A Weekend of Little Joys

This weekend was full of the softest self‑care moments, the kind that remind you you’re held, loved, and allowed to breathe. From a dreamy date‑night experience with live music and candlelight, to an unexpected Zumba class that lifted my whole spirit, to lounging by the pool like the sun was personally checking in on me.

South Carolina basketball had me locked in, so I’m giving you my March Madness predictions and sharing CBA updates because we officially have a season. I spent time with Taylor, soaked up church, and closed the weekend with some much‑needed relaxation with Fay.

And because I’m taking a break from social media, this episode feels even more like a heart‑to‑heart,  just me sharing life as it’s happening, without the noise.

Church… whew. The message was all about grace — the grace of God — and I’m sitting in so much gratitude for His love. I’m thankful for this weekend, for the softness, for the reminders, and for the grace that carries me.

This Is Where I Landed with Shayla
I’m in my bold, soft, God‑led becoming era — and I hope this episode reminded you that you’re allowed to take up space too. Step into your power, step into your softness, and choose the version of you that feels aligned, peaceful, and undeniable.

I want to hear from you, email me landedpod@gmail.com

Let’s connect on IG, TikTok and FB: @landedpod

Remember, you are that guy, you are that girl, you are whomever you choose to be. Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Hello, hello. This is where I landed with Shaylin. I'm so happy to have you here. If this is your first time landing with me, well, hello, hi, welcome. And if you are a return lander and have been rocking with your girl for a hot little minute, as always, hello babe. It has been a weekend, honey. It's been a weekend. Friday night. I went on a very nice date um to the candlelight concert, and they have this concert in over 180 cities, and Vegas just so happens to be one of them. And I went to the Neil Soul concert, and it is uh a strings performance, so there were violins, viola, and I forget what the other I think there were two of each. Um, but either way, such a beautiful experience. It was held at the industrial uh venue here in Vegas, and if you've ever seen it on Instagram, you can go and look them up. The candlelight concert, absolutely beautiful, with all of the candles lit all over the venue, and it is just-I mean, it's it's stunning. The Neo Soul uh set list was perfect, it was a fun little vibe. They have different uh concert set lists, so they have a 90s hip hop one that's coming up sometime in May, I believe. They have a Bridger Tin one, Neo Soul classical, so there's options for everybody, which makes it really cool. They started out the evening with Sizza, um, like what fire. Uh, they had some uh Frank Ocean, Childish Gamb, excuse me, Childish Gambino, uh Sade, Lauren Hill, absolutely beautiful. Like what an experience. Um, and so yeah, that is how I started off my weekend. Saturday, I slept in a little bit. I got up, I went in, uh, took a little walk to the little coffee truck by my house that I think I told you guys about. They have this really good coconut cloud espresso, and I love coconut, and the drink is perfect for me. It's very coconut y. Uh, they make it with coconut water, uh, some heavy cream, coconut syrup, um, and then they put the espresso in the cloud, which is like the foam top. 10 out of 10. Came back, uh, relaxed on the balcony a little bit, and then I was like, okay, I need a mop. Friday, when I was supposed to be getting ready, okay, I decided to clean, but that was good because on Saturday I did not have to do any cleaning because the house was already cleaned, even though, again, I should have been getting ready, but I ended up still getting ready. I was late, I needed like an extra 10-15 minutes, so yeah, I'm trying to do better with that because I am not typically on time. Uh, because yeah, I know what I'm supposed to be doing, but then I do other things instead. So, or what it mostly is, is I don't do a good job at planning. Um, or I will come up with a plan, but I don't stick to the plan, and then the time goes and I'm just like, oh well, I can just lounge for another 20 minutes, or I can like I don't know. You guys know how it is, everybody has their thing, so yeah. Um, so that's mine. I'm not on time. Oops, but again, I'm working on it, okay? Every day I'm making progress to create the life I want to live for myself, and being timely is a part of that. So, work in progress, all you can do every day is put your best foot forward, okay? So, anywho, woke up Saturday, got coffee, hung out on the balcony, relaxed, um, and then I mopped. And as I was sitting on the couch listening to music, I had a DJ set on. I was just vibing, and um, I had just decided randomly, I was like, let me see if the gym has any classes that I could take. Because I just felt like obviously I had a lot of injury because that espresso clay out. I think it's gonna do what it needed to do. And so, yeah, I looked and it was literally 1110. When I looked, they had an 11:15 Zumba class, and the gym was like a five-minute walk for me, but I was not dressed, so I literally hopped up, got dressed, selected that I was gonna go to the class, made my way over to the Zumba. I was like four minutes late. I walk up, it's packed. Packed. I found this little slither of a corner in the back of the class, and I had the time of my life at Zumba. I thoroughly enjoyed that class so much. There were a lot of older people, which is something that I do like about Zumba because it is a lot of older people. Um, I would say anywhere between 40 and 70, maybe. Um, and again, the class was packed. There was over 20 people in that class, maybe even more than that, 25 maybe. The instructor was perfect, he was high energy, good vibes, super cute. His hair was dyed like platinum blonde. He had these cute little purple uh butterflies up and down his arm. He just was like, he's super cute, Hispanic, and he just took us through such a fun class every time. Like, he just did like this cute little thing where he would just like kind of like bite on his finger, you know, like the vibe of that. And yeah, the older people were in the class doing their one-two step, and it just made me feel really good. I have a soft spot for older people. I grew up with my nana, she raised me, and so I was always around her and her friends, and being around the older people in the class was just so heartwarming, and literally everybody was just smiling and just happy, and it was just such good vibes for Saturday morning. After that, I went to the pool. Um, I was just like on my way back, and I was like, Well, I guess I can just stop. So I ended up stopping. I obviously was not dressed for the pool, but I ended up just putting my feet in the water, and the water felt really good. And then after that, I just kind of hung out on the hammock area in the pool and just relaxed, and it was really comfortable and just a good Saturday to just be and have a moment to myself, but then also to just have a self-care moment to go to the gym as something that I haven't done in a really long time, and I'm happy that I did because I had such a great time, and I will definitely be back next Saturday because uh, yeah, of course I made friends because hello, I'm nice, and people can gravitate toward the energy, and the little old ladies in the back, I hate to call them little old ladies, but I mean they're like little old ladies. The little old ladies in the back of the class with me, they love my nails. My nails are like this bright orange color with cat eye, so they're you know, they they meet the eye. Um, and then toward like the it was still the beginning of the class, the super cute little old black guy came in. Oh my gosh, adorable. I was obsessed with all of them, and if I could just make friends with all the people in my Zumba, I will be a happy girl, okay, because again, they're all like 40 to 70 years old, and there was this one lady, she could not stop moving, but she you could also tell like she was very much in shape, and she was also just doing she was doing the dances, but she was more so doing them as like a workout, and that was also the fun thing about Zumba is that there were actually people like dancing, and so it made me feel comfortable to dance because y'all know your girl loves a DJ set, so anytime that I get the chance to move my body and dance, I'm going to take it, and that's why I love Zumba. I have taken Zumba before in the past, but I haven't taken a class at the gym in a hot little minute, and really I was looking forward to like a body pump class, which really I say I was looking forward to, but was I really no? Because like, why would I want to go lift weights when I could go and dance at the Zumba class? Okay, so yeah, anywho, went to the Zumba, went um, yeah, hung out at the pool for like two hours. Oh, yes, and then South Carolina played, and that was a really, really great game. Who do we play? Hmm. I can't remember, but we won, and that's all that matters. So now we are in the midst of pushing through March Madness. If you don't know and you live under a rock, it is currently March Madness. Men's and women's basketball teams are trying to compete for a championship right now. We are down to the Elite Eight, then the final four, then it's really it's like playoff time. I believe my fingers are crossed that we will have a showdown between Yukon and South Carolina. If South Carolina doesn't make it to the championship, keep me in your thoughts and prayers because will I be mentally well? No, but they will make it. Um, and yeah, I think it'll be us versus Yukon. I love Yukon also. Uh, I love AZ FUD, I love Gino Oriema, I love the whole Yukon women's basketball, all of it. I am from the East Coast, so I'm very familiar with Yukon, obviously being in Connecticut, but there's just it's Dawn Staley for me. Dawn's gonna do it for me every time. Louis Vuitton Dawn, okay. I love her. She's from North Philly, and uh Dawn is just that girl, you know. She's also shorter, she's on the shorter side. She was in the WNBA, and she was hooping. And we love the hoopers, okay. We love the W. And we also love a short queen, okay. I am five, two and a half, and the half matters, okay. So thank you very much. And yeah, it's just something about Dawn that I just love. I love her integrity, I love her uh just admiration for the girls on our team and just black women in general, and just always like pushing pushing them forward. I love that, and so yeah, Dawn can do no wrong in my eyes. So I'm really excited for us to just continue. We play TCU sometime this week. I don't know exactly when this week we play them, but that'll be our next matchup, and I'm pretty sure we'll beat TCU. I can't see TCU beating us, but there have been upsets because LSU definitely lost to Duke, and that was a crazy game because I just knew that LSU was gonna win, and it made me really sad because I do love Fla J. And now her uh collegiate uh career is over, but she will most definitely be coming into the draft for the WNBA, and I'm excited about that. Also, CBA update because the last time that I talked to you beautiful people on the opposite side of the audio, we didn't know if we were gonna have a WNBA season or not, but I'm here to bring you the great news, okay, that there will be a season, and I am okay now, okay, because I was really struggling and I was stressed a little bit because I didn't know if there was gonna be a season or not, because obviously they were not trying to play pay the girlies what the girlies deserve, but they stuck it out. Obviously, I think having the strike on the table really put a lot of things into perspective for the WNBA like um leadership team in front office because uh you can make all of this money and have all this revenue to share that you don't want to share, but will any of that matter if you cannot produce games and have your star players on the court? Uh no. So it took some time, but I mean the increases in salary, the increases in everything, even when it comes down to playoff uh payouts and championship payouts, it's actually insane how little these women were getting paid before, and now where they'll be it's it's nuts actually. So I'm excited about that. I'm excited for the WNBA season to start. The first game is on May 9th. Um, and yeah, I need to be there because of course the Aces won last season, and so they will be receiving their rings, and I would love to be at the ring ceremony, so I actually need to look and see um into getting my ticket. I was trying to wait for them to sign the CBA, which they have. Um, and so yeah, I'm looking up for you guys because I know I talk so much about the CBA. I want to be able to give you a little bit of info. Um, so when we just talk about salaries, which is also insane for the 2026, the minimum will be actually no, I want to read what they used to be and what they are now because they used to be it's kind of crazy. And the fact that these women were literally I mean, putting their bodies on the line, being away from their family, their kids, some of them for the amount of money that they were getting paid was actually disgusting, to be honest. Um, but clearly they love the game, and I appreciate the fact that they love the game because it's kind of insane. It's women obviously are paid less than what they should be across the board. I know even with my position, I should be getting paid way more than I do. Um, and there's a lot of times, right, where the male counterpart will be making more than the woman just solely off the fact that they are men. And we know that you know, we know that just across the board. Yes, people can say that the WNBA and the NBA, like there's no comparison. The NBA has been around longer and blah blah blah blah. And all of those things may be true, but at the same time, pay them what they are owed, and so now they are getting all of those things that they deserve that they should have already had, and so yeah, I'm trying to find the info to share because you need to know these things, and I'm here to keep you up to date because you care about what I care about, so we love that. Um, but yeah, well, I looked that up, I watched South Carolina, that was really fun, and then I was like, the game was over. I'm three beers in at this point, okay. Now I'm telling you the nitty-gritty. I'm three beers in, and I'm like, you know what? Let's go skating. So, what do I do? Put my skates on, okay. Now here I am, three beers in, mind you, skating around my complex. Was this wise? No, and at some point in my skating, which I was having a good time, I was listening to music, I was vibing, but then it hit me, Shayla. If you fall and scrape your face up, and literally, I didn't even need no additional thoughts. That was all I needed to think, and after that, I literally sat my little booty down, took my skates on, put my slides back on, and took myself back upstairs. Because what the heck that could have been detrimental, and I love my face, I'm very thankful for it, and I just could not imagine if I would have fell, and I was a little, you know, I was a little shaky. I'm not gonna lie to you. It was not it was not my best skating work, but I had fun and it was over, and my face is fine, and so yeah, here we are today. Then after that, I went uh and hung out with Taylor, and that was really fun. We went to Ulta, and like me and Tay said, you can go back and listen to a friend's IV featuring Tay, where we literally talked about us going shopping together is not ideal, okay, because we are similar, but we're also different, and because we're different, we're like, Oh, look at this! I think that you'll like this, or you know, like we're like giving each other suggestions and ideas. We went to Alta together, and Taylor was looking for some um some primer and some other things, and so we had somebody help us out, and it was fun because it really put me back into my makeup artist bag. And you can go back and listen to Allow Me to Reintroduce Myself, where I shared with you guys that I uh used to freelance, I was a freelance makeup artist for a hot little minute, and it was just fun to talk about um makeup and product, and a lot of what I was saying. The uh Ulta Beauty lady, I don't know what they're called, but the lady agreed with me. We were saying the same things at the same time. I'm like, Yes, Shayla, you still got it, babe. You still got it, but you never lose it, you just don't use it. But uh yeah, so that was fun. We went to Ulta, I ended up getting the same primer as Taylor because that primer was too good. It was a milk, uh, milk primer. If you care, I don't know. Um, so yeah, we did that. Then we walked down over to Nordstrom Rack. Love a good Nordstrom Rack, honey. Um, and yeah, I styled Taylor. I picked out some dresses for her to um see if she liked them for her bridal power bridal party. She's going back home. Her mom's throwing her a party back in Sugar Grove, and yeah, my girl needed a dress, so I picked up some options because it's always good to get yourself outside of your comfort zone, and so yeah, we picked some options. She did like them, um, but she's still gonna, you know, continue to look, which we love options, and you should you should keep looking until you find exactly what you want, but it's also good to get outside of your comfort zone, and so I really enjoyed that. Um, and that was fun for me too because yeah, I haven't done that in a long time. I used to be a personal shopper when I worked at Ann Taylor. Shout out to Ann Taylor. Uh, back in the day, I worked at their flagship store, and I was a merchandiser as well as a personal shopper, and that was really fun. So hanging out with Tay definitely gave me all the feels and it reminded me of all the cool things that I've done before that I don't do anymore that I should that I should start doing again. So hmm, we shall see. I can't find the before and after of the deal, which is annoying, and I'm not on Instagram to like go quickly look it up somewhere because breaks matter. I'd be telling y'all the amount that you consume really matters, and I was like, Yeah, I need a nice little break, so we'll see when I go back on. But shout out to Taylor because I don't need to go on. The only reason why I would go on is for the pod, and I don't need to do that, so I think I'll take a nice little break. Um, so really quick, let me just share with you guys new revenue sharing system expected to deliver more than one billion dollars in players' salaries and benefits over the lifetime agreement. I think one thing that's cool about this CBA is not only are they increasing the pay for the women, um, but they also are doing a one-time payout to basically vets in the league that are no longer in the league. So I think that's beautiful to be able to give those women some type of reimbursement because they really got the shit out of the stick when you think about it. There was no revenue share, they weren't making what they should have made even back then when the league first started. And so for the players now to feel that it was important to be able to give back to them in that way because they helped, you know, pave the way, um, was really really cool. So I'm excited about that. Also, now um the salary crap, the salary crap, lord, the salary crap uh is increasing nearly by five times. So it's set at seven million dollars for 2026 and it's up from 1.5 million dollars. Can you believe that? The salary cap for the WNBA was 1.5 million dollars. The cap you can't go any further than the cap. So now it's seven million dollars. Much better, could be higher, but hey, we'll take we can't be greedy, okay? Because what the heck? They didn't even want to give seven million. Um, it says the historic salary growth across all contract levels, year one maximum to rise to 1.4 million dollars, average salaries expected to be uh 583,000, the minimum salary ranging up to 300,000, which is great because right now, if I'm not mistaken, Paige Becker's and Angel Reese came into the league at like 70k. That's nuts. Like these girls were making way more than that with NIL in college. So the league's top players will gain the ability to sign the first multi-million dollar contracts in WNBA history. Maximum contract players will earn a salary of$1.4 million in 2026. That is expected to grow to more than$2.4 million by 2032. So that's great. The league's average salary is expected to be uh$58. 583,000 in 2026 and increased to over 1 million uh by 2032. Minimum salaries will range from 270,000 to 300,000, which is great. Um, and the agreement also establishes a new rookie contract scale that significantly increases salaries for the top draft picks, including the number one overall in 2026, to projectedly earn$500,000. I really wish that I could have found the before and after, but trust me, the before was low, and the after is in a like a much better place because yeah, I I can't believe actually that it's not able to like come up so easily, but just no, it wasn't good, and now they're in a much better pay uh place getting exactly what they deserve and what they're old. So we love that for them. Um, and yeah, yeah. After that, we went back to Taylor's house. Terry made us steak. Oh my god, it was so good. We had steak, potatoes, and uh roasted vegetables, and it was just so so so good. Then I came home, relaxed, had a nice evening, and yeah, then got up like five minutes before I had to leave. Went to church with Faye, and church was great, and it was really just about grace, ultimately, it was about grace and giving yourself grace and receiving grace. And I always talk about grace, pick the phone up, call your friend grace because you will need it, and you will need to bestow it upon yourself, and there will be times where you need to be able to bestow the grace on other people, and it's important to do that because you deserve it. So don't forget that you deserve the grace that you give to other people, you deserve the patience that you give to other people, and you deserve the love that you give to other people. So, yeah, that was my little weekend recap. I wanted to share that with you guys. It was all a lot of just self-care, slow moments. Today was really nice. After church, Fae came over and we just hung out. We watched the Hannah Montana special, we took naps, we woke up, went on the roof, I did some word search. Um, yeah, slow, peaceful, still moments where you can just sit in gratitude and just be thankful for the small things. And I, as always, am thankful for you. So, remember you are that guy, you are that girl, you are whomever you choose to be, and I love you.