Category: Productivity

Bri Castellini Day Part 3 – @brisownworld

Today’s third article by award winning film maker, web series maker, film professor and all-around Brilliantly Talented Young Lady Bri Castellini. Enjoy! (Um, you might enjoy more if you scroll down and start with Part 1. Just saying.)

NYR 2019: A Reflection
by Bri Castellini

    1. Take at least 2 actual vacations, where I don’t work (except for maybe on writing projects, but you’re on thin ice, kid), outside of New York City. You might not know this about me because I keep a pretty chill exterior, but I’m extremely bad about taking breaks and setting boundaries and not overcommitting. Right now it’s 10pm on a Friday during which I’m still technically on vacation and I’m editing a podcast WHILE writing this blog and planning a DnD session for Sunday. Before this most recent Christmas break, I hadn’t had an actual, honest-to-god no-work no-stress vacation for 2 years. In another 2 years I will be 30 and maybe I’d like to live to see 31 before I have a nervous breakdown!
    2. Write every week. Not even every day- don’t be crazy. Some days I’m very busy or very tired or need to rewatch Outlander again. But didn’t I say a while ago that I’m a writer? Who wants to write as a career? Maybe I should actually do that more.
    3. Save $3500. Quinn and I plan to move to Los Angeles in early 2021, which is not going to be cheap. I also am apparently going on two vacations in 2020, and that ain’t cheap. Also, I’m making more money than I made last year because I have three jobs and a better paying main job, and I need to get my financial shit together because I’m 2 years away from 30 oh my god mortality/adulthood.
    4. Make and stay consistent with a budget. Now that I have three jobs and eighteen streaming video subscriptions and an impending move and a laptop battery that apparently needs servicing, once again, my financial shit needs to be together.
    5. Make one YouTube video a quarter. Once again I’m pretending like I’m going to step away from production a bit and that may or may not hold true but in either case it’s been like two years since I’ve made a YouTube video on my own channel, something that used to be a really big part of my life which I kind of miss.
    6. Make a healthy choice twice a day. This could be two healthy meals, one healthy meal and a workout, two workouts (lol ok Rocky), or a salad and a therapy session. Resolution modifier: I can stack healthy choices, so if I have a randomly amazing day where I work out, eat three healthy meals, and go to therapy, then the day after I can be a complete garbage monster and eat cake for every meal. This makes it a fun game rather than a slog. C-C-Combo!
    7. Order out fewer than three times a week. This is both a financial and a health imperative, especially my last year in New York. I know my kitchen sucks and in the summer was so infested with bugs we could not eradicate that we had to buy new shelving units that are wire and open air and we can’t use our cabinets anymore, but also airplane seatbelts have started to get dangerously tight and I travel for work a lot and that’s not gonna fly. (get it)
    8. Read all the books I’ve bought but haven’t read prior to January 3rd, 2020. Kinda speaks for itself. Books I’ve bought but haven’t finished/started (it’s a lot of memoirs): Obviously by Akilah Hughes, Bad With Money by Gaby Dunn, The Greatest Love Story Ever Told by Nick Offerman and Megan Mullally, This Will Only Hurt A Little by Busy Phillips, Feed by Mira Grant, the rest of the Outlander books (I actually didn’t buy these, I’m sharing a Kindle account with my mom and she already bought them and I read three and a quarter over Christmas break and I MUST FINISH THEM for SCIENCE).
    9. Stop over-explaining. I have this habit of feeling like people need way more information than they actually need (especially in work situations) and so in an effort to be thorough I end up rambling, which has the opposite effect that I want (that effect being ‘to be an efficient and valuable collaborator and teammate’). In 2020 I’m going to make an effort to be more concise with my language, requests, and general communication styles, especially when my impulse to over-explain comes from insecurity.
    10. Don’t go to your 10 Year High School Reunion. You don’t want to go, but you do want a tenth New Year Resolution for 2020.

    Happy New Year, what’re your arbitrary passing of time goals?

Bri Castellini is an indie filmmaker and Film Community Manager for Seed&Spark, a film crowdfunding platform, as well as an adjunct professor for two MFA programs. Watch the remarkable Ms. Castellini’s award-winning web series, Brains, HERE. See Sam And Pat Are Depressed HERE. This post first appeared on Bri’s wonderfully refreshing blog.

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