**A Conversation with [Name]: Life, Love, and Everything in Between**

In this latest episode of [Name]'s YouTube channel, she opens up about her life, sharing stories and experiences that fans have been eager to hear. From relationships to fitness, mental health to grief, [Name] dives into topics she's passionate about.

**Relationships with Family Members**

One topic [Name] discusses is the importance of nurturing relationships with family members. She reminisces about having a closer relationship with her grandparents when she was younger and wishes that things were different in her current life. "That's something that we both look back on and think like oh it would have been cool to be closer with our grandparents and have better relationships there," she says. This sentiment is echoed in her desire for a stronger bond with her parents, which she hopes will improve over time.

**Fitness and Wellness**

When asked about her workout schedule, [Name] reveals that she's been enjoying cardio more than weightlifting lately. She explains that her current routine consists of walking three days a week and full-body lifting three days a week, with breaks in between to accommodate travel. "I haven't been that consistent over the past like week or so because we've been traveling," she admits. Despite the occasional break, [Name] is committed to maintaining her fitness routine, citing mental health benefits as a major motivator.

"Seeing a lot of mental health improvement when I consistently exercise has helped me realize how important it is for my well-being," she says. As she navigates the IVF process, [Name] is determined to prioritize self-care and make healthy lifestyle choices whenever possible. "I know it helps keep my mental health sharp," she notes.

**Mental Health and Grief**

One of the most poignant topics discussed in this conversation is [Name]'s ongoing grief over the loss of a loved one, Pickles. She reveals that even though it's been some time since his passing, the emotions still linger, and she's still finding ways to cope with her feelings.

"It is always refreshing and nice to know that I'm not just like a machine," [Name] says in response to being asked if she's doing okay. "I appreciate people asking how I'm doing because it makes me feel seen and heard." While acknowledging the challenges of dealing with grief, [Name] also notes her growth and self-awareness since starting her YouTube channel.

"I didn't have those skills when I first started YouTube," she reflects. "I would stay up till like one in the morning editing videos and not eat well or take care of myself. But now, I'm learning healthy coping mechanisms, which is really nice."

**Final Thoughts**

The conversation concludes with [Name]'s final thoughts on the importance of self-care, support, and authenticity online. She asks that her viewers refrain from offering unsolicited advice, particularly when it comes to infertility, as she's still navigating this journey.

"I will ask for advice when I'm ready for that," she promises. "For now, I just need to sit with what I'm sitting with." As [Name] wraps up the conversation, she expresses gratitude for her fans and their ongoing support, hoping that future content, like a lifestyle Vlog in Florida, will be more uplifting and exciting.

"Thanks for watching, I love you all so much," she says before signing off.

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enhello welcome back to my channel in today's video I am going to be doing a lifestyle q a sharing all of my answers to the questions that you'll ask me over on Instagram I thought this would be a nice way to kind of like share updates with y'all it's been a very long time since I've done one of these videos and I also felt like the appropriate for him to kind of tell you all some of the big life changes that I'm going through at the moment I have kind of teased all I guess in the past few Vlogs talking about how I'm going to be sharing information with you and it just never felt quite right for a vlog setting which isn't to say that I am uncomfortable sharing this information it just I didn't want to bring the Vibes down you know but I'm ready to bring those vibes down in this video it's going to be a mix of things some of it's going to be more light-hearted some of it's going to be more serious but if you've been kind of curious what's been going on lately and why my posting has been less frequent than it usually is I'm gonna find out in this year video I'm breaking up the questions into specific categories which I'll time stamp in the description and obviously like you can skip around if you'd like to however I would recommend watching this video linearly because a lot of the questions kind of like Fade Into the next question I broken this down on purpose basically is what I'm trying to say so I would recommend staying until the very end here are all the life updates if that is something you're curious about and you'll want to just know a little bit more about me so I'm sharing a ton of stuff this is going to be probably a pretty long video but I will try to keep my answers as appropriately brief as possible we'll see how it goes so the first category of questions that I'm going to be answering are kind of Creator and content questions what camera do you use for your booktube content the camera that I'm actually filming on right now is the Sony zv1 I love this camera I actually have a rode video mic go to or something like that on top of it I am a really big circular for audio quality I also have a couple of other cameras in my lineup that I use less frequently for things like sit down videos so I have a Canon 90d that I like to use whenever I am filming in my office and doing those like big list videos the battery in this camera saply just like won't last for that sort of situation and this one is just slightly less great in quality though I still think the quality is pretty great so I would say if I'm recommending One camera for a booktuber it would definitely be this one as your family always supported your channel and was it hard during University I think that question the was it hard during University Park is made maybe asking like oh having YouTube was when I was in college and I actually didn't have YouTube and college I started right after I graduated from my master's program at like 23 and then how's your family always supported your channel I think and I started at a different time that probably would have mattered to me a little bit more like had I started in high school or college I probably would have cared me out more about like my parents support and kind of what they thought and my parents are very supportive in the sense that they tell me I should go after whatever I want but they also don't care a ton and I don't mean that in a bad way they're just not like watching my YouTube videos or really making comments on the fact that I make YouTube videos I've always been like okay that's cool like you have a hobby that's that's fun and I think I like that approach like I don't want my parents watching every one of my videos especially considering like the the topics that I talk about they're also not like oh you shouldn't be making videos either they've always been like supportive I guess in the sense that they tell me I can do whatever I want so that's been that's been pretty nice actually they tend not to discourage me from going after things they haven't historically but they also don't get too invested in the things that I'm doing and um there's something to be said for that too that's that's pretty nice who do you follow on booktube and which content creator do you admire higher most this question is kind of tough for me because I think because we'll get into in other like questions later on down the road I have been watching a lot less book content lately and there are multiple reasons for that one my interests are just expanding I have a lot more things that I'm interested in now which I'm actually really excited and proud about like I think when I first started I only cared about books was all that was in my life and now there's just so much other stuff that really excites me and I trust me and I also think when you're in more of a niche space sometimes watching too many creators who do similar things to you can make you feel inadequate or get you comparing yourself to other people so I don't watch a ton of book content anymore I am still subscribed to all my faves and if I'm in the mood to watch book content the creators that I tend to watch most often are Aaron from booked and busy Olivia from Olivia reads latte Crystal from Crystal's bookish life uh just to name a few like those are the ones that immediately come to my mind and those are people that I like talk to fairly regularly as well so so they're just the people that I I tend to like and admire watch frequently and all of those creators have something so unique to offer and have a passion for YouTube that is different than my own passion and I really like that like I don't I don't want to watch people who do things exactly the same way that I do and I like just saying how other people are doing things you are looking for a Creator I think who is most similar to me in terms of taste in books and like what they're looking for in books I would definitely say follow Crystal if you are looking for someone who is a bad when it comes to business and I just admire the out of them uh Olivia similar in terms of creatorship I guess Aaron I don't know they're all amazing and I love all three of them so I would say those are the three creators I admire the most and watch the most so yeah I tend to watch people that like I actually talk to and interact with any advice for someone who's struggling to grow their YouTube channel I think this is a tough question to answer because so much in the landscape of YouTube has changed over the past few years especially considering the rise of tick tock I really hate to give generic answers like just be yourself and just you know do you my biggest advice to people who are struggling to grow their channel is really to consider why you're doing it I think that really helps guide me when I first started I think everybody starts YouTube for different reasons and I think a lot of bookish creators start because they're looking to make friends that's not a bad thing at all obviously but I think sometimes it's not going to guide you in a direction that is going to necessarily make your channel take off like yes you will probably have fellow creators watching you which is also you know fun and it's fun to like make friends but I think if you're someone who is looking to grow your channel the things that are going to matter are like you watching analytics watching what the trends are trying to not create a brand or like yourself into too much of a niche but really consider what you have to offer that's like maybe a little bit different than other people and it doesn't necessarily have to be something super specific it could just be your personality but I think like actually sitting down and treating it like it's something serious I think is the first step if you are trying to kind of grow your channel that is something that always interested me because part of the reason that I joined it I say the biggest reason I joined YouTube in the first place was because yes I loved books I wanted to share my love of books but also I like making videos that is like my favorite part of this and that's why as my channel continues to evolve I've never left YouTube because I like this format and this is exciting to me so I don't know if that's like best advice ever or like the most helpful but I would say yeah definitely consider why you're doing it and start to like tailor your content because of that don't be afraid to experiment especially if you haven't been doing it for very long either I think people can get too hung up on like certain video formats and I think the thing that helped me the most was taking risks and just trying to understand who I am and like what people might want from me have you ever felt trapped in the sort of Niche you've created on social media I like this question because it feels like very aggressive but uh deep in a sense I don't think I feel trapped in like the sort of like book Community but I do think at times it can feel a little bit stifling and I haven't always felt that way I would say the first three years that I was on booktube all I wanted to talk about was books and so that was I did feel trapped it was something that I did for myself but I'd say the past two years it has been a little bit stifling to feel like I have to include books in every single video I stopped making my more lifestyle content last year because I felt this pressure to finish books in those videos and I think that the video suffered because of that because it was really trying to like cram content in a place that it didn't fit so yeah I do think in a sense I I don't feel trapped but I sometimes still stifled by the sense that like all I can talk about is books and part of that too is the fact that like I as I get older I have more interests I think I started my channel when I first graduated grad school time all I really cared about was books it was my single interest my single focus and I love that all all that my life encompassed was books like that was it now that I'm getting older and my life's changing and other things are important to me it does sometimes feel a little bit stifling not to be able to share those things but I also think you can only feel as stifle as you let yourself right and so you'll see a lot of changes in my channel in the coming year probably as I start to share other aspects and interests of my life so when asked would you consider showing more house content like decor and Renovations I love sharing that content with you there are probably not going to be any more Renovations than we do in this house I don't know how much longer we are going to stay here given you know the economy and stuff probably longer than I would like but we don't really have any plans to do any more Renovations here because I've kind of done everything that I want to do in terms of Decor though I would I would love to share more home decor stuff with you and I think especially when like holiday seasons roll around I love sharing that content so that's definitely something that's going to be here on my channel do you have plans to do more planner content I did not know I have a planner content Channel a plan with Chan I posted a few videos there I think less than 10 at this point and I really like filming those videos but they are kind of kind of hard to edit it's just not a top priority for me because there's just so many different things that I feel like called to do and excited to do yeah let's just kind of fall into the Wayside I will definitely be filming more content there in the future and I pretty much always do a planner setup video at the beginning of every year but it's not like a super super big priority for me at the moment I would say but you consider doing word lifestyle content in your Vlogs and the answer to that is of course yes I am going to be doing lifestyle Vlogs on this channel they might be completely devoid of books and bookish content which is something I mentioned in the last Vlog that I posted that one did actually have some reading in it but I don't want to feel the pressure to include books in every video especially again considering the kind of major life changes that I'm going through I want to be able to share that stuff and not feel like oh God I have to read a book as well next let's move into the other categories we have a bunch of categories to get through the next category is work what is your full-time job what do you do and that's totally valid I do have a full-time job YouTube is not my full-time job have a work from home job which is really really nice and affords me the ability to be able to probably spend more time on my content than I would if I was having to commute every day which I'm really grateful for I don't really talk about the details of my job privacy and all that but it is one of those jobs that your parents would tell you about like oh yeah my mom has this job I have no idea what she does all day that's the kind of job that I have in the past I've had like sales jobs and just a bunch of different stuff and right now I have a work from home kind of like hard to explain white collar job I don't know like Corporate America kind of job someone asked how do you find balancing work YouTube and reading I am assuming this person knows that I do have a full-time job and for me it has gotten easier over the years just as I get more experience in like my career field and in just kind of like the stuff that I do I feel like I do have more time throughout my day to be able to find little pockets of time to film that being said like over the past five years I have not really had balance I would say like YouTube has always been my number one priority before everything else and I do think that like some of my life has fallen to the Wayside as a result and that's something that I've been correcting for over the past like year and I think that's why I post maybe a little less frequently or there are some times when I just like you know don't post on a Sunday because I am trying to like prior advertised for time spent with Hayden and the people around me um so I don't know that like I really have a recommendation for balancing things I don't know that I like am very good at balancing things I try my best but I'm not the greatest at it you know again for the first three years I was so single-minded um in growing this Channel and in reading that like didn't bother me it didn't bother me that things weren't balanced and I acknowledged it and it didn't bug me now it bugs me more but I am still so like grateful for that experience and I don't look back and think like oh I should have been more balanced now I think is the time in my life that I'm sort of craving that so I'll keep you posted if I eventually find balance or or you know really succeed at it but I think sometimes things fall to the Wayside and I just kind of let it next category of questions marriage and babies let's talk about it how soon would you want kids okay let's buckle up let me get my leg up here and so this is the Big Life Update um honestly like I was prepared to talk about this and now I'm just kind of like I don't even know where to begin so uh Hayden and I have been trying to have kids for the past year as you can probably guess that has not happened so um at the beginning of this year's we basically started trying to have kids actually a little bit before we got married not like super actively but we weren't you know preventing if you will we tried for about a year our anniversary came up in April and around March of this year is when we decided let's maybe get some testing done and since it's easier for a man to get tested less invasive I was like why don't we get you tested and kind of see where that leads and then if nothing comes of that then like maybe I'll start getting tested or you know whatever oh so Hayden got tested and it was sort of a multi-part multi-step process all of this I should say I have run by Hayden and he is like share all that you want like he is totally open about this so I want to put that out there he got tested we did multiple rounds of testing different kinds of testing for men and we got very conclusive answers kind of about his fertility and and we found out that he is suffering from male Factor infertility which doesn't come as much of a surprise to us and was something that kind of spurred the testing in the first place if that makes sense uh Hayden had cancer as an infant he had leukemia when he was 10 months old he was part of an experimental trial most kids at his age like most infants at that sort of like age group at the time passed away from the leukemia it was very very deadly and so he was part of a trial where they tested a new more aggressive type of chemotherapy and they said that there was a likelihood that you know could have children naturally like they said it was likely that he would he was the second person in that trial and so they really don't have conclusive data and we kind of do now have conclusive data which is to say that he is suffering from infertility um as a result of that chemotherapy nothing that he could have done to prevent that it just affected the way that he developed and as a result we have to seek fertility treatment no matter you know if I get tested and we also find out that there are like female Factor issues whatever the only solution for us is IVF he basically had a low count and low a company opening factors I guess I don't want to like get too into the weeds of it not because he doesn't want me to share but because I don't want to be demonetized he's like he has he has count issues and it's nothing that can be fixed from surgery or with medication it's just the way that his body was formed um and developed after you know if he had cancer so it has been a lot to process I won't lie obviously I don't think anyone goes in to having babies with someone or you know wanting to get pregnant assuming that they are going to deal with infertility I don't think anyone thinks that I'm very grateful that um infertility is something that's talked about a lot more on the Internet it's definitely something that crossed my mind that could be a problem and of course we got Hayden tested so it was something that was top of mind for me but um yeah I just obviously never anticipated that this would be how I would have to have children but we have to do IVF specifically I don't know if I already said that but um there's basically no other option he does have you kind of want to like it's a knot we're not necessarily going to have to use like donor materials that we know of yet given account numbers it is straight to IVF like there's no other option and that has been hard to process like I come from a very extremely hyper fertile family I am about 99 sure that I don't have any issues and I do I don't think those issues necessarily affect my ovulation so I I'm pretty freaking sure that I can get pregnant naturally so it has been a lot to process um that you know through no fault of either of us really I'm gonna have to stick myself with needles and go under general anesthesia and get my blood tested I've never had a blood test done I've never had my blood drawn like I think I might have had my finger pricked when I was like 11 but I've never had like a drawn from like my arm like I I'm terrified honestly of the medical component to all of this it has been yeah she's been a lot to process this is fairly recent news we found out like conclusively that there was nothing we could do there was about a month there where we like knew his counts but we were like oh maybe there's something we can do like you know medication or surgery there's a month there when I was kind of hopeful um and then I think it was like May yeah it was like late May that we found out that there's nothing we can do um and so for the past like you know a few weeks I've been kind of just sitting with this news and sitting with the reality of it in some ways I'm really grateful that I have answers because I think I can't imagine how challenging it probably is to go to a fertility consultation not know anything and then have to to like cycle through a bunch of different things that may or may not work for us like again no matter what happens with me we will have to do this if we want to have a baby together so um at least I'm I'm having time at this point to like process the fact that we're doing IVF it's not like I'm having to process my own infertility news and then I've yeah yeah it's I keep trying to think of the bright side and the Silver Lining and really I am grateful that this is an option for us that we will be able to take on never expected this I'm still pretty young I'm only 28 and yeah it's um it's been pretty devastating and I hope I talked about this as respectfully as possible because I've watched so many people's stories online and it has been so hopeful and so helpful for me but yeah it has been really challenging and I'm sharing this with you because this is something that I'm going to be talking about frequently on my channel going forward I know that this is information that could be potentially triggering for people so when I do include this in my lifestyle Vlogs I will make sure to timestamp whenever I talk about this information but this is my life now like this is something that I'm going to be taking on and it is going to probably consume a lot of my life for the next six months to a year so it would be strange to hide that from y'all and I'm an open book for the most part like I like sharing things with y'all it doesn't really feel weird to be sharing this information that's that is one of the biggest updates there's another fairly big update that I'll be sharing later but um yeah I do want kids soon to answer the question I do and we'll see how soon that will be and if it if it will be you know I I'm not going in to this with any expectations I've watched so many videos at this point that I know that a lot of the time it doesn't work the first time uh for some people it never works and you know I'm trying to go in positive but also realistic so um yeah I'm going to share more details as I have them I'm obviously going to undergo fertility testing and if I you know have PCOS or Endo or you know some sort of contributing factor I'll be sharing that with you and um just sharing everything really along the way so if you like that sort of stuff stay tuned if you don't I I really think that you'll still enjoy the lifestyle content and again I will time stamp stuff because I know that this is sensitive stuff and some people have been through it and never want to hear about it again and that is valid so baritone babies um the next question the last question in this category really is how have you felt being married now and honestly this has been the hardest year of my life and it's not because because of my marriage if anything my marriage has made my life so much better first pet my first cat passed away in September got this fertility news some other stuff has happened that I'm going to talk about in a second and it has been really hard but being married Tim has not been hard it has been best part honestly of this year so oh wow okay I I forgot that I was gonna double whammy myself like back to back with the hard stuff but you know what I think just get it over with okay cats let's talk about cats the first question is tell me about your cats and this is hard recently had to re-home pickles I had three cats uh for the past nine months I have pepper who is the oldest at five years old and then Teddy and pickles who were technically around the same age but Teddy I got first and I got him as baby and then pickles I adopted as an adult cat I adopted pickles the week before my oldest cat nugget passed away I fully intended to have a happy four cat household I'm so excited about it and all signs were like really positive that this is going to work out and then nugget passed away I didn't cope well which is kind of part of of this but I'm getting all three of the remaining cats gone along really well for about a month they were playing I have pictures of them cuddling on my bed but I don't know what happened something changed at that month Mark and pickles any time he saw Pepper would try to attack him I never really knew that there was like true cat aggression like I've seen cats kind of tackle each other when they play but I've never seen anything like this before and it was worrying to me after it happened twice I knew that it was not okay to leave them alone together in any sense so I separated them and they were separated from each other for the entire nine months that we had them I did so much research on trying to like reintroduce cats and to get you know two cats who seemingly don't get along to get along I got pheromone diffusers I got pickles on Prozac L'Occitane um which was something that was recommended to me by a vet or aggressive cats I did the formal introduction process as uh you know recommended by Jackson Galaxy which is like you know sight swapping and base camp and all of these different steps and I tried so much for nine months to try to get these two cats to get along because Teddy and pickles got along so well and pickles is NYS the sweetest cat that I've ever had like the kindest the most affectionate the most easy going just the most fun cat ever but he could not get along with pepper and in February I was feeling discouraged and defeated and I didn't know like how long I could continue to try to introduce these cats to each other it was just really really hard I think February is kind of when I knew that like something did to change I wasn't willing to admit it I'll be honest like I wasn't willing to admit to myself that this just was not working it was like my pride thinking like oh like I know cats I can make this work and it just didn't work no matter what I did it did not work and it was not fair to have to swap the cats out throughout the day have one cat basically be alone for part of the day because no that cat didn't want to be attacked by the other one I think for me when I finally knew that I needed to like set my hubris aside and set my pride and ego aside was when we went to New York sister was watching my cats she accidentally let pickles out he like slipped past her legs and went to attack pepper neither of the cats was injured but it was a really scary circumstance for her obviously having to separate them and break them up which she did successfully pretty quickly but it was just hard for me not being there and feeling so out of control and just knowing that this this was it like this is just not gonna work anymore I went through so many emotions when I was there that's why that New York section of my Vlog is only like four minutes long and I think it's because I've cried so much that I am cried out at the moment but in New York is when we when we decided that it just like wasn't it wasn't fair to either of the cats it wasn't fair for pickles to be this stressed out it wasn't fair the pepper to like be scared you know all the time again he wasn't like regularly around him because we had them separated but I was just I didn't it wasn't fair to him and he seemed pretty sad too after losing nugget who was his best friend um it was just hard so we decided to put feelers out and try to see if we could find a new home for him and I'm happy to say that he found a home and it is again prayed aside a better home than he would have had here I never thought that this would be something that I would do I ride or die for my cats I love my pets um and Hayden and I both have similar ad attitudes about rehoming which is like of course we're never gonna re-home pets but I think until you're in that situation you just really don't know and it's easy to pass judgment but like it has been devastating it's been really really hard so I brought him to his new home a few days ago this person I mean couldn't be more perfectly Suited for him a retired woman with no other pets whose 14 year old dog passed away and she was looking for a new companion and a new friend the communications I had with her I was just overwhelmed with like how well she took care of her pets in the past she's had cats as well I could just tell she was something special and when Hayden read her emails and stuff too he was like wow she's perfect uh she lives a mile away from my parents a singular mile away from my parents in Houston and she has been texting me every day since I dropped him off with updates and pictures and snow he's in the right place it's so hard now I'm gonna get teary because there was I mean there were so many reasons I adopted him he was an adult cat and I you know I'm the kind of person that like I don't want to see pets not get adopted like I I really like adult cats more than I like kittens and I just really wanted it to work and I wanted him to be a part of our house but unfortunately with with pepper I know going forward that like adult cats are just not a good fit for him he's so tiny and so scared and he's fine around kittens and small cats but he just can't do like large scary adult cats and so that's a little bit of a tell me about your cats is it not but I had three home pickles recently and that has been really hard and my house feels so empty with only two cats in it I have not had just two cats in my house for for two years at this point but if you want to hear about my other two cats I guess I could briefly tell you about them because I think some of these questions are about my cats um my cats are ride dolls that was one of the questions what breed are your cats there Ragdoll cats all of my cats have been ragdolls they're really special to me I really love the breed though I will say I love all cats it's not like I only have to have Ragdoll sort of thing but um I did I do tend to gravitate towards them and I have a really special connection with the woman that I've gotten my ragdolls from and so I think that really just like encourages me to get more of them but they're ragdolls I have pepper and Teddy at the moment those are my only two cats peppers like I guess official government name is Pepe but we call him pepper he is a five-year-old rag doll he is very very tiny and slight inserting a picture of him right here he's about eight or nine pounds which is very small for a rag doll and he's just a skinny little rat we love him so much he is the most temperamental of all of our cats in the sense that he loves to cuddle but he also is very much don't with me he has like more of the temperament of a female cat I feel like he's he's really funny and then there's Teddy who is our big teddy bear uh Hayden likes to call him trout is about 13 or 14 pounds full of energy bounces off the walls that's part of the reason we got pickles was um to maybe be a playmate for him so he wouldn't with pepper as much pepper just wants to be left alone basically uh and that I mean they were friends they did get along really well so again that was hard like pretty pretty hard to know that like he's not gonna have that friend anymore so uh those are my two cats those are the breed of cats someone asked did the cats have favorite snacks the cats are interesting pepper really likes sweet things he will try to steal an Oreo from you obviously I don't like let him have a you know whole Oreo or anything but I'll let him like Lick in oreo from time to time and then Teddy he really really likes human food he will try to steal chicken off of your plate or rice or anything savory like he's all about it he is he's the worst pepper won't really get up on the table when you're eating dinner but Teddy will try to get up there and like is quick those are their favorite snacks those are not like things that they have regularly though uh I don't feed my cat's treats very often so I don't really have like treat recommendations or anything like that but when I heard snacks like that was where my mind went favorite and least favorite thing about having cats I like this question because uh well I love cats obviously I'd say my favorite thing about having cats is also part of my least favorite thing it's kind of like a dual thing for me I love the responsibility that cats bring into your life and the sense of routine cat's crave routine and as someone who has moderate to severe mental health issues routine is something that's really important to me as well and so to know that I have to keep these things alive these beautiful beautiful Pets Alive and thriving and happy has brought a sense of routine and structure to my life that I need it's one of my favorite things obviously I love their personalities and I just love them and getting to know them and their unique quirks and traits and things like that but I think you know when I really sit down and think about it it's the routine that we have and the responsibility that it brings to my life it really actually is quite a joy although it can be one of the hardest things I would say about having cats like obviously cleaning up poop on the ground or vomit is just like not super fun it's just not but I would say the hardest thing sometimes for someone who again has mental health issues is like sticking to that routine when you just want to be in bed and do nothing knowing that you like have to get out of bed because you have to skip a litter box you have to feed them you have to play with them um it can be hard and overwhelming sometimes but it's something that I also love so it's like yeah it's a mixed thing there so this question if you could own any number of cats how many would you have know that this is not like a final number of cats for me I know two is just it's so empty in my house and quiet I think ideally again four cats would be incredible I like even numbers I think that works well for humans and for beds I mean obviously every situation is different but I think ideally four would be great and the situation and just how everything went down I don't know when I will get more cats next I know that they will definitely be kittens because again I have pepper and he doesn't really like large animals he's cool with kittens and he's cool as they age I mean like Teddy is bigger than him and he's fine with Teddy but um we got teddy as a kitten so it's a different situation yeah four cats ideally and I think eventually we will probably get a couple of kittens I don't know when that will be honestly I could see it happening sooner rather than later just simply because of the IVF that we're gonna have to be doing uh we have a consult in June after I come back from a vacation and I can see that kind of going quickly and like being something that happens and I think having something else to focus on and something else to care about I think would be really nice um again comes back to like my favorite least favorite thing about cats is the responsibility and like having something to focus on other than yourself can be really freeing and I think having having some kittens to like go through that with would be pretty nice like but we'll see I really don't know four cats is like ideal yeah I want some some kitties soon but I'm also trying to give myself some time to like grieve pickles and just kind of get used to this like new structure we also have my sister's cats coming stay with us for a week and then leaving for a week and then coming back for a week because uh she's going on a vacation with me Hayden's gonna watch the cats and then I'm coming back and Spencer's going on a vacation and then I'm gonna again watch your cats her cats will be here and they'll be like hanging out with my cats I think my sister's youngest cat Toby loves other cats and so does my cat Teddy so I think Teddy and Toby are gonna have a lot of fun um over the next week I'm really excited to get updates about that but since I have those things coming up I'm not like oh gotta go out and like grab a new kid immediately so yeah four cats ideally but like who knows when let's move into the less depressing side of things shall we it's your dream to be a full-time author um all right yes no I don't know this is something that I think I'm like kind of grappling with and I don't want to repeat myself too often but I found over the past year and year and a half that I have a passion for so many different things and I've never fully allowed myself to dream and to expand my dreams past you know having a successful YouTube channel because I've been scared I've been like well I'm successful at this and trying so hard I don't want to give up on this you know changing my attention would be kind of giving up like I just don't I can't do it and for so many years I just let that happen even though there were other things in the back of my head that I wanted to do and I would say at the beginning of this year I was like you know what I don't think I could do YouTube forever I think I want to be full-time author that was like my my initial Instinct and then more stuff started creeping in like more stuff that I was excited about more stuff that I wanted for my life and I think at this point I can say pretty confidently that like I don't want to do anything full-time like I want to be able to do all of my hobbies I don't think that's realistic necessarily but like I want to allow myself to experiment and to give myself the grace to probably a bunch of different things because life is too short I don't know where I got my sense of immortality I have just always thought to myself I don't want to leave this planet not having tried everything that I want to try and that really guides a lot of my decision making I made a YouTube channel I was like scared obviously it's scary to put yourself out there but I knew you only get one life why would I not try to be successful on YouTube like that's always something I thought would be cool I think that's gonna be the confidence to like go and try different things so at this point there are a lot of different things that I would like to do I do very much want to be an author that is something that I want to commit to do doing it's a big part of my life like I have a passion for writing and I have been writing my book for a while and I'll explain more of that in the other questions but I want to be a writer I want to be a photographer I'm starting a photography business with my little sister I want to be a YouTuber I want to be a mom there's so many different things I want to do so I don't want to commit and say like I want to be a full-time author um not because I don't see that as a part of my life but because there's so many other things that I want to do additionally someone asked how the writing is actually coming along and frankly I sort of paused a little bit once we started getting fertility news it's been hard to focus on things frankly just waiting for the other shoe to drop waiting to find out more information and now that I have more information and kind of know the path ahead I've been feeling this like itch to start raining again but I was able to get 25 into my fully outlined book I outlined the full thing it took me a few weeks to outline my first book and then I got 25 into writing it and I'll be honest with you during that 25 I didn't have any roadblocks I didn't have any times where I was like I can't do this thing and I was shocked at that I was really assuming this would be challenging and it would be like pulling teeth but frankly it has been so fun freaking love rating like it's really great I'm not saying I'm great at it but it's been really great and yeah sometimes 25 in and I'm actually going on vacation with my little sister on Saturday we're going to Florida for a week seven full days I am bringing my laptop and one of my biggest goals there is to just write write my book is going to be set in the Texas Hill Country near a lake a Florida beach is a little different but I'm assuming that is going to just like give me all the inspiration and all the Vibes that I need to get a lot of this done my goal is to finish this book before October because I want to write a different book for nanowrimo I have a three book series planned this is the second book in a series of standalones I'm writing the second one first because it's a dual POV story where it's the first book in this series is a free POV story which is going to be more challenging to write obviously um so I wanted to give myself the easier challenge first but for Nano I want to write that like polyamorous three person story writing's good trying to just do it when I feel like it and also be committed it's been a challenge but like not the writing itself it's just like finding the time to to Really commit to a last writing question would you ever do a writing or nanowrimo Vlog yes I think so uh I don't know if I will Vlog Nano my goal for nanowrimo and for the month of November nanowrimo by the way is National novel right month I believe those who don't know and it's a time where people really commit to writing a full book basically in a month I for the month of November was really hoping to have a lot of content pre-planned free pre-filmed like ready to go so that y'all would not see a change in content but that I wouldn't have to do anything in November except for right and I'm still hoping to do that so it's like do I want to commit to also vlogging I was like really looking forward to just taking a break I don't know we'll see I'll probably do at least one Nano Vlog just to kind of like show y'all how it's going and I'll probably start including writing in my lifestyle updates as well it felt weird to put the writing updates in like a reading Vlog um because I know as someone who is a reader first I don't really care about writing stuff or at least I didn't care about writing stuff when I was just a reader and so I don't want to make people sit through that if they just want book content so I will probably include writing updates in Vlogs even if I don't do committed or like dedicated Nano Vlogs all right and then the last two categories first one's Taylor Swift I got two Taylor Swift related questions so I figured might as well make it a category how was the Taylor Swift concert it was so good I went to night one in Houston and it was delightful besides the surprise songs not being like my favorite I had such a good time with my little sister I guess I didn't realize how much Taylor Swift was like a bond for us but I listened to a lot of Taylor Swift growing up and I guess my sister kind of picked up on that and she did this thing where she would like write down Taylor Swift lyrics in her notebook to like memorize them and stuff and um Taylor Swift has become a really big part of her life and she's an even bigger Swifty than I am yeah I didn't realize until recently like how much that really connected us and bonded us and it was just really special to like go with her we've gotten really closer the past couple of years as well like she is my best friend at this point and yeah so it was like great because the concert was great but it's also really great to like go with my sister and have this experience together I think that was probably the most special part so it was really great I loved it we had great seats and a great time um and then someone asked how I got the Taylor Swift Fearless final like the original Platinum Edition uh I went to a record store with Hayden in New York I cannot remember the name of it I'll put the name of it right here if I can remember or like if I can find it into this incredible record shop and I was just like throwing records at Hayden like we need this we need this we need this and then I saw that record like on the wall it was the last one and um yeah I scored it it wasn't too expensive I think it was like 45 and I think you can still get them like second hand for not too expensive but it was really special Fearless is my favorite album love Taylor's version but I do kind of like the original better it's just like so nostalgic for me because that was like the original yeah it's just really special to have it uh it's in Hayden's office with all the other records that we own and I think Hayden looked recently and was able to to find them for not very expensive so they're not that hard to find I think fingers crossed and then lastly let's talk about lifestyle uh I have quite a few lifestyle questions here and I'm excited to answer them first one is something that has been bringing you Joy lately that is really tough because things have been really hard oh okay I guess this is something fun I am getting a new car soon and I have been following the process of like when I'm gonna get this car I like ordered it I'm getting information on like when it's gonna be ready and like when it could be picked up and that stuff's like changing every day and I've been really excited about that um it's just like a little thing that's bringing me joy although a car is like kind of a big thing but that has been really exciting also just like looking forward to vacations I'm not a big traveler but I've been planning travel for this year uh I'm going to Disney with Hayden later this year and I'm not a Disney adult but Disney adults have sucked me in y'all I have been watching so much Disney content over the past year as like Comfort watches I know some people really like ASMR or like have some sort of like Niche thing that brings some comfort and for me it's been Disney adult content you know really convinced me to go to Disney so the idea of travel and the idea of like having things to look forward to has been really nice especially again considering that like I've got some not so fun stuff that's gonna be happening in the near future so like having that kind of stuff to look forward to has been nice yeah travel new car like those are exciting things those have been bringing me joy all right I really liked this question because this is one of my Niche interests favorite perfume and candles I am a scenty girl if you come into my house it smells good I'm gonna be honest even even though I have a shitload of pets uh two dogs two cats at this point my house smells pretty good not too bad but it smells great I love like Bath Body Works Wallflowers I like candles it is fragrant in here am I combusting carcinogens for sure but like it smells good so that that's what matters okay um my favorite perfumes I would say at the moment my favorite would be by Rado it's like a more Indie I guess perfume house and I really love their fragrances I have five at this point pretty much all of their perfumes I really enjoy but my favorite at the moment is La tulip it has a rhubarb note that is just so sharp and kind of green I don't know I just really like that fragrance it's a very clean scent it makes me happy every time I spray it and wear it and I really really like that another perfume that I like I'm actually wearing right now I made custom perfume in New York with Hayden I knew that that was like a thing you could do in other places is I looked it up there's a place called olfactory in New York and we went and made our own custom fragrances and it was so fun so the one that I made that I'm wearing right now is a very fig heavy scent so it smells like the Fig Tree in my grandpa's backyard it's so green and so fresh I like that it's custom to me like I got to kind of put this scent together so yeah those I would say are like my two favorite I tend to lean towards fresher scents but I have like a I have a shitload a perfume honestly let me know if you want like a perfume tour or whatever at some point I could do that because I like sharing fragrance and then in terms of candles that one's tough for me I would say like my two favorite candle brands at the moment are novel Wicks obviously for like bookish candles uh they're wood wet candles and they tend to have like I would say fairly unique scents and then I also really like anchored Northwest which is another sort of like you know smaller Indie and they did a collaboration with Taylor Nguyen in the past like a laundry scented candle and like a trio of candles for her those were delightful and I just got really into how unique and how layered and complex those fragrances are so I need to get more candles from them but those are like probably my favorite Brands and like a lot of different scents to be honest like Atlanta fresh lunch but like kind of like everything I'm not very picky if you could travel anywhere where would it be this one's tough for me I think that has changed over over the years but I would say the most immediate thing that I would like to do like the top of my list for international travel would be traveling to the United Kingdom I studied history uh when I was in university I just really have a desire to visit England and Scotland and Ireland to just explore the different like topography and beauty of nature but also the different historical sites and things like that would be just so nice like I really like that that idea and one of my best friends is engaged to a man who lives in London and I actually really like the idea of going whenever she is in London so like she can take me around to like more of the cool non-historical kind of things so that's that's something I would like to do in the near future but there are places on literally every content that I'd like to visit so excited to do that in the future and I'm really excited that there are so many different people who are subscribed to me and I'm definitely gonna put my feelers out when I do some international travel and like things I must see in different places so all right last few are you going going to move house someday soon I feel like I sort of hinted at it that we have a desire to move but I just don't know how soon that will actually happen given so many different lifestyle things it's like we're doing IVF here in Austin kind of have to be here for that also the economy is nuts I had home prices and interest rates are also nuts it would just it would be hard I guess to justify moving that being said we do have a really big desire to be closer to our family once we do have children because both of our families live in the Houston area and it would just be nice to be able to like have our kids grow up near their grandparents neither Hayden or I really we're super close to our grandparents growing up because we didn't live super close to them and that's something that we both look back on and think like oh it would have been cool to be closer with our grandparents and have better relationships there so um that's something that we would like to do and also we'd like our parents so we'd like to be close to them so Houston eventually but I don't know how soon that would be I would say in the next five years someone asked what my workout schedule is which you know both of you to assume that I have like a consistent workout schedule lately I would say I I have been enjoying cardio more than I have been enjoying weightlifting which is really rare and weird for me because I love weightlifting but my current like split I guess you could say is to walk three days a week and to do full body lifting three days a week so like every other day kind of breaking things up that way I haven't been that consistent over the past like week or so because we've been traveling but I'm excited to get back to that this week um when I'm in Florida Spencer and I have plans to go on a lot of hot girl walks which should be fun I've been seeing a lot of like mental health Improvement when I consistently exercise so it's something that I definitely want to continue on with especially as I you know go through IVF but obviously parts of that Journey where you're not allowed to exercise but I know it helps keep my mental health sharp so for the times when I am allowed to work out I want to be actually doing that because it makes me feel a lot better so that's kind of my current setup is just like walk some full body exercises some and when I say full body exercise I go to a gym and lift weights to do that I'm not like a body weight exercise girl although that's not a bad thing so yeah that's kind of like my workout schedule and then the last question is are you doing okay and I actually got this a few times from various different people and I just want to say thank you for asking that question it is always refreshing and like nice to know that I'm not just like a machine two people um online I mean I know that's not the case I know so many of y'all care and I really like so appreciate that that's always nice to be asked like how I'm doing and you know what I'm doing okay things are hard obviously I am still grieving the loss of pickles I mean he is very much alive and well and probably doing very very well without me but I'm still breathing at loss I'm still very sad about it I'm still dealing emotionally with the IVF stuff I haven't cried for a while for like a week or two about the IVF stuff which is really nice but I'm giving myself like space to cry when I need to and space to be emotional when I need to and give myself breaks when I need to so I'm doing okay I think I'm learning healthy coping skills as I age and learning how to take care of myself even when it's hard I didn't have those skills when I first started YouTube I would stay up till like one in the morning editing videos and not eat well not take care of myself I think now I'm doing more of that and so I'm able to say with some confidence even when things are hard that I am okay I mean that's it that's the last question I hope that this was Illuminating to y'all in some ways I hope I answered the questions y'all wanted me to answer I think I answered almost everybody's question I did have a few like book questions but frankly I didn't want to talk about books today and it was really nice not to have to the only request that I have from you my lovely viewers is that if you are someone who is currently dealing with infertility or who has dealt with infertility in the past if you could please not provide advice in the comments I would very much appreciate that I will ask for advice when I'm ready for that advice um or when I have questions but at this moment I am very much okay with like how things are I don't have answers yet um I don't have questions yet I just need to like sit with the things that I'm sitting with my only real request but I really do love y'all so much I'm really grateful for your support and um yeah I hope to not have to ever do one of these again I mean hopefully not for a very long time hopefully nothing major happens in the next couple of years but um yeah I again I'm grateful for all and grateful that y'all are here for this journey with me and uh look forward to some lifestyle Vlogs there's going to be a Florida lifestyle Vlog coming and that should be a lot more uplifting and exciting so you know thanks for watching I love you all so much and until next timehello welcome back to my channel in today's video I am going to be doing a lifestyle q a sharing all of my answers to the questions that you'll ask me over on Instagram I thought this would be a nice way to kind of like share updates with y'all it's been a very long time since I've done one of these videos and I also felt like the appropriate for him to kind of tell you all some of the big life changes that I'm going through at the moment I have kind of teased all I guess in the past few Vlogs talking about how I'm going to be sharing information with you and it just never felt quite right for a vlog setting which isn't to say that I am uncomfortable sharing this information it just I didn't want to bring the Vibes down you know but I'm ready to bring those vibes down in this video it's going to be a mix of things some of it's going to be more light-hearted some of it's going to be more serious but if you've been kind of curious what's been going on lately and why my posting has been less frequent than it usually is I'm gonna find out in this year video I'm breaking up the questions into specific categories which I'll time stamp in the description and obviously like you can skip around if you'd like to however I would recommend watching this video linearly because a lot of the questions kind of like Fade Into the next question I broken this down on purpose basically is what I'm trying to say so I would recommend staying until the very end here are all the life updates if that is something you're curious about and you'll want to just know a little bit more about me so I'm sharing a ton of stuff this is going to be probably a pretty long video but I will try to keep my answers as appropriately brief as possible we'll see how it goes so the first category of questions that I'm going to be answering are kind of Creator and content questions what camera do you use for your booktube content the camera that I'm actually filming on right now is the Sony zv1 I love this camera I actually have a rode video mic go to or something like that on top of it I am a really big circular for audio quality I also have a couple of other cameras in my lineup that I use less frequently for things like sit down videos so I have a Canon 90d that I like to use whenever I am filming in my office and doing those like big list videos the battery in this camera saply just like won't last for that sort of situation and this one is just slightly less great in quality though I still think the quality is pretty great so I would say if I'm recommending One camera for a booktuber it would definitely be this one as your family always supported your channel and was it hard during University I think that question the was it hard during University Park is made maybe asking like oh having YouTube was when I was in college and I actually didn't have YouTube and college I started right after I graduated from my master's program at like 23 and then how's your family always supported your channel I think and I started at a different time that probably would have mattered to me a little bit more like had I started in high school or college I probably would have cared me out more about like my parents support and kind of what they thought and my parents are very supportive in the sense that they tell me I should go after whatever I want but they also don't care a ton and I don't mean that in a bad way they're just not like watching my YouTube videos or really making comments on the fact that I make YouTube videos I've always been like okay that's cool like you have a hobby that's that's fun and I think I like that approach like I don't want my parents watching every one of my videos especially considering like the the topics that I talk about they're also not like oh you shouldn't be making videos either they've always been like supportive I guess in the sense that they tell me I can do whatever I want so that's been that's been pretty nice actually they tend not to discourage me from going after things they haven't historically but they also don't get too invested in the things that I'm doing and um there's something to be said for that too that's that's pretty nice who do you follow on booktube and which content creator do you admire higher most this question is kind of tough for me because I think because we'll get into in other like questions later on down the road I have been watching a lot less book content lately and there are multiple reasons for that one my interests are just expanding I have a lot more things that I'm interested in now which I'm actually really excited and proud about like I think when I first started I only cared about books was all that was in my life and now there's just so much other stuff that really excites me and I trust me and I also think when you're in more of a niche space sometimes watching too many creators who do similar things to you can make you feel inadequate or get you comparing yourself to other people so I don't watch a ton of book content anymore I am still subscribed to all my faves and if I'm in the mood to watch book content the creators that I tend to watch most often are Aaron from booked and busy Olivia from Olivia reads latte Crystal from Crystal's bookish life uh just to name a few like those are the ones that immediately come to my mind and those are people that I like talk to fairly regularly as well so so they're just the people that I I tend to like and admire watch frequently and all of those creators have something so unique to offer and have a passion for YouTube that is different than my own passion and I really like that like I don't I don't want to watch people who do things exactly the same way that I do and I like just saying how other people are doing things you are looking for a Creator I think who is most similar to me in terms of taste in books and like what they're looking for in books I would definitely say follow Crystal if you are looking for someone who is a bad when it comes to business and I just admire the out of them uh Olivia similar in terms of creatorship I guess Aaron I don't know they're all amazing and I love all three of them so I would say those are the three creators I admire the most and watch the most so yeah I tend to watch people that like I actually talk to and interact with any advice for someone who's struggling to grow their YouTube channel I think this is a tough question to answer because so much in the landscape of YouTube has changed over the past few years especially considering the rise of tick tock I really hate to give generic answers like just be yourself and just you know do you my biggest advice to people who are struggling to grow their channel is really to consider why you're doing it I think that really helps guide me when I first started I think everybody starts YouTube for different reasons and I think a lot of bookish creators start because they're looking to make friends that's not a bad thing at all obviously but I think sometimes it's not going to guide you in a direction that is going to necessarily make your channel take off like yes you will probably have fellow creators watching you which is also you know fun and it's fun to like make friends but I think if you're someone who is looking to grow your channel the things that are going to matter are like you watching analytics watching what the trends are trying to not create a brand or like yourself into too much of a niche but really consider what you have to offer that's like maybe a little bit different than other people and it doesn't necessarily have to be something super specific it could just be your personality but I think like actually sitting down and treating it like it's something serious I think is the first step if you are trying to kind of grow your channel that is something that always interested me because part of the reason that I joined it I say the biggest reason I joined YouTube in the first place was because yes I loved books I wanted to share my love of books but also I like making videos that is like my favorite part of this and that's why as my channel continues to evolve I've never left YouTube because I like this format and this is exciting to me so I don't know if that's like best advice ever or like the most helpful but I would say yeah definitely consider why you're doing it and start to like tailor your content because of that don't be afraid to experiment especially if you haven't been doing it for very long either I think people can get too hung up on like certain video formats and I think the thing that helped me the most was taking risks and just trying to understand who I am and like what people might want from me have you ever felt trapped in the sort of Niche you've created on social media I like this question because it feels like very aggressive but uh deep in a sense I don't think I feel trapped in like the sort of like book Community but I do think at times it can feel a little bit stifling and I haven't always felt that way I would say the first three years that I was on booktube all I wanted to talk about was books and so that was I did feel trapped it was something that I did for myself but I'd say the past two years it has been a little bit stifling to feel like I have to include books in every single video I stopped making my more lifestyle content last year because I felt this pressure to finish books in those videos and I think that the video suffered because of that because it was really trying to like cram content in a place that it didn't fit so yeah I do think in a sense I I don't feel trapped but I sometimes still stifled by the sense that like all I can talk about is books and part of that too is the fact that like I as I get older I have more interests I think I started my channel when I first graduated grad school time all I really cared about was books it was my single interest my single focus and I love that all all that my life encompassed was books like that was it now that I'm getting older and my life's changing and other things are important to me it does sometimes feel a little bit stifling not to be able to share those things but I also think you can only feel as stifle as you let yourself right and so you'll see a lot of changes in my channel in the coming year probably as I start to share other aspects and interests of my life so when asked would you consider showing more house content like decor and Renovations I love sharing that content with you there are probably not going to be any more Renovations than we do in this house I don't know how much longer we are going to stay here given you know the economy and stuff probably longer than I would like but we don't really have any plans to do any more Renovations here because I've kind of done everything that I want to do in terms of Decor though I would I would love to share more home decor stuff with you and I think especially when like holiday seasons roll around I love sharing that content so that's definitely something that's going to be here on my channel do you have plans to do more planner content I did not know I have a planner content Channel a plan with Chan I posted a few videos there I think less than 10 at this point and I really like filming those videos but they are kind of kind of hard to edit it's just not a top priority for me because there's just so many different things that I feel like called to do and excited to do yeah let's just kind of fall into the Wayside I will definitely be filming more content there in the future and I pretty much always do a planner setup video at the beginning of every year but it's not like a super super big priority for me at the moment I would say but you consider doing word lifestyle content in your Vlogs and the answer to that is of course yes I am going to be doing lifestyle Vlogs on this channel they might be completely devoid of books and bookish content which is something I mentioned in the last Vlog that I posted that one did actually have some reading in it but I don't want to feel the pressure to include books in every video especially again considering the kind of major life changes that I'm going through I want to be able to share that stuff and not feel like oh God I have to read a book as well next let's move into the other categories we have a bunch of categories to get through the next category is work what is your full-time job what do you do and that's totally valid I do have a full-time job YouTube is not my full-time job have a work from home job which is really really nice and affords me the ability to be able to probably spend more time on my content than I would if I was having to commute every day which I'm really grateful for I don't really talk about the details of my job privacy and all that but it is one of those jobs that your parents would tell you about like oh yeah my mom has this job I have no idea what she does all day that's the kind of job that I have in the past I've had like sales jobs and just a bunch of different stuff and right now I have a work from home kind of like hard to explain white collar job I don't know like Corporate America kind of job someone asked how do you find balancing work YouTube and reading I am assuming this person knows that I do have a full-time job and for me it has gotten easier over the years just as I get more experience in like my career field and in just kind of like the stuff that I do I feel like I do have more time throughout my day to be able to find little pockets of time to film that being said like over the past five years I have not really had balance I would say like YouTube has always been my number one priority before everything else and I do think that like some of my life has fallen to the Wayside as a result and that's something that I've been correcting for over the past like year and I think that's why I post maybe a little less frequently or there are some times when I just like you know don't post on a Sunday because I am trying to like prior advertised for time spent with Hayden and the people around me um so I don't know that like I really have a recommendation for balancing things I don't know that I like am very good at balancing things I try my best but I'm not the greatest at it you know again for the first three years I was so single-minded um in growing this Channel and in reading that like didn't bother me it didn't bother me that things weren't balanced and I acknowledged it and it didn't bug me now it bugs me more but I am still so like grateful for that experience and I don't look back and think like oh I should have been more balanced now I think is the time in my life that I'm sort of craving that so I'll keep you posted if I eventually find balance or or you know really succeed at it but I think sometimes things fall to the Wayside and I just kind of let it next category of questions marriage and babies let's talk about it how soon would you want kids okay let's buckle up let me get my leg up here and so this is the Big Life Update um honestly like I was prepared to talk about this and now I'm just kind of like I don't even know where to begin so uh Hayden and I have been trying to have kids for the past year as you can probably guess that has not happened so um at the beginning of this year's we basically started trying to have kids actually a little bit before we got married not like super actively but we weren't you know preventing if you will we tried for about a year our anniversary came up in April and around March of this year is when we decided let's maybe get some testing done and since it's easier for a man to get tested less invasive I was like why don't we get you tested and kind of see where that leads and then if nothing comes of that then like maybe I'll start getting tested or you know whatever oh so Hayden got tested and it was sort of a multi-part multi-step process all of this I should say I have run by Hayden and he is like share all that you want like he is totally open about this so I want to put that out there he got tested we did multiple rounds of testing different kinds of testing for men and we got very conclusive answers kind of about his fertility and and we found out that he is suffering from male Factor infertility which doesn't come as much of a surprise to us and was something that kind of spurred the testing in the first place if that makes sense uh Hayden had cancer as an infant he had leukemia when he was 10 months old he was part of an experimental trial most kids at his age like most infants at that sort of like age group at the time passed away from the leukemia it was very very deadly and so he was part of a trial where they tested a new more aggressive type of chemotherapy and they said that there was a likelihood that you know could have children naturally like they said it was likely that he would he was the second person in that trial and so they really don't have conclusive data and we kind of do now have conclusive data which is to say that he is suffering from infertility um as a result of that chemotherapy nothing that he could have done to prevent that it just affected the way that he developed and as a result we have to seek fertility treatment no matter you know if I get tested and we also find out that there are like female Factor issues whatever the only solution for us is IVF he basically had a low count and low a company opening factors I guess I don't want to like get too into the weeds of it not because he doesn't want me to share but because I don't want to be demonetized he's like he has he has count issues and it's nothing that can be fixed from surgery or with medication it's just the way that his body was formed um and developed after you know if he had cancer so it has been a lot to process I won't lie obviously I don't think anyone goes in to having babies with someone or you know wanting to get pregnant assuming that they are going to deal with infertility I don't think anyone thinks that I'm very grateful that um infertility is something that's talked about a lot more on the Internet it's definitely something that crossed my mind that could be a problem and of course we got Hayden tested so it was something that was top of mind for me but um yeah I just obviously never anticipated that this would be how I would have to have children but we have to do IVF specifically I don't know if I already said that but um there's basically no other option he does have you kind of want to like it's a knot we're not necessarily going to have to use like donor materials that we know of yet given account numbers it is straight to IVF like there's no other option and that has been hard to process like I come from a very extremely hyper fertile family I am about 99 sure that I don't have any issues and I do I don't think those issues necessarily affect my ovulation so I I'm pretty freaking sure that I can get pregnant naturally so it has been a lot to process um that you know through no fault of either of us really I'm gonna have to stick myself with needles and go under general anesthesia and get my blood tested I've never had a blood test done I've never had my blood drawn like I think I might have had my finger pricked when I was like 11 but I've never had like a drawn from like my arm like I I'm terrified honestly of the medical component to all of this it has been yeah she's been a lot to process this is fairly recent news we found out like conclusively that there was nothing we could do there was about a month there where we like knew his counts but we were like oh maybe there's something we can do like you know medication or surgery there's a month there when I was kind of hopeful um and then I think it was like May yeah it was like late May that we found out that there's nothing we can do um and so for the past like you know a few weeks I've been kind of just sitting with this news and sitting with the reality of it in some ways I'm really grateful that I have answers because I think I can't imagine how challenging it probably is to go to a fertility consultation not know anything and then have to to like cycle through a bunch of different things that may or may not work for us like again no matter what happens with me we will have to do this if we want to have a baby together so um at least I'm I'm having time at this point to like process the fact that we're doing IVF it's not like I'm having to process my own infertility news and then I've yeah yeah it's I keep trying to think of the bright side and the Silver Lining and really I am grateful that this is an option for us that we will be able to take on never expected this I'm still pretty young I'm only 28 and yeah it's um it's been pretty devastating and I hope I talked about this as respectfully as possible because I've watched so many people's stories online and it has been so hopeful and so helpful for me but yeah it has been really challenging and I'm sharing this with you because this is something that I'm going to be talking about frequently on my channel going forward I know that this is information that could be potentially triggering for people so when I do include this in my lifestyle Vlogs I will make sure to timestamp whenever I talk about this information but this is my life now like this is something that I'm going to be taking on and it is going to probably consume a lot of my life for the next six months to a year so it would be strange to hide that from y'all and I'm an open book for the most part like I like sharing things with y'all it doesn't really feel weird to be sharing this information that's that is one of the biggest updates there's another fairly big update that I'll be sharing later but um yeah I do want kids soon to answer the question I do and we'll see how soon that will be and if it if it will be you know I I'm not going in to this with any expectations I've watched so many videos at this point that I know that a lot of the time it doesn't work the first time uh for some people it never works and you know I'm trying to go in positive but also realistic so um yeah I'm going to share more details as I have them I'm obviously going to undergo fertility testing and if I you know have PCOS or Endo or you know some sort of contributing factor I'll be sharing that with you and um just sharing everything really along the way so if you like that sort of stuff stay tuned if you don't I I really think that you'll still enjoy the lifestyle content and again I will time stamp stuff because I know that this is sensitive stuff and some people have been through it and never want to hear about it again and that is valid so baritone babies um the next question the last question in this category really is how have you felt being married now and honestly this has been the hardest year of my life and it's not because because of my marriage if anything my marriage has made my life so much better first pet my first cat passed away in September got this fertility news some other stuff has happened that I'm going to talk about in a second and it has been really hard but being married Tim has not been hard it has been best part honestly of this year so oh wow okay I I forgot that I was gonna double whammy myself like back to back with the hard stuff but you know what I think just get it over with okay cats let's talk about cats the first question is tell me about your cats and this is hard recently had to re-home pickles I had three cats uh for the past nine months I have pepper who is the oldest at five years old and then Teddy and pickles who were technically around the same age but Teddy I got first and I got him as baby and then pickles I adopted as an adult cat I adopted pickles the week before my oldest cat nugget passed away I fully intended to have a happy four cat household I'm so excited about it and all signs were like really positive that this is going to work out and then nugget passed away I didn't cope well which is kind of part of of this but I'm getting all three of the remaining cats gone along really well for about a month they were playing I have pictures of them cuddling on my bed but I don't know what happened something changed at that month Mark and pickles any time he saw Pepper would try to attack him I never really knew that there was like true cat aggression like I've seen cats kind of tackle each other when they play but I've never seen anything like this before and it was worrying to me after it happened twice I knew that it was not okay to leave them alone together in any sense so I separated them and they were separated from each other for the entire nine months that we had them I did so much research on trying to like reintroduce cats and to get you know two cats who seemingly don't get along to get along I got pheromone diffusers I got pickles on Prozac L'Occitane um which was something that was recommended to me by a vet or aggressive cats I did the formal introduction process as uh you know recommended by Jackson Galaxy which is like you know sight swapping and base camp and all of these different steps and I tried so much for nine months to try to get these two cats to get along because Teddy and pickles got along so well and pickles is NYS the sweetest cat that I've ever had like the kindest the most affectionate the most easy going just the most fun cat ever but he could not get along with pepper and in February I was feeling discouraged and defeated and I didn't know like how long I could continue to try to introduce these cats to each other it was just really really hard I think February is kind of when I knew that like something did to change I wasn't willing to admit it I'll be honest like I wasn't willing to admit to myself that this just was not working it was like my pride thinking like oh like I know cats I can make this work and it just didn't work no matter what I did it did not work and it was not fair to have to swap the cats out throughout the day have one cat basically be alone for part of the day because no that cat didn't want to be attacked by the other one I think for me when I finally knew that I needed to like set my hubris aside and set my pride and ego aside was when we went to New York sister was watching my cats she accidentally let pickles out he like slipped past her legs and went to attack pepper neither of the cats was injured but it was a really scary circumstance for her obviously having to separate them and break them up which she did successfully pretty quickly but it was just hard for me not being there and feeling so out of control and just knowing that this this was it like this is just not gonna work anymore I went through so many emotions when I was there that's why that New York section of my Vlog is only like four minutes long and I think it's because I've cried so much that I am cried out at the moment but in New York is when we when we decided that it just like wasn't it wasn't fair to either of the cats it wasn't fair for pickles to be this stressed out it wasn't fair the pepper to like be scared you know all the time again he wasn't like regularly around him because we had them separated but I was just I didn't it wasn't fair to him and he seemed pretty sad too after losing nugget who was his best friend um it was just hard so we decided to put feelers out and try to see if we could find a new home for him and I'm happy to say that he found a home and it is again prayed aside a better home than he would have had here I never thought that this would be something that I would do I ride or die for my cats I love my pets um and Hayden and I both have similar ad attitudes about rehoming which is like of course we're never gonna re-home pets but I think until you're in that situation you just really don't know and it's easy to pass judgment but like it has been devastating it's been really really hard so I brought him to his new home a few days ago this person I mean couldn't be more perfectly Suited for him a retired woman with no other pets whose 14 year old dog passed away and she was looking for a new companion and a new friend the communications I had with her I was just overwhelmed with like how well she took care of her pets in the past she's had cats as well I could just tell she was something special and when Hayden read her emails and stuff too he was like wow she's perfect uh she lives a mile away from my parents a singular mile away from my parents in Houston and she has been texting me every day since I dropped him off with updates and pictures and snow he's in the right place it's so hard now I'm gonna get teary because there was I mean there were so many reasons I adopted him he was an adult cat and I you know I'm the kind of person that like I don't want to see pets not get adopted like I I really like adult cats more than I like kittens and I just really wanted it to work and I wanted him to be a part of our house but unfortunately with with pepper I know going forward that like adult cats are just not a good fit for him he's so tiny and so scared and he's fine around kittens and small cats but he just can't do like large scary adult cats and so that's a little bit of a tell me about your cats is it not but I had three home pickles recently and that has been really hard and my house feels so empty with only two cats in it I have not had just two cats in my house for for two years at this point but if you want to hear about my other two cats I guess I could briefly tell you about them because I think some of these questions are about my cats um my cats are ride dolls that was one of the questions what breed are your cats there Ragdoll cats all of my cats have been ragdolls they're really special to me I really love the breed though I will say I love all cats it's not like I only have to have Ragdoll sort of thing but um I did I do tend to gravitate towards them and I have a really special connection with the woman that I've gotten my ragdolls from and so I think that really just like encourages me to get more of them but they're ragdolls I have pepper and Teddy at the moment those are my only two cats peppers like I guess official government name is Pepe but we call him pepper he is a five-year-old rag doll he is very very tiny and slight inserting a picture of him right here he's about eight or nine pounds which is very small for a rag doll and he's just a skinny little rat we love him so much he is the most temperamental of all of our cats in the sense that he loves to cuddle but he also is very much don't with me he has like more of the temperament of a female cat I feel like he's he's really funny and then there's Teddy who is our big teddy bear uh Hayden likes to call him trout is about 13 or 14 pounds full of energy bounces off the walls that's part of the reason we got pickles was um to maybe be a playmate for him so he wouldn't with pepper as much pepper just wants to be left alone basically uh and that I mean they were friends they did get along really well so again that was hard like pretty pretty hard to know that like he's not gonna have that friend anymore so uh those are my two cats those are the breed of cats someone asked did the cats have favorite snacks the cats are interesting pepper really likes sweet things he will try to steal an Oreo from you obviously I don't like let him have a you know whole Oreo or anything but I'll let him like Lick in oreo from time to time and then Teddy he really really likes human food he will try to steal chicken off of your plate or rice or anything savory like he's all about it he is he's the worst pepper won't really get up on the table when you're eating dinner but Teddy will try to get up there and like is quick those are their favorite snacks those are not like things that they have regularly though uh I don't feed my cat's treats very often so I don't really have like treat recommendations or anything like that but when I heard snacks like that was where my mind went favorite and least favorite thing about having cats I like this question because uh well I love cats obviously I'd say my favorite thing about having cats is also part of my least favorite thing it's kind of like a dual thing for me I love the responsibility that cats bring into your life and the sense of routine cat's crave routine and as someone who has moderate to severe mental health issues routine is something that's really important to me as well and so to know that I have to keep these things alive these beautiful beautiful Pets Alive and thriving and happy has brought a sense of routine and structure to my life that I need it's one of my favorite things obviously I love their personalities and I just love them and getting to know them and their unique quirks and traits and things like that but I think you know when I really sit down and think about it it's the routine that we have and the responsibility that it brings to my life it really actually is quite a joy although it can be one of the hardest things I would say about having cats like obviously cleaning up poop on the ground or vomit is just like not super fun it's just not but I would say the hardest thing sometimes for someone who again has mental health issues is like sticking to that routine when you just want to be in bed and do nothing knowing that you like have to get out of bed because you have to skip a litter box you have to feed them you have to play with them um it can be hard and overwhelming sometimes but it's something that I also love so it's like yeah it's a mixed thing there so this question if you could own any number of cats how many would you have know that this is not like a final number of cats for me I know two is just it's so empty in my house and quiet I think ideally again four cats would be incredible I like even numbers I think that works well for humans and for beds I mean obviously every situation is different but I think ideally four would be great and the situation and just how everything went down I don't know when I will get more cats next I know that they will definitely be kittens because again I have pepper and he doesn't really like large animals he's cool with kittens and he's cool as they age I mean like Teddy is bigger than him and he's fine with Teddy but um we got teddy as a kitten so it's a different situation yeah four cats ideally and I think eventually we will probably get a couple of kittens I don't know when that will be honestly I could see it happening sooner rather than later just simply because of the IVF that we're gonna have to be doing uh we have a consult in June after I come back from a vacation and I can see that kind of going quickly and like being something that happens and I think having something else to focus on and something else to care about I think would be really nice um again comes back to like my favorite least favorite thing about cats is the responsibility and like having something to focus on other than yourself can be really freeing and I think having having some kittens to like go through that with would be pretty nice like but we'll see I really don't know four cats is like ideal yeah I want some some kitties soon but I'm also trying to give myself some time to like grieve pickles and just kind of get used to this like new structure we also have my sister's cats coming stay with us for a week and then leaving for a week and then coming back for a week because uh she's going on a vacation with me Hayden's gonna watch the cats and then I'm coming back and Spencer's going on a vacation and then I'm gonna again watch your cats her cats will be here and they'll be like hanging out with my cats I think my sister's youngest cat Toby loves other cats and so does my cat Teddy so I think Teddy and Toby are gonna have a lot of fun um over the next week I'm really excited to get updates about that but since I have those things coming up I'm not like oh gotta go out and like grab a new kid immediately so yeah four cats ideally but like who knows when let's move into the less depressing side of things shall we it's your dream to be a full-time author um all right yes no I don't know this is something that I think I'm like kind of grappling with and I don't want to repeat myself too often but I found over the past year and year and a half that I have a passion for so many different things and I've never fully allowed myself to dream and to expand my dreams past you know having a successful YouTube channel because I've been scared I've been like well I'm successful at this and trying so hard I don't want to give up on this you know changing my attention would be kind of giving up like I just don't I can't do it and for so many years I just let that happen even though there were other things in the back of my head that I wanted to do and I would say at the beginning of this year I was like you know what I don't think I could do YouTube forever I think I want to be full-time author that was like my my initial Instinct and then more stuff started creeping in like more stuff that I was excited about more stuff that I wanted for my life and I think at this point I can say pretty confidently that like I don't want to do anything full-time like I want to be able to do all of my hobbies I don't think that's realistic necessarily but like I want to allow myself to experiment and to give myself the grace to probably a bunch of different things because life is too short I don't know where I got my sense of immortality I have just always thought to myself I don't want to leave this planet not having tried everything that I want to try and that really guides a lot of my decision making I made a YouTube channel I was like scared obviously it's scary to put yourself out there but I knew you only get one life why would I not try to be successful on YouTube like that's always something I thought would be cool I think that's gonna be the confidence to like go and try different things so at this point there are a lot of different things that I would like to do I do very much want to be an author that is something that I want to commit to do doing it's a big part of my life like I have a passion for writing and I have been writing my book for a while and I'll explain more of that in the other questions but I want to be a writer I want to be a photographer I'm starting a photography business with my little sister I want to be a YouTuber I want to be a mom there's so many different things I want to do so I don't want to commit and say like I want to be a full-time author um not because I don't see that as a part of my life but because there's so many other things that I want to do additionally someone asked how the writing is actually coming along and frankly I sort of paused a little bit once we started getting fertility news it's been hard to focus on things frankly just waiting for the other shoe to drop waiting to find out more information and now that I have more information and kind of know the path ahead I've been feeling this like itch to start raining again but I was able to get 25 into my fully outlined book I outlined the full thing it took me a few weeks to outline my first book and then I got 25 into writing it and I'll be honest with you during that 25 I didn't have any roadblocks I didn't have any times where I was like I can't do this thing and I was shocked at that I was really assuming this would be challenging and it would be like pulling teeth but frankly it has been so fun freaking love rating like it's really great I'm not saying I'm great at it but it's been really great and yeah sometimes 25 in and I'm actually going on vacation with my little sister on Saturday we're going to Florida for a week seven full days I am bringing my laptop and one of my biggest goals there is to just write write my book is going to be set in the Texas Hill Country near a lake a Florida beach is a little different but I'm assuming that is going to just like give me all the inspiration and all the Vibes that I need to get a lot of this done my goal is to finish this book before October because I want to write a different book for nanowrimo I have a three book series planned this is the second book in a series of standalones I'm writing the second one first because it's a dual POV story where it's the first book in this series is a free POV story which is going to be more challenging to write obviously um so I wanted to give myself the easier challenge first but for Nano I want to write that like polyamorous three person story writing's good trying to just do it when I feel like it and also be committed it's been a challenge but like not the writing itself it's just like finding the time to to Really commit to a last writing question would you ever do a writing or nanowrimo Vlog yes I think so uh I don't know if I will Vlog Nano my goal for nanowrimo and for the month of November nanowrimo by the way is National novel right month I believe those who don't know and it's a time where people really commit to writing a full book basically in a month I for the month of November was really hoping to have a lot of content pre-planned free pre-filmed like ready to go so that y'all would not see a change in content but that I wouldn't have to do anything in November except for right and I'm still hoping to do that so it's like do I want to commit to also vlogging I was like really looking forward to just taking a break I don't know we'll see I'll probably do at least one Nano Vlog just to kind of like show y'all how it's going and I'll probably start including writing in my lifestyle updates as well it felt weird to put the writing updates in like a reading Vlog um because I know as someone who is a reader first I don't really care about writing stuff or at least I didn't care about writing stuff when I was just a reader and so I don't want to make people sit through that if they just want book content so I will probably include writing updates in Vlogs even if I don't do committed or like dedicated Nano Vlogs all right and then the last two categories first one's Taylor Swift I got two Taylor Swift related questions so I figured might as well make it a category how was the Taylor Swift concert it was so good I went to night one in Houston and it was delightful besides the surprise songs not being like my favorite I had such a good time with my little sister I guess I didn't realize how much Taylor Swift was like a bond for us but I listened to a lot of Taylor Swift growing up and I guess my sister kind of picked up on that and she did this thing where she would like write down Taylor Swift lyrics in her notebook to like memorize them and stuff and um Taylor Swift has become a really big part of her life and she's an even bigger Swifty than I am yeah I didn't realize until recently like how much that really connected us and bonded us and it was just really special to like go with her we've gotten really closer the past couple of years as well like she is my best friend at this point and yeah so it was like great because the concert was great but it's also really great to like go with my sister and have this experience together I think that was probably the most special part so it was really great I loved it we had great seats and a great time um and then someone asked how I got the Taylor Swift Fearless final like the original Platinum Edition uh I went to a record store with Hayden in New York I cannot remember the name of it I'll put the name of it right here if I can remember or like if I can find it into this incredible record shop and I was just like throwing records at Hayden like we need this we need this we need this and then I saw that record like on the wall it was the last one and um yeah I scored it it wasn't too expensive I think it was like 45 and I think you can still get them like second hand for not too expensive but it was really special Fearless is my favorite album love Taylor's version but I do kind of like the original better it's just like so nostalgic for me because that was like the original yeah it's just really special to have it uh it's in Hayden's office with all the other records that we own and I think Hayden looked recently and was able to to find them for not very expensive so they're not that hard to find I think fingers crossed and then lastly let's talk about lifestyle uh I have quite a few lifestyle questions here and I'm excited to answer them first one is something that has been bringing you Joy lately that is really tough because things have been really hard oh okay I guess this is something fun I am getting a new car soon and I have been following the process of like when I'm gonna get this car I like ordered it I'm getting information on like when it's gonna be ready and like when it could be picked up and that stuff's like changing every day and I've been really excited about that um it's just like a little thing that's bringing me joy although a car is like kind of a big thing but that has been really exciting also just like looking forward to vacations I'm not a big traveler but I've been planning travel for this year uh I'm going to Disney with Hayden later this year and I'm not a Disney adult but Disney adults have sucked me in y'all I have been watching so much Disney content over the past year as like Comfort watches I know some people really like ASMR or like have some sort of like Niche thing that brings some comfort and for me it's been Disney adult content you know really convinced me to go to Disney so the idea of travel and the idea of like having things to look forward to has been really nice especially again considering that like I've got some not so fun stuff that's gonna be happening in the near future so like having that kind of stuff to look forward to has been nice yeah travel new car like those are exciting things those have been bringing me joy all right I really liked this question because this is one of my Niche interests favorite perfume and candles I am a scenty girl if you come into my house it smells good I'm gonna be honest even even though I have a shitload of pets uh two dogs two cats at this point my house smells pretty good not too bad but it smells great I love like Bath Body Works Wallflowers I like candles it is fragrant in here am I combusting carcinogens for sure but like it smells good so that that's what matters okay um my favorite perfumes I would say at the moment my favorite would be by Rado it's like a more Indie I guess perfume house and I really love their fragrances I have five at this point pretty much all of their perfumes I really enjoy but my favorite at the moment is La tulip it has a rhubarb note that is just so sharp and kind of green I don't know I just really like that fragrance it's a very clean scent it makes me happy every time I spray it and wear it and I really really like that another perfume that I like I'm actually wearing right now I made custom perfume in New York with Hayden I knew that that was like a thing you could do in other places is I looked it up there's a place called olfactory in New York and we went and made our own custom fragrances and it was so fun so the one that I made that I'm wearing right now is a very fig heavy scent so it smells like the Fig Tree in my grandpa's backyard it's so green and so fresh I like that it's custom to me like I got to kind of put this scent together so yeah those I would say are like my two favorite I tend to lean towards fresher scents but I have like a I have a shitload a perfume honestly let me know if you want like a perfume tour or whatever at some point I could do that because I like sharing fragrance and then in terms of candles that one's tough for me I would say like my two favorite candle brands at the moment are novel Wicks obviously for like bookish candles uh they're wood wet candles and they tend to have like I would say fairly unique scents and then I also really like anchored Northwest which is another sort of like you know smaller Indie and they did a collaboration with Taylor Nguyen in the past like a laundry scented candle and like a trio of candles for her those were delightful and I just got really into how unique and how layered and complex those fragrances are so I need to get more candles from them but those are like probably my favorite Brands and like a lot of different scents to be honest like Atlanta fresh lunch but like kind of like everything I'm not very picky if you could travel anywhere where would it be this one's tough for me I think that has changed over over the years but I would say the most immediate thing that I would like to do like the top of my list for international travel would be traveling to the United Kingdom I studied history uh when I was in university I just really have a desire to visit England and Scotland and Ireland to just explore the different like topography and beauty of nature but also the different historical sites and things like that would be just so nice like I really like that that idea and one of my best friends is engaged to a man who lives in London and I actually really like the idea of going whenever she is in London so like she can take me around to like more of the cool non-historical kind of things so that's that's something I would like to do in the near future but there are places on literally every content that I'd like to visit so excited to do that in the future and I'm really excited that there are so many different people who are subscribed to me and I'm definitely gonna put my feelers out when I do some international travel and like things I must see in different places so all right last few are you going going to move house someday soon I feel like I sort of hinted at it that we have a desire to move but I just don't know how soon that will actually happen given so many different lifestyle things it's like we're doing IVF here in Austin kind of have to be here for that also the economy is nuts I had home prices and interest rates are also nuts it would just it would be hard I guess to justify moving that being said we do have a really big desire to be closer to our family once we do have children because both of our families live in the Houston area and it would just be nice to be able to like have our kids grow up near their grandparents neither Hayden or I really we're super close to our grandparents growing up because we didn't live super close to them and that's something that we both look back on and think like oh it would have been cool to be closer with our grandparents and have better relationships there so um that's something that we would like to do and also we'd like our parents so we'd like to be close to them so Houston eventually but I don't know how soon that would be I would say in the next five years someone asked what my workout schedule is which you know both of you to assume that I have like a consistent workout schedule lately I would say I I have been enjoying cardio more than I have been enjoying weightlifting which is really rare and weird for me because I love weightlifting but my current like split I guess you could say is to walk three days a week and to do full body lifting three days a week so like every other day kind of breaking things up that way I haven't been that consistent over the past like week or so because we've been traveling but I'm excited to get back to that this week um when I'm in Florida Spencer and I have plans to go on a lot of hot girl walks which should be fun I've been seeing a lot of like mental health Improvement when I consistently exercise so it's something that I definitely want to continue on with especially as I you know go through IVF but obviously parts of that Journey where you're not allowed to exercise but I know it helps keep my mental health sharp so for the times when I am allowed to work out I want to be actually doing that because it makes me feel a lot better so that's kind of my current setup is just like walk some full body exercises some and when I say full body exercise I go to a gym and lift weights to do that I'm not like a body weight exercise girl although that's not a bad thing so yeah that's kind of like my workout schedule and then the last question is are you doing okay and I actually got this a few times from various different people and I just want to say thank you for asking that question it is always refreshing and like nice to know that I'm not just like a machine two people um online I mean I know that's not the case I know so many of y'all care and I really like so appreciate that that's always nice to be asked like how I'm doing and you know what I'm doing okay things are hard obviously I am still grieving the loss of pickles I mean he is very much alive and well and probably doing very very well without me but I'm still breathing at loss I'm still very sad about it I'm still dealing emotionally with the IVF stuff I haven't cried for a while for like a week or two about the IVF stuff which is really nice but I'm giving myself like space to cry when I need to and space to be emotional when I need to and give myself breaks when I need to so I'm doing okay I think I'm learning healthy coping skills as I age and learning how to take care of myself even when it's hard I didn't have those skills when I first started YouTube I would stay up till like one in the morning editing videos and not eat well not take care of myself I think now I'm doing more of that and so I'm able to say with some confidence even when things are hard that I am okay I mean that's it that's the last question I hope that this was Illuminating to y'all in some ways I hope I answered the questions y'all wanted me to answer I think I answered almost everybody's question I did have a few like book questions but frankly I didn't want to talk about books today and it was really nice not to have to the only request that I have from you my lovely viewers is that if you are someone who is currently dealing with infertility or who has dealt with infertility in the past if you could please not provide advice in the comments I would very much appreciate that I will ask for advice when I'm ready for that advice um or when I have questions but at this moment I am very much okay with like how things are I don't have answers yet um I don't have questions yet I just need to like sit with the things that I'm sitting with my only real request but I really do love y'all so much I'm really grateful for your support and um yeah I hope to not have to ever do one of these again I mean hopefully not for a very long time hopefully nothing major happens in the next couple of years but um yeah I again I'm grateful for all and grateful that y'all are here for this journey with me and uh look forward to some lifestyle Vlogs there's going to be a Florida lifestyle Vlog coming and that should be a lot more uplifting and exciting so you know thanks for watching I love you all so much and until next time\n"