Well I’m keeping at running and I am proud to say I have no injuries!! Buckle in for my longish diary of a post…
Yesterday I ran 4 miles. Getting ready for my 10K! And when I say I ran…usually I walked a little in there. I ran most of the first 3 miles at an 11min/mile pace, then I had to walk. This run consisted of a mile run up AND down a huge hill (felt really good) and then around the park. When I got to the sprinting point around the park I really sprinted. I usually imagine someone jumping out of the woods at this one point in my run so I really book it. I don’t think it is a dangerous place to run…but something about knowing I could run away if someone popped out of the trees makes me run faster and harder. Weird right?
On this particular run I was contemplating life. Maybe that’s why the run up the hill wasn’t so hard.
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I was thinking about my schooling and how it seems to be taking For.E.Ver. I am still at a community college and I was going to be transferring to the university in my city for Exercise Science, but I wanted something with nutrition as well. So I decided to transfer to the sister school in a nearby city (about an hour commute time) for Nutrition, Exercise and Health Sciences. Super excited…but I still have TWO AND A HALF YEARS TO GO ONCE I TRANSFER THERE IN THE SPRING. Sorry for yelling, but I have already been at this community college for 3 years! Sometimes school seems a little rediculous. You would think that there wouldn’t be much of a difference between the sister colleges AND the very similar degrees, but it turns out there is a difference. And I just remembered that I have to take Anatomy again AND we have to work with a human corpse..eek! because this particular university does not accept my community college Anatomy and Physiology course…only the Physiology portion. Urgh!
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(I wish my community college was as awesome as the NBC version…)
This lovely community college I have been attending (okay it’s not that bad, but I am bitter at being there so long) sent me a letter informing me that my Chemistry class has been canceled. Grr I need that course! There are two options for the Chemistry class: take the course between 2 quarters or extend it over 3 to make it easier. I was going gutsy and going for the accelerated class to GET IT DONE but now I could only fit the extended version into my schedule. Really?
I decided on my run that the positive take-away would be that this quarter will be easier than I thought so maybe I can use my free time to work on my blog and/or pick up more shifts at the wing-joint. Woot!
Another thing I have been thinking about all last week has been my blogging voice. (I also happened to stumble upon a fellow blogger’s post from a year ago about this subject Savy Eat’s “Finding Your Blog Voice”).
It’s been challenging since I started blogging because I did not realize how many healthy blogs were out there! There are so many many talented bloggers with their own voice and ideals and their own amazing photo-taking abilities that it gets very intimidating. What makes me special in all of this competition?
I have begun to think that I am not blogging the right way or I should only be sharing healthy recipes or always figuring out the calorie content that it started driving me bonkers. Then there was the aspect that I could make money doing this by selling ads and networking…who knew? Not I! I got a contract to work with a food advertising agency, but there are restrictions on it…such as I have to have 8 out of 10 posts be about food. That stresses me out! I would have to count all of my posts and make sure I’m not violating my contract. I suppose I could be better about planning, so this is possible, but I’m still not sure about doing that.
So I realized I need to get back to my basics and answer this one question…why do I blog??
Here’s what I came up with:
- I want to share my tips and tricks of living a balanced and healthy life. No extreme dieting or focusing on one particular aspect of a healthy life…just working for balance. (Which is a life-long deal.)
- I like having a creative outlet and a sort-of diary where I can share my thoughts and feelings.
- I want to help people who think that living healthy is hard. It is so not hard. It is just a lifestyle and everyone has to find their own balance. If I help just one person I will be happy!
- I also want to be able to use the talents God has given me and I believe this sort of thing is what I was made to do. Sounds way to0 corny, but I have to believe that He created me for something.
- I actually like taking pictures of my food. I used to scrapbook all the time and it feels a little like that. Making it look pretty and even using some of my scrapbooking paper. I really need to get a new camera, but for now I am making due with the free one that I got with points on my credit card. 🙂 I am very proud of the pictures on these posts:
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| Easy Reesey Cupcakes |
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| Superb Biscottis |
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| Snack Time |
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| Cookie-ina-Cookie |
There is also the issue of what kind of money/time I want to be putting into this blog. While I love doing it…it is hard to justify spending hours every day working on blog posts and blog surfing and twittering and facebooking…
Questions I am asking myself:
- Do I want to switch to the dot.com name instead of having the dot.blogspot?
- Do I want to pay a web developer to help me with the ins and outs of blogs that I simply do not understand?
- Do I change my blogspot to a wordpress…which has more room for growth?
- Do I spend money on a twitter system that I can load 20 “tweets” into so they will send out at different times during the day for the sake of marketing/networking?
- And seriously, how much time is too much time to be spent blogging? It is so ironic that I am a healthy living blogger, yet I sit on my butt for hours doing blog things!
And speaking of which…I need to get up because I still need to unpack and do laundry from my Chicago trip!
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| Chi Town! Chicago Family Reunion Post |
Fun time with family but there always seems to be so much to do when I get back from a vacation!
Also, stay tuned for the second part of my mom’s “Weighty Woes” post. Read part one here. She is on a journey to losing 50 pounds the healthy way and I am so excited to get to help her! Plus the second part of the post she is bragging about me so gotta love that! 😉
What about you? Any weight-loss goals?
Do you contemplate life on your runs? If so, what do you think about?
I really am interested in my readers! 🙂
~Amanda @ Semi-Health Nut~
I have been asking myself a lot of the same questions about blogging lately. Most of my questioning is really determining what my “voice” is within my blog. It seems like you are at least really aware of what that is, which is great!
I also do a lot of my thinking on long runs. I hope it all works out for you!
@experiencelifewithme: It’s funny because before I started running, my mom told me she ran 5 miles every day in highschool and it helped her to think and I thought she was crazy because the only way I could run was with my ipod…but I love it now!