since May because May is when all of the immigration stuff started for Switzerland so we had May, June, July which was all the prep and then August was moving there and admin and so on and then September it wasn't as busy but like there was a work trip for a week and the first week of October there was also another work trip so work got very busy and October has slowed down a bit again and thankfully I've got this time off but it's sort of like these things keep happening and there's been no time to slow down and I have five days off now and the first and the way I've been looking at them is like oh okay I wonder how much I can get ridden in that time I wonder like how much I can get organized for Nana Rhino I should catch up on videos and it's like Jackie that's not how you're supposed to use time off and I didn't really realize how destructive that was until my camera died and I went to lie down and went I can't lie down I have that like tired but wired feeling like I I'm almost shaky with the need to do something and that's not healthy and I'm almost shaky with the need to do something and that's not healthy and it just like I knew it had been so long since I'd been able to stop and like I mentioned post immigration things have been busy because multiple work trips we had like a virtual AMA which is very um it doesn't sound that big but it's a big marketing project there's a lot of effort that goes into it and I'm head of marketing and yeah I've just um been so busy for the past what is that six months now six months five months I think it's the end of October so I think that's six um I kind of keep this is what's happening to my brain my brain is spaghetti now it doesn't do its job anymore because I don't know how to relax anymore because I work and and constantly on the go like yesterday I had I think 12 meetings I had a 15 minute break for lunch and the rest of the day was back to back meetings and it's always you know bam bam bam and I'm getting I'm having less and less time for like deep focused work and when I do get the time I'm so spent that I don't do that like barely been reading and I'm just watching things on youtube and that um I suppose it's been enough of a mental break when it's been something my brain can do when I'm not sleeping and also don't want to be working but it isn't really um good for recovering and I only just realized that today when the minute I stopped doing stuff I was suddenly you know shaky and tired but wired and I'm not sure what that means for writing and author tube and and even this holiday like I'm like if I've forgotten how to relax so yeah I think maybe I do still want to do some writing on this like originally Nicole and I were talking about is a writing retreat and I would still like to do some writing or some writing related things but I'm also wondering if maybe um this is time when I should be recalibrating and almost teaching my body and my brain how to relax again you know maybe my time would be better spent doing some meditation or long walks since that's probably the one thing I do still do that helps so yeah I'm in bed because Nicole's beating is still happening so I'm like okay let's let's try this relaxing thing and see how it goes maybe maybe it's a skill I can relearn is to um do an old town tour of me so um we're in the old town now and then we've already committed that later today we're going to actually go back to our Airbnb and make some time for writing because then it was like three days away and neither of us is very well looked at so um yeah I think she's going to be doing some flooding and outlining I'm going to be so she's going to be doing some flooding and outlining I'm going to start writing my draft of the glass which finished our walking tour we just went the London full so now I'm just wandering around the old town a little bit and we're going to head back to our Airbnb and finally get some writing done on this supposed writing retreat so Nicole and I just got back and we're going to get to work and do some writing but first I wanted to share with you this very exciting discovery which is this tea which says clear ideas so my plan is I'm going to drink some of this and then I will magically be a better person and I'm going to knock out the book this afternoon so let's see how I go so I've been writing for about an hour and I have another 922 words which honestly I'm pretty okay with given how long it's been since I've done any writing and if I add that to the 900 I did earlier today I've actually done more than what is expected in Nana Raimo Day so hopefully I can keep this up in November the one challenge I'm running into is that because this is set in a historical period that I have actually let's take a step back because I don't think I've actually talked about the project in this video so the project I'm going to be working on in Nana Raimo which I'm working on now is The Glass Witch which is about a glassblowing apprentice in Venice who basically discovers this statue of a girl made out of glass and she desperately wants to figure out who made it this leads on onto a journey to discover a witch and magic and so on and so forth and it's in Renaissance Venice and leads up to Carnival so it should be a lot of fun one of the challenges is that even though I've been doing research on Renaissance Venice it's really hard to find details about daily life and so on so I'll write a little bit and then I'll have to stop and go oh what's this called or what will what should this person be wearing and some of the time I've just done like note to self fill this out later but then there are some things where like at the moment we're in the glass workshop and I'm like well what is she actually making and what can she make where we can have like one bit assigned to the more senior apprentices so she gets jealous of them so that means the progress is slower than I'd like but the fact that I'm making progress at all given that I haven't done anything in months is really really positive so it's going in the right direction good morning it's about quarter to eight on Saturday so the second last day of the trip unfortunately last night we went to one of my friends places and she cooked us an amazing Persian dinner and brought us like these little cakes from the local bakery or patisserie so we basically rolled home last night as we were so full and then this morning we're going on a food walking tour so I think we will be very full again in a few hours so there's about an hour before we leave and I want to get some writing done at this point I've done the prologue I'm working my way through the first scene it would be great to finish the first chapter though I'm not sure when my chapter breaks will be and I don't know if this was something I had planned for power so it came to me intuitively with power but yeah I feel much more out of my depth with this book but I also think that's just because I haven't done this in a while so the best way to get over it is to do it I've finished my writing but I think 942 words done and I'm feeling really optimistic about this project now like it makes me wonder why haven't I been writing for so long like I could have been doing this the entire time but it's better to start late than ever so we're about to head off I have a very special guest with me so we've got a food tour of Nice today and yeah we're gonna head off get very full for like the fourth day in a row um probably sleep and hopefully do some more writing later this afternoon yeah from the food tour a few hours ago and they've just spent the last hour and a half writing which is not as much time as we've been home I wasted a lot of it but one of the nice things about having time off is you have time to waste which is probably not the best attitude but it is what it is so I've been writing for the last hour and a half and um got another 2000 words which is really exciting like part of me is almost um um like surprised at how easily this is happening and part of me wonders like is it actually any good or is it sort of self-indulgent stuff when I decide to take a tangent down memory lane for one of the characters so I think that's obviously not something I can judge at the moment only to go back and reread it like once it's written it yeah just the fact that I'm writing words and continuing to write words um is a really good sign and I do wish I got back into this earlier so fingers crossed that I don't run out of steam before Nanorimo because yeah that that would not be great but from here I think I've done enough for today I am partway through a scene so I'll sort of like to finish when I've got a little bit more to go because that gives me something to get started with the next day so I'd like to finish that tomorrow and um from here I guess Nicole and I are going to look for somewhere nice for dinner so we randomly stumbled across the Villa Massena which is having a Heroes of Literature exhibition today which is kind of perfect for Nicole's and my last day in Nice so we've been working from the terrace bar of Nicole's hotel where she's going to be staying for the next few days um I've written another 900 or so words and I'm actually up to the scene that I already had written previously which is when Kiara first sees the like statue of a glass girl that sets the whole plot in motion so it's exciting to be at this bit I don't know if I've got enough there but like I've been saying for the last day or so I think it's just exciting to be writing again so um I do feel a bit written out though so I'm going to do a little bit of editing for the next hour or so before I head to the airport so this is Future Jackie I'm back in Switzerland and realise I had nothing to sign off on this video so obviously made it home safely and yeah had a great week in Nice thank you Nicole for letting me know you're in Europe and for organising the Airbnb and everything I had an awesome time and on the writing side I'm really just happy to have started writing again so if you like this video please like, subscribe, leave a comment, hit the notification bell and I will see you next time. Bye!