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!

Grit

I started my "read 25 new books" resolution with a bang this year -- three days into the new year and I've already knocked one out. And it wasn't a conscious decision, but I think it was the perfect book with which to start out a new year. It almost makes me want to change my 2017 word to Grit, but I think "Fearless" and "Grit" go hand-in-hand.

Anyway, this book. Incredible. Amazing. Fantastic read. I couldn't put it down. Five stars on GoodReads. 100% on Rotten Tomatoes. That last one is just for movies? Oh, well. At its core, this book is about how, in the long run, hard work takes you farther than talent. Effort counts twice. And that is something with which I resonate deeply. I've always, always believed in the power of hard work. I'm living proof of it. And before I go into my gritty anecdotes, please don't think that I've got a perfect grit score. Not even close. But for as long as I can remember, I've taken a lot of pride in being able to say I gave it my all, and that I have nothing left to give.

(Source)

I could probably take this idea back to my elementary school days, but for the sake of this post, I'll only go as far back as high school. I made straight A's in high school. I was in all the advanced classes, and I truly excelled. I was able to graduate as a "co-valedictorian" (because my school district has a very interesting ranking system). I had quite a few friends who were in the exact same boat. But some of them put in maybe 1/3 the amount of effort I put in to graduate with that medal around my neck.

And that's not to toot my own horn, rather, it's to say that I surrounded myself with some extraordinarily bright friends. I mean, we're talking scary smart. One of my best friends missed just two questions on the SAT. But I digress. I was the kid making straight A's, but I was also the kid who went to tutorials in the morning if I didn't understand something. And in Physics and Calculus, that was a lot of the time. When an APUSH test rolled around every couple of weeks, I was rereading the many textbook pages so that I could be fully absorb every piece of information. I did all of my homework, and then some. I was the flash card queen. I made good grades, but it certainly wasn't effortless. And I have zero regrets about how hard I worked in high school, from freshman year to senior year - I had a social life as well, I promise - because it instilled good habits in me when it came to college. But we'll get there.

Dirty SRDy study room memories

Another area in which grit came into play was volleyball. I don't know how much volleyball you've watched, but at the very least, you probably recognize how very tall most of the girls are. And if you don't know me personally, I'm simply of an average 5'5" height. Considered small in the volleyball world. I was a setter, meaning I was the one who set up the hitters so they could swing away and mark down a kill. Setters are the quarterback of the team, and I got to be a part of every single play. And I loved it. And I was a good setter. I met quite a bit of success throughout my career, and while I certainly wouldn't have played at a powerhouse like Texas or Penn State, I probably could have played somewhere collegiately had I chosen that route. 

Following the same pattern as my schoolwork, I worked very, very hard to become the player that I was. I drove 30 minutes each way, three times a week, to condition for 45 minutes, go through 30 minutes of setter training, and then two hours of team practice. And I did this for six years. That doesn't include the bi-monthly tournaments, nor does it include the hours I spent hitting the ball against the side of the house. My parents will tell you how much that cost. But I had a pretty mean serve because of it. It doesn't include the camps I was fortunate enough to attend, nor the private lessons I took in order to refine my skills. I once asked for a special setter ball for Christmas so that I could get more repetitions and strengthen my wrists while I was watching television.

Did I make mistakes? Absolutely. I made mistakes up until my very last game, but I didn't let them control me. I only let them motivate me to work even harder so that I wouldn't repeat them.

In college, when I was taking my first real English class as an official English major, I brought home a D on my very first paper. I had never even seen a grade that low on a piece of my writing, and I was absolutely crushed, as there was no way to recover from this grade and make an A in the class. Of course, my first thought was maybe that English wasn't the major for me. Maybe I wasn't as great a writer as I thought I was. And I wasn't. But that was the last time I saw a D on any one of my English papers. My Astronomy exams, now, that's a whole other story. Anyway, that poor grade motivated me to change my approach to the papers I was assigned. I began to write drafts, go to office hours, and go to the writing center, that semester and the remainder of my semesters. Eventually, I learned how to analyze text and develop my own voice, and the B+ I received in that first English class was the most proud I've ever been of a grade. Because of how hard I worked for it.

In one final personal example, let's talk running. You guys know that running has been a big part of my life for about six years now. Up until this past summer, I saw running as a way to stay in shape. I saw it as my time to think. And I enjoyed signing up for races as a way to challenge myself and push myself to run farther, but I had never pushed myself in terms of speed. In a sense, I never knew how good I could be at running. And at the beginning of this "deliberate running", we'll call it, I failed many a time. I mean we're talking, "Maybe I should quit running and take up Zumba" failure. It was hard. And it's still hard. And I still fail. But I have a purpose and a goal when I run. And while it may not always be fun (I'm talking to you, Thursday tempo runs), that deliberate practice is going to (hopefully) show on January 15th when I take on the Aramco Houston Half Marathon. I'm not the most talented runner. Not even close. Hard work just really, really matters.

This book stands out to me because I really and truly felt as though I was having a coffee (if I drank coffee, that is) with Mrs. Duckworth. It's personal, it's backed with an insane amount of research that actually makes sense to me, and I just can't stop thinking about it. Granted, I just finished reading it last night. But I think everyone should read it. It's applicable to so many aspects of life, and it certainly resonated with me in terms of running, but it really hit home for me as a high school teacher and coach. Particularly the idea of a fixed vs. growth mindset. This absolutely kills me, but for whatever reason, so many of my students are of the fixed mindset that "school just isn't for them," and I'll have players tell me, "I'm just not good at setting (or whatever skill)." Whatever the reason for that type of mindset, as we begin this spring semester, I want my students and players to develop a growth mindset. I want them to know that their "ability to learn is based on their effort, their hard work, and their dedication," not what they've been told in the past. I want them to take on the hard things, and push themselves beyond what they think they can do. I want them to challenge themselves beyond what they may believe to be possible. Failure isn't forever. Failure is motivation to get up and start again. To persevere and stick with it. So much of life is about effort. You have to ask yourself how badly you want something, and how hard you are willing to work to get it.

(Source)

The conclusion of this book is what really hit me. It reads, "To be gritty is to keep putting one foot in front of the other. To be gritty is to hold fast to an interesting and purposeful goal. To be gritty is to invest, day after week after year, in challenging practice. To be gritty is to fall down seven times, and rise eight." This book is challenging. This book is powerful. It fires me up, and it gives me hope. Like we were told when we were little kids, when we fall off our bikes, we've got to get back up and try again.

17 in '17

Happy 2-0-1-7! It's fitting that we start the new year on a Sunday, right? Beginning of the week; beginning of the year. I've got a good feeling about 2017, so let's hope that feeling holds true.

Well, I made a goal of writing one blog post a week, so what better way to start it off than by posting on the first day of the new year? I've got 17 random questions to share with you guys as we bring in 2017.

1. What brings you the greatest joy?

Can I list more than one thing? Running obviously brings me quite a bit of joy. It also keeps me sane. And drives me insane at the same time. Traveling and discovering new places. Mack brings me unparalleled joy. And I feel spoiled that I’m able to say this, but teaching absolutely brings me joy. Most days of the week, anyway.

2. What are your vices?

This is an easy question. Dark chocolate and sweet potato fries. I just can’t seem to say no.

I also love a nice glass of wine.

3. What is on your nightstand?

A lamp, a couple of books, a box of tissues, a picture of Mack, and I know you’re not supposed to, but I do charge my phone on my nightstand. I use it as my alarm clock!

4. Do you have a secret talent? 

Hmm, I can wiggle my ears? I’m a pretty good baker, but that’s not really a secret. I can be crafty every once in a blue moon. 

5. What is your greatest indulgence? 

I love getting pedicures and I love getting massages. I don’t do either one of them too often, but they’re a nice reward, and they’re something to look forward to. I’m so looking forward to my post-Aramco Houston Half Marathon pedicure on January 15^th. And unless it ends with a cortisone shot in the butt, there’s not a lot that I love more than a relaxing massage.

Pre-massage

6. What should everyone try at least once in their life?

I’m of the belief that every single person should travel solo at least once in his or her life. It doesn’t have to be to a foreign country for three weeks. Maybe a weekend in a different city, or a week in a different state. But you learn so much about yourself, you meet some incredible people, and you can do whatever it is that you want to do whenever you want to do it. That means gelato for lunch if you want gelato for lunch.

7. What makes you laugh?

Honestly, there’s not a lot that doesn’t make me laugh. But the two things that make me laugh on a regular basis are my students and Mack.

8. What is one thing people would be surprised to know about you?

People might be surprised to know that I’ve never had a cup of coffee? I’ve probably talked about this before, but it’s not that I’m anti-coffee, I just don’t like the taste of it. And I have a very addictive personality, so I would probably turn into one of those people who simply can’t function without it. So for now, I’ll continue to be the Energizer Bunny without having had a cup of coffee.

9. What is on your bucket list? 

I’m really bummed that our back-in-the-day family computer completely broke down before I had the chance to save some of my old Word documents, because I had an actual Bucket List saved on that computer. And I know for a fact some of them were really dumb – going to my senior prom was on there, for example – but I’m pretty sure I had some really cool things on that list. Right now, though, one of my top bucket list items is to visit all seven continents.

10. What is on your feet right now?

Tennis shoes.

11. How did you make your first dollar?

When I was in elementary and middle school, for every report card that I brought home with all “A’s” on it, I received $20. I know many people disagree with the extrinsic motivation thing, but I was motivated by far more than the money. But it was nice to have a little extra cash to buy pizza and cinnamon sticks with as I spent my summer days at the neighborhood pool.

12. What superstition do you believe in?

I tend to not walk under a ladder if I stumble upon one. And I always pick up a penny if I see it lying on the ground!

13. What items in your closet do you wear the most?

Probably my dresses. I love pairing them with booties if I’m feeling fancy, or with cute athletic shoes if I’m going for comfort. They’re one of those things that are easy to dress up or dress down depending on your mood as well as the occasion.

14. What is the best gift you’ve ever received?

One of my very favorite gifts is one I received for my college graduation – from a guy I’m no longer dating, but it’s fine – my Lucchese cowboy boots. I seriously wear those things to school at least once a week. Another gift given to me for graduation that really means a lot to me is the candy dish I have on my desk at school. It belonged to my Granny, and she used to keep candy in that very dish on her desk when she was working. My uncle gave it to me, and my students love checking it for candy updates.

15. What is on your liquor shelf?

Fun fact: I don’t have a liquor shelf. I do have a wine shelf in my refrigerator, though.

16. What is on your kitchen counter?

What isn’t on my kitchen counter? Actually, I don’t keep a lot of clutter on my counter, but some of the permanent things I have on my counter are my beloved KitchenAid Stand Mixer, a toaster oven, a microwave, and a bowl of fresh fruit.

17. What would you never leave home without?

While it is very rare, I have left home without my phone before. Though I’m probably running to Walgreens or something. I almost never leave home without my trusty Hydro Flask. What can I say? I believe in the value of staying hydrated!

And with that, I'm off to lounge on the couch and spend New Year's Day the way New Year's Day should be spent. I did run this morning, after all!