Life Update, Moving, and the Biggest Change in my Life in Years

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Welcome back to season 10! I am so happy to be here with you in today's episode of The Brownble Podcast, and also on video if you're watching us on YouTube.

Today I have a big personal update to share with you because a lot has happened since season 9 ended. This was our longest hiatus yet and I have to thank each and every one of you for your patience. I know you were all waiting for season 10 to start and we had to take a bit of an extended break and you're going to understand why when you listen to today's episode.

 

Lots of changes have been going on in our lives and we needed time to adjust and get the ball rolling again, and although the party never stops at Brownble.com and we've been continuously providing video content to all of our members of our online program and creating so much content for you, reels for Instagram and recipes that we've been sharing, the podcast is such a big part of what we do at Brownble and one of my favorite parts about our work. For some reason, even though I don't have the interaction back from you immediately I always feel that it's the most personal connection that I have with our listeners and our viewers and students, and I missed you all! It's been a long time coming and I again thank you so much for your patience.

A Little Health Scare 

The last time I recorded season 9 it was the summer and I had just gone through a very big health scare. I had been in the hospital for a few days and everything was a little bit nerve-wracking in terms of the diagnosis, which wasn't very clear. As I was going through that, little did I know how much your life could change in just a few months! I'm not going to bore you with all of the details but the good news is that in terms of the health updates I'm doing amazingly well. During the summer I got a blurry spot in my left eye and they had to do all sorts of tests in the hospital to find out why that was going on. There were some very scary diagnosis possibly attached to that but everything came out negative and I'm doing just fine. With time and medication it cleared up and I can now see better than I did before!

 

That was when I left you in last season of the podcast, season 9, and since then, we sold our apartment, we moved to our dream home, we got a brand new kitchen for Brownble and now Brownble doesn't even share our kitchen. It has its very own working kitchen which is so exciting and I can't believe that we've gotten to this place and we have all of you to thank for that. Brownble wouldn't exist if you weren't here to go on this journey with us.

Moving, and Is the Brownble Kitchen a Real Kitchen?

A lot of you ask me when you're watching our videos, especially when you're watching older ones, if that's our kitchen, if we rented a kitchen or if it was just a set. The very first kitchen we had at Brownble wasn't a kitchen at all, it was this sort of filming set that we improvised in our dining room. We would flip the table around lift it up in stilts and that became our kitchen counter. We designed this kitchen-like background and it worked for many years. That's the kitchen where we were filming and every time we had to shoot we had to set everything up, and then take everything down, set up the lights and microphones and things have evolved so much since then.

We started filming with one camera and now we're up to four! It's really evolved and changed as we've grown and a few years in after having that kitchen we finally remodelled our own kitchen and it gave us that gorgeous farm-style white kitchen with the wooden countertop that you saw in our newer videos that we also had for a few years. This was our real kitchen at home and that meant that all of the lights, microphone stands, tripods and different cameras had to be set up and taken down each and every time.

 

Now, after this big move is the first time we actually have what we've dreamed of having for years, an actual kitchen that is just for Brownble.

That's a little bit of the story behind Brownble's many kitchens, which have changed quite a bit through the years, and if you're a member of our online program, where we give you new videos every single week and we've been doing so for the past 7 years and counting, you're probably switching between videos and seeing all of the different kitchens that we've had. It's a little time machine when I go back and watch one of those older videos and now it's so exciting that we have this larger space where we've been experimenting to see where it's best to take the photos of the food, and what room has the best light and where we should record these videos for the podcast, where the sound was going to be okay for the podcast, where to record reels, etc.

It's been a very exciting journey and I can't wait to continue making all of this content to support you and bring you more delicious vegan food, recipes, meal ideas and all of that support when going vegan.

The Biggest News and Change in My Life in Years

One of the biggest updates I have for you is of a more personal nature. I decided to go back to school and I am getting my degree in psychology  at the university here in Spain, hopefully in training to become a therapist down the line, and hopefully bring you so much extra support in so many areas. As you know if you're a long time listener of this podcast, one of the things that just sets us apart from other podcasts that talk about vegan issues and animal rights and food and recipes is that we go a little more in depth into the meaning behind our food choices and into our relationship with food in and of itself. As I always tell you, food, our habits with food and our food choices are never just about the food. We talk about so many other things apart from veganism that can go hand in hand with this journey, and as usualI like to remind all of you and any new listeners or viewers that you do not have to be vegan to spend time with us in this space, everybody is welcome no matter how you eat, but we go into so many of these deeper areas that have really nothing to do with ingredients or recipes or meals, and hopefully this journey that I'm on in going back to school which is the scariest and the most exciting thing I've done since starting Brownble, is going to allow me to bring you support in a much more in depth way and give you lots of interesting perspectives while I go through this process.

I don't know what this journey is going to look like, and I'm going at half the speed because I've got double the load in that I've got all of our work load and now studying and everything else that is going on in my life, but I'm slowly but surely moving towards this new goal.

It was really scary to get started on this journey at age 40, which feels a little bit insane sometimes, but I can't turn back time, so it was either going to be at 40 or 41 or 42 or 50, and so maybe 40 isn't that bad of a number.

Going back to school has been the wildest rideI It had been a long time coming and I had been planning on it thinking about it dreaming about it and I wouldn't let myself say it out loud. I hadn't even dared to talk to Carlos (my hubby and Brownble's co-founder) about it! it was just one of these things where I knew once I laid it out on the table it wasn't going to be as easy to ignore for me and that was exactly the case. The minute I spoke that wish and dream out loud, which has a lot of back story for me and it was not an easy choice, there was no turning back. I was moving every mountain to get enrolled in school and start school and it's been a while for me, so everything took quite a few adjustments.

Studying, and having to memorize so much again, having to go through a statistics class considering I haven't had a math class in ages, it really has been a test that I've had to pass, not only the actual tests that I have to pass but just emotionally. Realizing that it's going to take a learning curve and that I'm on this path and stumbles and all I just have to keep going. It's a big big deal for me and I am so excited. I am so happy that I'm just sitting here reading and learning all the things I'm learning. It's a very special thing for me and I still can't believe it because I think it's one of those things where I could have stayed and waited and said, "maybe I'll do it next year", and then we would have been doing some project or another and I would have kept postponing it and then I would have felt that it was too late.

It's so interesting to go back to school at this age when compared to when we usually go to college at 16, 17, 18, and everything is absorbed in a different way. I'm sure in many ways it's a little bit harder because our brains are definitely not the same as when we're younger but there are so many more connections, especially with a subject like psychology, there is so much more depth in that learning process because of the life experience. I'm very grateful for that, and everything is fun and exciting and there's not that much of that feeling of "well I just have to do this to pass this class", or a focus on the grades, and it's more of a focus on learning and seeing how I'm going to end up applying it.

If you've been contemplating the idea of going back to school as an adult, to study something that could be very different from your area of work, or similar but just expanding your studies, getting another degree, or a masters. I really really think you should take this as a sign and do it! I ignored so many of my internal signals that kept telling me this was something I really wanted to do. I kept ignoring and pushing those back because I thought it just didn't fit with everything we had going on, but it's one of those things where you really can't anticipate how you're going to do it but you end up doing it and of course I wish I had done it sooner. That's always the thing when we make these choices as adults, especially if you're in your forties like me, but it's been such a great experience and this is your sign if you've been waiting for one. We can we can talk about the highs and lows together from now on.

Today it also feels like an extra level of real because as always, you hold me accountable for so many things, and when I started on my vegan journey, if I go back to before we had Brownble, I had a very small blog that I was writing when I first went vegan and I was talking about all the things I was learning, sharing recipes, and it was sort of the origin of Brownble, and I remember thinking when I started it that it was going to help me stay accountable. That people were going to know that I was on this journey. That I was going to give this a try and that that was going to help in the initial stages of going vegan. This January 2023 marked 10 years of me going vegan and it really does help to know that you have people that are rooting for you, but to also say "hey, I'm going to put my money where my mouth is and I'm going to stick with this". As you know, this journey changed my life in so many ways and it sort of feels like I'm doing this right now with school.

 

I've gone through stages of first telling Carlos, and him going through the whole process of me trying to enrol and start, then telling my family, then telling my friends and now the final level of "I'm actually doing this!" and bringing you on this journey with me. It's going to be fun to go through this with all of you as I've done with most of my life since I've had Brownble in my life.

So here we are! I am right now sitting in the attic of our new home, which is just a dream. It's been such a joy to see the dogs in their own garden, something they've never had before, and getting to know our new town and adjusting to all these big changes, now having all of this space to work on Brownble and provide you with even more content, and of course, this whole new process has also meant that I'm navigating a lot. It's taken me a while to really wrap my head around it  and if you've ever gone through a big change like this you know that it really takes time, and it sometimes takes me longer than most.

The ways of organizing time and work that worked before for some reason don't work in the same way now, so I've had to wrap my head around a new way of doing things, and part of the reason why we took this big leap of now showing you our podcast on video as well, is that we're trying to bring you more content in all of our platforms but it's hard to do that in so many different areas. This was a fantastic way to first of all introduce all of these topics that are a little bit more in depth and not recipe related to our YouTube community and little family, and also to give the opportunity to see it on video for people who are big fans of the show, who've been listening to us for years and maybe sometimes want that connection in a more visual format. I'm hoping that we can bring in some cool interviews from time to time with some interesting professionals and peeps and have them on video as well. 

I am so grateful to have you here and today's episode was one of those personal ones in which I share what we've been up to and I introduced the season of the show and like I told you in our little trailer or teaser last week, there's so much coming this season. I want to focus on so many of your questions. I want to focus on a lot of the struggles that we go through when we're making more plant-based choices or more vegan choices. I want to talk about the social aspects of being vegan which I'm always receiving your questions about. We're going to continue tackling all of those hard topics about your relationship with food, mindful eating, intuitive eating and body image. I love to give you content around food which is my expertise but now I'm going into a new field as well, and if you've been a long time listener, maybe you guessed that we were going a little bit in that direction.

I think it's going to be an exciting ride so again thank you so much for tuning into this life update. I want to know how you're doing so drop me a line at [email protected], send us your questions so that we can include them in this season of the show and as usual I'll see you next week.