The Return

Hello, Internet!  It sure has been quite a long time (almost three years!).  In that time, I've finished grad school and I am currently looking for a job.

When I first started this blog back in two thousand nine, I'm not sure I ever really had a clear vision of what I wanted it to be.  I had a friend who had one and was encouraging me to start one as well.  When I got my own laptop after graduating high school, it seemed like an excellent time to start a blog and use it to write more for myself outside of school assignments.  And that is what I did:  I wrote short posts on and off on whatever I felt like writing about.

In April two thousand fourteen, I tried the A to Z Challenge, where I wrote a new post every day (except Sundays) with each post title beginning with a new letter of the alphabet.  That is perhaps the most consistent I've ever been with blogging.  During this time, I realized that the name of my blog was no longer relevant to where I was in my life.  I was finished with my undergraduate eduction.  If I wanted to continue, changing the name of my blog might better fit any long-term blogging plans.  There is still a name change in the future, and perhaps that will happen before the end of the year.  At any rate, this post is an announcement that I am back to try the whole blogging thing again.  I have several pieces that have been in the works for a while now that will hopefully be published in the near future.

So why now?  It's not because I'm gradumacated, although it certainly helps to no longer be in the middle of writing my dissertation.  It has been a combination of knowing that I need to make a few changes in my life to improve my physical and metal health and being inspired by two YouTube videos I recently watched.

The first is by fitness YouTuber Blogilates.  She reflects on her 90 day fitness and health journey, the changes she made, and the outcomes she noticed along the way.  One of the things that she did was tracking her weight daily and tracking other measurements on a regular basis.  While the frequency is a little much for me, having never consistently used a scale, I am inspired to try doing this on a weekly basis, simply to have a tangible way of marking my progress as I start my weightlifting journey.  While agreeing to a 90 day journey is a bit much for me right now, I am making a 30 day commitment.

And second is Simon and Martina's video where Simon discusses some of the changes he's made in the last year.  As with Cassie from Blogilates, he took a holistic approach to his well being.  One of the things he changed in terms of his physical fitness was to add running into his routine in addition to weightlifting.  I've been considering something like this as well as I plan my workout routine.  I hope to elaborate on what I am doing in another post.

So this return marks the start of my 30 day journey.  To whatever small readership I may have, I will be accountable to you on this journey, sharing a bit of my progress along the way along with other literary adventures.  I will likely not post every single day (in fact, today is really day two since my first gym visit was yesterday), but I will be posting much more often.  To end, here are a few principles I will operate by during this time.

• I will not make all the changes I want to make at once.  That is a good way to become overwhelmed and want to quit before making it very far.


• I will give myself permission to fail.  If I miss a day of doing whatever it is I intended to do, it's O.K.  I can get up tomorrow and try again.


• Even if I don't accomplish all that I want to, I have still gone further than I would have.  Even small amounts of progress should be celebrated and not forgotten.