Lifestyle essentially means how a person lives, and what’s better than letting your Instagram followers decide how you should live your day?
It’s the Easter holiday. I’m currently back at home, away from the exciting chaos living in York brings. With all this peace and tranquillity, why not completely throw it away and let you control how I live my life, for a day?
To start this process, I published a series of stories to @yorkvisionlifestyle, @york_vision and my personal account, @jas_natalie_m. I decided to use three accounts to maximise the responses from you lot. I’ll be using both the poll sticker and the sliding Instagram sticker so I can include a range of choices because, I think, that’s a tad more interesting for you and myself. You were given the opportunity to decide on the following:
- When I should get up from bed
- Tea or coffee and if it should be…
- … hot or iced
- How I should move my body- or not
- What I should wear
- How long I should study for
- What I should eat for lunch
- What I should do for ‘fun’
- My bedtime
What could go wrong?
Here’s how you, our followers and readers, controlled a day in my life:
Waking up
I set a range between 6am to 12pm. On average, you decided I should wake up at 8:30am. To be honest, this was a decent time and fairly reasonable. I was slightly groggy when waking up but I don’t remember the last time I felt truly refreshed after waking up.
Tea v coffee
This was a very close call and there was only a difference of one vote between the options! With just one vote ahead, coffee was chosen as my morning beverage! I used to be a tea person, herbal tea person, and I do drink it quite often. However, as I have progressed in university, I have grown accustomed to coffee and it’s become part of my routine.
Hot v iced
With another slim majority, you decided that my coffee should be iced. Normally, I drink my coffee hot but my day was in your hands. Nevertheless, I made a tray of coffee ice cubes ready for me on Wednesday morning. It was a refreshing change and I will be drinking more iced coffee in the near future. I think I made it correctly… ?
Exercise?
The majority of you voted that I should take a walk in the sun. As much as I like the sun, I don’t seem to go outside that much at home if I am by myself. This was a lovely experience though and certainly gave me another layer of appreciation for the warm weather we’ve been experiencing recently. The weather looks to be worsening next week so thanks for sending me outside!
Clothes?
For a while, the winner seemed to be the sundress option. However, jeans and a ‘nice top’ took over by quite a big margin! The only issue was the weather, which I deemed too warm for jeans. I opened a bonus poll, asking if denim shorts counted as jeans! At the time, the ‘yes’ option was dominating so I chose to wear denim shorts. As I am writing this, half of you have chosen the ‘no’ option. I’m afraid it’s a little too late to change… I stuck to the denim option though!
Studying
I gave our followers a range between 1 hour and 6 hours. On average, it was decided I would study for 3.5 hours. I was thankful it was not 6 hours (although for those who voted for that option, I will just assume you voted for that to motivate me) but relieved that it was over 2. This dissertation process seems to be never-ending. In that time I read, annotated and analysed one of the pieces of literature I will be using in my dissertation. The time studying was split into different chunks, with my breaks being lunch and my walk in the sun. To be honest, I could have studied more and I think that was down to the walk outside. I will be doing that more often in the future.
Lunch
From the four options, picky bits was my chosen lunch. It was certainly weather-appropriate and I enjoyed having a variety of different foods. The other options were salad, soup and bread. Some people chose ‘C O F F E E’, which was a bit of a chaotic option, especially since I had quite a large one in the morning.
Fun
Baking was what our followers chose for me to do! In close second was a Netflix binge, followed by scrolling on my phone. To be honest, I do the third option a bit too much so it was probably for the best that it wasn’t the number one choice for our followers. There was a mini-disaster but I was in a good enough mood to find it comical.
Bedtime
I offered a range from 9pm to 12pm. On average, our followers set my bedtime to 11pm. Again, pretty reasonable. I was quite tired from my earlier-than-usual start and decently productive day.
Conclusion
Wednesday was certainly one of the most fulfilling days I’ve had so far in the holidays. I was slightly concerned that our Instagram followers would try to make today a bit too intense, but I was pleasantly surprised with what was in store for me that day.
If you’d like to see how it went on Instagram, check out the Lifestyle Instagram account. The stories are in the highlights section, under ‘Interactive’.
Thank you for taking part in this article and thank you for such a pleasant day!