1 year of MIA!! Some life updates

Knock knock -
I'm peeking in my own blog to see if anyone is left here after a full year of no updates.

If you're still here, Hi! long time no talk!
Not sure how to start an entry anymore - blog-writing now feels so foreign to me.. 

I don't like wasting my time listening to other people talk about themselves, but just wanted to update everyone on what's been going on in my life for the past 12 months. Hopefully, this can get me back on track with a lot of things I've neglected online.. And hopefully, you will forgive me for going on and on about myself :p I promise, I won't have a Catalina-centric post like this anymore.




First half of 2014

Work and CES!
The year started off with CES, which is the biggest show in my industry (*cough cough* CE). I started working where I work in January 2013, right after CES 2013 was over, so this year was my first CES attendance. The show is held in Vegas annually, and I must say.. it was a brutal week in Vegas.  With CES over, I felt like I needed to freshen up a lot of things in my life. I started decluttering my surroundings and reorganized some structural elements in life.
With the new attitude in life, I began to obsess more and more about my work.
March - May was filled with back to back key customer meetings, all-nighters and weekend runs to work.


Second half of 2014

Traveling!!
I traveled so frequently this year, I ended up racking up 54,000 miles by just flying domestically.  At one point I was at the office only 8 days out of the entire month. I really enjoyed the traveling aspect of my job since all of the trips were short and sweet (3-5 days + 1 day padded entirely for up-in-the-air time) domestic traveling. I've been to places I'd never thought of paying to go myself and was able to squeeze in some touristy stuff after work. If you follow me on my twitter, you've probably seen all of my crazy check-ins all over the country.

So far this year, I've been to: San Francisco (2x), Bentonville, Las Vegas (3x), Atlanta (2x), St. Louis, Sacramento, Rogers, Monterey Bay, New York (3x), Stamford, Minneapolis, Dallas (2x), Salt Lake City, Anaheim, Phoenix (2x), Houston, Lake Charles and Raleigh.
** Of them all, my favorite place was Monterey Bay. If you haven't been, I highly recommend the place. I loved every minute of my stay at Monterey Bay.


Also, recently, I've put in my resignation letter at my work place to accept another opportunity at, let's say, Company B. I don't really recall having so much leverage while resigning a position through out my career like this time, it gave me a lot to think about my situation and my career goals. Long story short, with a lot of back and forth in between, I decided to make a U-turn and stay at my current company and had to tell Company B that I had changed my mind. Phew... that wasn't a pretty ending..



Anyway, as you can see, my life is pretty consumed with work. All I do is go to work M-F, sleep off the weekend, and repeat M-F again. Sounds boring, but I feel like I am racing towards my career peak and can't really think of slowing down. Physically it's draining, but hopefully, all the effort will pay off!

I haven't abandoned my love for makeup and beauty - I still hoard like I've never hoarded before, and try to take going to work as an opportunity to dress up/make up within the 'office look' boundaries. I work in a male-dominated environment, so I feel somewhat free to put as much makeup as I want to since the 'boys' don't really seem to know how much is too much. If male/female were more balanced, I wouldn't have been able to rock my thick foundation and theatrical eye makeup at work. :p



Vlogging: I stopped vlogging because someone who works very close to me figured out my vlog channel. I put my life out in public for the public to view, but wasn't really expecting one of the public to come back at my professional life and try to use my vlogs against me. I don't think there were any malicious intents, but I started feeling very uncomfortable about my vlogs being referred to in open conversations (and this was during big meetings too :'(.. wahh..) and decided to abort. I still have clips throughout the year, but it will most likely end up as a yearly wrap up video..

I can keep going on and on, but don't want to bore you guys!

Hopefully, I will start posting regularly and more often than before. :)

Thanks for sticking by-

Catalina