Sunday Ten

Happy Sunday! SEVEN DAYS until the Aramco Houston Half Marathon! I've been seriously training for this thing since late July, so I am more than ready to see if what I have been working for can come to fruition. I'm also more than ready for this week of all easy runs. Maybe I'll even sneak in another post or two. Probably not, as my school to-do list seems to keep on growing, but you never know.

But first, a survey!

1. How has blogging impacted you and your life?

I have always loved writing. I remember sitting down with my family’s ancient laptop at a very young age and writing stories based on characters from books or television shows that I was currently reading or watching. The one I remember most vividly is a Christmas story featuring the infamous Mary Kate & Ashley Olsen.  Anyway, I’ve always loved writing, and I have a passion for fitness and healthy living that I wanted to share with others. And I really enjoyed reading various healthy living blogs, so I figured the next step was to start my own. And this blog has shifted from its healthy living focus to a blog about my everyday adventures. Some may find that self-centered, but it has forced me to sit down and reflect on each season of my life. And I know I’ll be really grateful for that down the road.

2. What’s the favorite post you’ve written?

That is TOUGH! Not to toot my own horn, but I’ve written some pretty good posts over the years. And I’ve got a good one in the works for my 25^th birthday, but we’re not quite there yet. Anyway, here are a couple of my favorite posts –

• A Look Back on 2016
• Thankful – It’s also really fun to look back on how each of my thankful posts both change as well as stay the same
• A Letter to my Former Coaches
• Lucky Number Three
• Realistic Goals
• Bellaire Diaries
• Vulnerability 

Okay, that was more than a couple. I stopped myself from picking anything posted prior to 2015.

3. How do you find time to juggle it all, blogging, working, having a social life?

Ha, well, I haven’t quite figured it out yet! As you guys have clearly experienced, blogging is the first thing to go when my life gets busy. And I wish that wasn’t the case, but if I’ve got a stack of papers to grade, they’re going to win over sitting down to write a blog post. Same with my Thursday tempo runs. And as little time as I’ve got to hang out with my friends, that will nine times out of ten beat out fitnessandfroyo. I’ve learned that you can’t possibly do it all and maintain your sanity. So when I’ve got time to blog, I blog. And when I've got something to blog about, I blog. I don’t let it stress me out, rather, I hope it’s always something of a stress reliever.

When your desk looks like this, you're not blogging

4. What is something special you do to treat yourself?

A pedicure or a massage. T-one week until I can get that post-half marathon pedicure and my feet are PUMPED.

5. Do you take spontaneous trips or are you more of a planner?

I am such a planner. I may book a flight spur-of-the-moment (read: last Saturday), but it will be for some time in the future. And while I may not plan each day down to the minute – I certainly don’t have a day-by-day itinerary, I do have a list of things that I want to do, and I try and plan it so that I am making the most of my time and doing things that are in the same area on the same day. And as many times as people told me that I could “get a hostel the day of” in Argentina, I definitely didn’t leave that to chance. So, long story short, my type A personality totally makes me a planner.

6. Where was your last trip to?

Argentina – Buenos Aires, Mendoza, Bariloche, and Iguazu Falls. And now that I think about it, I still need to finish up the recaps from those last three cities. Whoops!

7. Where is your dream vacation destination?

This is a pretty tough question, because there are so many places on my to-travel list. I would really love to go to Peru, Greece, Ireland and Scotland, Switzerland, Italy – everywhere! I am going somewhere new in 2017, though, so stay tuned for that!

8. Weirdest fact about you?

I can recite close to every line in She’s the Man. It’s based on Shakespeare’s The Twelfth Night, okay?

(Source)

9. Knowing what you know now, what advice would you give to your 18-year-old self?

Oh man, oh man. Enjoy the time you have living within biking distance of your best friends. It only gets harder to maintain those relationships along with everything else going on – work, marriage, babies (yikes!), and moving to other cities, among other things.

10. Are you a light packer or a I-should-take-everything-just-in-case type of gal?

Oh lord, there’s no question about it. I’m such a “I-should-take-everything-just-in-case” kinda traveler. Which I hate, because inevitably I come home and half of the stuff in my suitcase hasn’t even been touched. Why on earth would I bring heels with me to Buenos Aires? Just in case, she said. And I always think I’m packing light, but then I look around me and realize that I’ve once again suffered from a case of overpacking.

Adios! I've got a million things to do, and not nearly enough hours to do them. Catch y'all this week!