Our 4:30 A.M. MORNING ROUTINE (our quarantine story)

It's usually pitch dark when we start running, but.

Everything takes a little longer when you're filming.

I used to think people who did this were totally nuts. I mean, it's still totally nuts to me, but running through this apartment complex with everyone sleeping, it's a good feeling.

We're Karen Vait.

Wow.

And for the last four years we've lived our life on the road, pursuing our goal of visiting 100 countries. Like most of you, the coronavirus has completely flipped our lives upside down.

Who knows how long it's gonna be before we can do this again.

In mid March, when the Pand took the world by storm, we found ourselves barely making it out of the Philippines before the capital city went into lockdown.

It is seriously a miracle.

From there we made the short flight to Singapore where we had planned to stay indefinitely. After three weeks in self quarantine, our visa extension was denied and the US sent an email recommending that we return to the US as soon as possible. With few options left, we boarded a couple very empty flights and made our way back to our hometown of Nashville, Tennessee.

Before we get started, we wanted to say a big thank you to surfshark for continuing to support us through what is admittedly a challenging time to be a travel creator. When we're on the road, we are always using a VPN to keep our online information safe. It encrypts all the information sent between our computer and the Internet so that no one can steal our sensitive information. Especially when we're using public WI fi in places like airports and hotels. But even if you aren't out using public WI fi like most of us right now, a VPN can still be a useful tool to help you access more content, especially content that isn't available in your area. All you have to do is change your location and you get access to completely new content libraries so that you never run out of new stuff to watch. If you don't already have a vpn, you probably need one. It's like a really cheap insurance policy with some fun benefits. We recommend surfshark because they're the only VPN that lets you have one account for unlimited devices. Plus you can still use our code Karen nate to get 85% off plus three extra months for free. And there's no risk to try it out because you have a 30 day money back guarantee. To get started, just click the link in the description below.

Now let's talk about quarantine. Whenever we arrived back in Nashville, we wanted to be really careful not to interact with Anyone? So one of our really good friends dropped off his truck at the airport and we rented an Airbnb in the middle of the woods.

We.

So we are completely isolated. And this is where we have been for the last seven weeks, which is longer than we have been anywhere in the last four and a half years. It has been a huge change for us, but we can't complain too much. We have such an awesome place to be quarantined. This log cabin is one of the few Airbnbs in our hometown and we got a great monthly rate since not many people are traveling right now. Now, let me give you a quick tour of where we've been living. This is our living room. And over here is this big, beautiful kitchen. I've been cooking so many fun things because I usually don't have time to when we're traveling. So this has been really fun. And over here, this is our kitchen table, work table, makeshift studio. Spend a lot of time here, as you can tell. And these three rooms alone are bigger than majority of places that we have stayed in the last four years. But there's more. This is the office, which we have attempted to turn into a studio. And this house is so big that I don't think this room really has a purpose. It's kind of like a bonus room. Playroom, games, Nintendo 64, bathroom, laundry room, which is great. And upstairs.

This is bedroom number one that we don't use, and bedroom number two that we don't use. Bedroom number three. Bedroom number four, bathroom in here. And finally, bedroom number five, the master bedroom where we've been sleeping. You can tell that we really miss travel because we're still living out of our suitcases.

Actually, most of my stuff is just all over the floor. I've really made myself at home here. It's fun.

We realized about a week after we had been here that this is the first time in our marriage that we've ever had our own house. So we've been taking full advantage of it, playing our music as loud as we want to.

Exercising inside without bothering people below us. I don't know why this is a positive.

It's felt really freeing and it's been really nice to have our own place. But at the same time, after barely stepping off this property for the last seven weeks, it feels like we've been here forever. All of the days are starting to blend together in my head and I'm wondering where the last seven weeks of our life went. Surely we can't be the only people who are feeling this way.

We have been on a roller coaster of emotions since moving into this house. At the beginning of all this, the thought of getting to stay in one place indefinitely honestly sounded kind of nice. We were very excited about this. After hitting our 100 country goal back in December, we had planned to take some time off to rest, but but instead we planned a party for 750 people in Nashville, wow. Created a documentary and then set off to visit our seventh continent.

So when COVID 19 forced us to slow down, we tried to look at the bright side and be grateful for the opportunity to rest and relax and work on personal things that have been pushed to the back burner over the last few years as we've been on the road. And for the first month that's exactly what we did. I did my best to turn off Hustle mode and we rested and our daily routine looked something like this.

We'd start waking up around 8am.

Then we'd spend the next hour or two scrolling through social media, seeing what everyone's doing with their quarantine and catching up on the latest coronavirus news. Not necessarily a healthy way to start the day. We'd wander downstairs and start working around nine. We'd work for a few hours in the morning. Then we'd take full advantage of our giant kitchen cooking a delicious lunch.

Which.

Would typically lead to a two hour lunch break.

Need to make another grocery order? We've been trying to use this time at home to eat healthy, which means.

Mostly plants. And this is all the vegetables that we had left in the fridge stuffed into a tortilla with a little hummus. Mmm. Thank Mexican thoughts.

And then we'd go down the YouTube rabbit hole while we ate and probably linger there a little too long.

Then we'd spend a few more hours working. Or not working. It was more like me sitting behind the computer googling random stuff and trying to figure out what we were gonna do with our lives now that we couldn't travel. We'd usually stop working around 4 or 5 and maybe do a little workout or maybe just have an early glass of wine.

Then it was time to head back to the kitchen to cook yet another big delicious meal. I am not the fastest chef.

Try number two.

Especially when I'm trying out new fun recipes. I feel like I work at Blue Coast Burrito, so this would take a little while. After dinner, we rotated between zooming with friends and family bonfires or watching Netflix for hours on end. Actually, no matter what we did, we ended the day with watching Netflix for hours on End.

Can't see.

Thank you.

It hurts me to admit this, but in our first month at home we consumed more Netflix than the last four years combined.

That is 100% not an exaggeration. At some point, this whole giving ourselves an excuse to rest thing just turned into pure laziness and we found ourselves in a major quarantine funk.

So when we saw that one of our friends had challenged himself to wake up at 4:30am every day in May.

To beat the couch luffing laptop using potato out of my body, we're gonna see if we can make some life improvements by doing what we hate.

We decided that that was the drastic change we needed to add some self discipline back into our lives.

I like to challenge myself with extreme things like this every once in a while. Like taking 30 days of cold showers or just stopping drinking coffee for a month just to prove to myself that I can live without caffeine. I think I revert to these things when I need a hard reset. And normally care is fine with me doing these things on my own. I think we both got to the point where we were equally desperate to break out of this quarantine funk. So she joined me for this one.

So since the beginning of the month, our new daily routine looks like this.

My alarm goes off at 4:30am I typically snooze several times before getting out of bed, but this month I made a deal with myself that no matter what, I would get up on my first alarm.

So by 4:31, I'm rolling over to make sure Kara's awake.

And then I get out of bed and put my clothes on that I strategically laid out the night before.

Still hasn't gotten any easier to wake up at 4:30.

A couple minutes later, I finally get up.

I brush my teeth, put on my shoes, then we mope down the stairs.

We grab our headphones, wallet and keys and get in the truck.

We usually ride in silence because neither one of us are morning people and we drive five minutes to the nearest school.

It's usually pitch dark when we start running, but.

Everything takes so long when you're filming.

And this is where we start our three mile run.

Good morning.

It is day 18 of doing this. Not gonna lie, I thought it'd be a little easier by now. Just to make it clear, I have never, ever, ever been a morning person or a runner. So this has been a huge challenge for me. Me getting up before coffee and running.

It's crazy.

Done.

This feeling is indescribable. I wake up every morning and try to come up with an excuse of why I don't want to get up and I definitely don't want to run. But then as soon as I'm done and the sun is rising and it's not even 6:00 o'clock yet, I feel so accomplished. I wish I could just bottle up this feeling and open it up at 4:30 in the morning while's going off. It's a great way to start the.

The best thing about waking up this early is that I read two and a half books this month, which is probably how many books I read every year.

Once we get back, we usually make a juice or smoothie, take a shower, and then we're downstairs with a cup of coffee behind our computers by 7am thank you.

Besides a quick lunch, that's pretty much where we sit the rest of the day. Working. If you're wondering what work means, I'm still editing our vlogs and I've been working on updating my editing course.

I've been spending a lot of time with our company, Fair Drop, and just trying to figure out what we're going to do with our lives as travel vloggers during a pandemic. And usually by the time we cook dinner, wash the dishes, and I lay out my clothes for the next morning, it's time to go to sleep and do it all over again.

I don't lay out my clothes because I just sleep in the mall. Just one less thing to do in the mornings. I need all the help I can get.

You have to go to bed early to get up at 4:30.

We aim for about nine.

Normally it's a little late.

All right, we are three and a half weeks into this early morning routine and although we've both been doing doing the exact same thing every morning, we've been on two separate personal journeys.

For me, it has taught me that I am capable of so much more than I thought I was before this whole thing started. I only run three miles once in my life and here I was committing to running three miles every single day for a month. And not only that, doing it at 4:30 in the morning before my precious morning coffee. I was always the person that was like, there's no way I could do that. I can't run. I can't get up early. It's so not me. The first night that we had our Alarm set for 4:30, I was so nervous that I couldn't sleep. Like I didn't know what my body was gonna do at 4:30. Running like was I gonna be able to function. Then that first day I did it and then I did it again, and then I did it again.

And then you did it in the cold and then you did it in the rain.

And it was so surprising. And so it's just been such an empowering experience for me and I was not expecting that.

For me it's been more about self discipline. I don't like waking up at 4:30 every morning, but I knew I could do it. And I've also ran three miles plenty of times in my life. It was just about making myself start the day with something uncomfortable for an entire month. And I was also hoping that it was gonna make me more productive. And I wish I could say that this was the most productive, life changing month that I've ever had, but that's just not the truth. I think we've just had this cloud of uncertainty kind of hanging over our head because for the last four years we've had this goal of visiting 100 countries. And although our path to get there may have looks something like this, that was always kind of like our guiding star pointing us in the right direction. And now that we've been forced to sit still, we have time to really think about what's next after achieving our hundred country goal. In some ways that's a blessing and in other ways that's a curse. It's a blessing because I think you do have to take time in your life to think about what you seriously want. Because if you just go with the flow and you take the path of least resistance, that's a really, really good way to live an unfulfilled life. But at the same time, it can be mentally draining trying to figure out what you're going to do and it can paralyze you. Throw a pandemic and quarantine on top of that and you have a recipe for confusion, stress and mental battles. Which is exactly what I've been experiencing every day after I finish my run.

It has been overwhelming at times, but there's light at the end of the tunnel because we finally know what's next, which is exciting for so many reasons. If there's anything we've learned about ourselves in quarantine, it's that we like to have a goal. We like to have that thing that we're striving towards and we figured it.

Out and we should be ready to share it with you in next week's video. But if you want a sneak peek, we're gonna try out that text thing that you may have seen other people doing so. You can send us a text to our number, which we'll put on the screen and in the description below. If you send us a text this week, at some point later this week before the video comes out, we'll text you back and you'll know what's happening before anybody else.

It'll be a big fat hint.

We'll make it worth your time.

Or you can just wait for the next vlog. But the text is a lot easier. The vlog we have to make into this big pretty thing and uploaded.

And the text would just save that part to the end because we figure only the people that really care stick.

Around to listen to us talk for this long.

Yeah. Yeah. If you made it this far. Thank you.

It's not a light. There's light at the end of the tunnel. It's not a specific light.

Okay.

You know, like when you're in a cave and you. It is the sun. It is one specific one, I guess, but that's not the saying.

Definitely been overwhelming at times. I can't stop smiling. It has definitely been overwhelming at times.

It doesn't sound overwhelming.

Okay. But it was. I got to take myself back to that time.

Go.

I know how you know, cuz I.

Heard it winding up.

But there is light at the end of the tunnel. We have some ideas.

You were laughing.

I wasn't laughing. No, I wasn't.

I could feel your laughing.

I was not. No, I wasn't.

Right at the end of the tunnel. We have some ideas. That one was definitely been overwhelming at times. I can't think. We have to think of something else.

I can't look at you.

We have to say something.

No, you can do it. I just can't look at you and just.

You can't. Don't look at me.

I can't even remember what I'm supposed to say after that. I made the coffee this morning. I'm a new me. And over here.

Does that look cool?

And. Ow. Can't see.

Thank you.

Feel seductive.

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