Posts I'm Passionate About, 18 March 2012

 

Every week, one of the bloggers I follow, Alexis Grant at The Traveling Writer, presents her readers with a list of great posts she’s come across that week and links so we can read them for ourselves. I just love these because I always find at least one or two that I really enjoy.

Recently I’ve come across so many fantastic, inspirational pieces that now I totally understand why Alexis feels the need to share her faves. So, here is my current list of Posts I’m Passionate About. I hope you'll find something here that resonates with you.

• In her Everyday Bright blog, Jennifer Gresham suggests that you use envy to guide you toward what you should do or who you should be.

• Niall Doherty talks about the extraordinary generosity of strangers and how this has made Iran one of the highlights of his current trip around the world from his Disrupting the Rabblement blog. (He also introduces this post with a video in his sexy, Irish accent!)

• Jeff Goins offers 3 simple (but powerful) steps to help you make decisions when you feel completely stuck in his blog, Jeff Goins, Writer.

Enjoy and let me know what you think of these!

Body Clearly Not a “Favorite”

I noticed something revealing and scary yesterday as I looked at my bookmarked Favorites online: I had to scroll more than halfway down a very long list to get to my folder of health-related sites. It was much farther down than my hair salon site (why do I need a link to that?), my Mapquest link (that I haven’t used since I got a GPS for my car), and a host of other sites I can’t even remember bookmarking. This was revealing because it’s a total metaphor for how low a priority I’ve made my health. It was scary because, at 47, I’m too old to have this attitude.

Yes, I eat like a teenager. No, I’ve never been an especially active person. Yes, over the last year or so, I’ve definitely noticed this behavior catching up with me in the form of excess weight and a host of odd aches and pains. The good news is I’m finally starting to make an effort to do better. Why now? As with most things in my life, it’s because when the student is ready, the teacher is there…and recently both have been showing up for class.

This afternoon, I had just finished unpacking my bag full of healthy foods from Trader Joe’s and was starting to get ready for my first yoga class in over a year, when I caught Dr. Oz sharing recipes on his show for healthy and tasty snacks that will also help improve metabolism and energy. Hello! Class is in session!

I know I have a long way to go—and I’m not looking forward to how sore I’m pretty sure my newly-returned-to-yoga body will be tomorrow—but I have moved my Health folder much higher up on my list of Favorites. Now it’s just below the link to rental apartments in Paris.

Hey, I have to have somewhere amazing to take my new and improved body!

Thinking Is Overrated

We start out with the best intentions—to get healthy, be more productive, work smarter—but after the first time or two of working toward our goals, we poop out. You’ve been there, right? You have to get off the couch and go for a run, or you have to get out of your cozy bed to start the day, or it’s time to clean your house…but you don’t want to. So, what’s the answer?

Don’t think. Just do.

Ask an Offensive Question…

There are some questions that people should never ask perfect strangers. I was asked one of those questions today.

In the middle of a discussion about whether we were enjoying the current weather, the clerk checking my groceries asked, “Have you gone through menopause yet?” 

Process, Product, and Playthings

For the past two days I've been watching my cat attempt to retrieve about a dozen cat toys from underneath our TV cabinet. He’s been very successful in his pursuit…though he’s reclaimed not a single thing.

It all started when he accidentally pushed a new toy under the furniture while playing with it. He made several attempts to recover it, but when his little paw kept coming back empty, I decided to help him. I dragged a ruler under the cabinet to help push his toy out from beneath it. It did come out…along with a host of other dusty, little cat toys that had been hiding there for who knows how long.

Sue Monk Kidd, My New BFF

One of the reasons I love reading so much is because of the instant connection you can feel with someone, even though you’ve never met them.

Right now I’m in the middle of reading Traveling with Pomegranates, a memoir by Sue Monk Kidd and her daughter Ann Kidd Taylor in which they travel abroad and explore foreign countries, each other, and themselves. In the book, Kidd is about to turn 50 and is looking back at where she’s been and forward to where she might be headed. I’m getting ready to turn 47 and doing much the same thing. I can also totally relate to Kidd’s pre-menopausal insomnia and overwhelming (often frantic) desire to re-locate, though I’d not seen a connection between these two conditions until she suggested it.

“Raymond Burr’s Legs”…Get It?

Sometimes being around students who are so much younger than I am makes me feel young…and sometimes it just makes me feel like an old fart.

I’ve been a college professor for about eleven years now, and most of my students are between 19 and 22 years old. The odd thing about teaching students who never seem to age is that it makes me feel that I’m not aging either…at least it has until recently.