>> YAY YAY YAY! Stuff & Things day is my favorite day, you guys! Like a mini holiday every week!
>> I have resorted to the most pathetic meals. We’re in the home stretch friends! The last football game is SATURDAY and then I should resume fixing proper meals. But this week I’ve survived off coffee, edamame, pretzels with ranch, and pasta. Yikes.
>> On a bit of a bummer note, I’ve decided to discontinue youtube. At least for now. I know, how short lived was that, right? But the fact is, I’m a busy lady. And with everything happening the way it is the last little while, it’s just too much in all honesty. I found myself stressing about it more than I was enjoying it–and that’s just a sure sign that it wasn’t right. Not right now anyway. I never ever feel that way with my blog–I enjoy every element of blogging. So maybe, like Dena says, I need to stick with what is natural for me. Writing.
>> Yeah. That happened on Tuesday. I just woke up and felt like putting up our tree. We usually wait until after Thanksgiving, but with all the drama with my parents’ tree– I really didn’t want my holiday spirit to be sucked out by a tree that refuses to stand. That whole situation is still funny to me–and so while it is, I just wanted to put up my decorations while in a good mood.
>> Because you all rock our freaking faces off, Kristin and I have decided that if you participate in the Thanksgiving Edition of Stuff & Things, you’ll be entered to win our little giveaway! We just wanted to do something as a token of our appreciation for hanging out with us every Thursday (especially Thanksgiving)! So be sure to schedule your posts for next Thursday so you don’t miss out!
>> Meg and I walked over to Starbucks this week, and this was the view on our walk home. This campus is just so stinking gorgeous, I tell you. It was absolutely freezing, and we got to talking about what it was like to go to school at App. And gosh. Sometimes I just really miss it. That was one gorgeous mountain I got to live on!
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I had such a groove going. Run every other day. Sometimes it was 2 miles. Sometimes it was 3. But every other day, without fail, I was out running.
And then came the excuses. It’s dark out. I’m tired. My joints hurt. I washed my hair today…
It stopped being important to me. I stopped making it a priority. In the last three weeks I have hardly run at all.
And suddenly I’m familiar with what everyone calls the winter slump. Okay, maybe no one calls it that–or maybe they do. But it’s what I’m calling it.
But the thing is, I like running! I like being active. I like how it makes me feel and I like how it changes my body!
So here I am, implementing a little bit of a challenge. The goal is to workout 5 days a week this winter. It can be any combination of the 7 days in the week, but 5 days–no excuses!
Isn’t it funny how now-a-days it’s incredibly common to meet people online? What was once so taboo–usually followed with a “you’re going to be murdered and chopped into a million pieces” whenever you told someone you met a person online, is now the norm.
I remember when I first started to immerse myself in the blogging community (long after I actually started blogging), I noticed some bloggers were “friends.” But they’d met through blogging. It seemed so odd to me. How could people become friends through blogging.
So imagine how ridiculous I feel now as I sit here and confess to you that one of my very best friends, the one I call my person (you know, Meredith and Christina style) is someone, cough, I’ve never actually met. I’ve never hugged her neck and we’ve never shared a pizza. In fact, the girl lives halfway around the world from me. When I’m waking up for the day, she’s winding down and getting ready for bed.
And it baffles me to think that our paths would never have crossed without the world of blogging. I would have lived my entire life without ever knowing she existed. That goes for all of you, too. There are so many of you whom I’ve come to call friends. You take the time to hang out in my little corner of the web, and we start to feel like we really know each other. We invest ourselves in each other.
And I’d never know you. I’d never know you existed. Isn’t that wild to think about? If we lived forever in the 1997 world where the internet was sort of…taboo (and gosh so new).
And now it’s practically the norm. I talk about you people. There’s rarely a story I tell that doesn’t in some way involve “one of my blog friends said xyz.” And while the idea might seem a little strange, it’s our reality, you know? You start to feel connected to the people you take the time to know–even if it’s just through a computer screen. And it’d be crazy to think that friendships wouldn’t develop.
And while it still might seem a little strange that after nearly two years, I’ve never “met” my person, our families ask about the other. Our husbands know that any big thing is being discussed between the two of us.
It’s weird when you think about it…how friendships actually happen. There are people all over the planet. 7.125 BILLION, to be specific. I once saw something on pinterest that made me chuckle but also had me nodding my head. Friendship is so weird. You just pick a person and say “yup, you.” And then you just start hanging out with them, relying on them. “I like this one.” Like picking out a sweater in a store.
And the world of the internet just expands those parameters. There isn’t a person in the world that you don’t have the chance of knowing anymore. And that’s just…really freaking cool.
