Making a comeback

A year.  A year! It has been a year since I last blogged. There's not much I can say. It wasn't intended. I'm positive that if I'm going to let the blog die it won't just be in lapsed silence.

This last year (I judge years by school years...or summer to summer) has been crazy. At school, I took on extra classes. I was teaching up to 5 class periods a day, when the norm is 3, without an actual prep period. That's a lot of work, with no break. It stressed me out to the point that I didn't even know I was grumpy and stressed. It was just the norm.  Professionally, I also took on trying to obtain my reading endorsement. This has been harder than I imagined. With experience teaching, the state of AZ doesn't believe that I need to actually become part of a college reading instruction program. But my first failed attempt at just taking the exam proved that I do need classes, so spare time has been funneled towards those classes. Due to the stress of work and college classes I've let my fitness plans slip. I've just been too tired to do any sort of exercise with any regularity. So, slowly over the last year I've put back on 15 lbs. This is most troubling because it means most of my clothes don't fit. Not even a little bit. It's sad and frustrating. Especially, considering at the beginning of the year I challenged myself into participating in the Dirty Girl 5K.  I was fit enough to participate. I did well....in fact I know I was stronger and in better shape than many of the participants....however, I was not able to run the full 5k. There were large lengths of the course that I walked. During all of this I was wrapped up in comicon. I took on a new position....which blossomed into a much bigger position unintentionally. I saw problems and tried to fix them. But that made my experience harder and frustrating.


And that was a load of rambling. But really the point is to say....I'm not sure how I'm going to get about it. I want to dial back. I want to relax and enjoy the things I'm doing again. Some of the plans include not taking on extra classes, getting back into my exercise routine (I'd love to lose those 15 lbs. again.), and pulling back out of the stressful things. Right now I believe that may also mean pulling back on my comicon involvement. It also means perhaps having time to blog without the thought just exhausting me. Or participating in NaNoWriMo?

I want to be happy again.  I want to relax. I'm tired of worrying about things.

Something's in the air

I've been strangely productive today. Normally, productivity wouldn't be anything worthy of a blog post, but like I said this is strange. Lately, I've been anything but productive. I'm pretty sure I even blogged about how frustrating it was....or something vaguely related to my non-productivity. School started back up recently and that was enough to kick my daily routine into gear. I do have to prepped and ready for daily classes. Plus, being capable of getting things done means less time doing non-fun things on weekends. This is different though. From the time I woke up, throughout the school day, even this evening at home...I've been getting things done. I don't quite understand it, but I'm not going to toss this gift away. I was able to get up this morning and make a series comments on various blogs. I even made a couple friends on a new book forum. School went smoothly. I was able to finish all of my planned school tasks plus some - which is awesome in my opinion. I don't often get even my planned tasks done daily. At home there has been more blog comments, a book review, this post, t.v. shows enjoyed....and there is still time! I just needed to get this day down in mandyland history. *bouncy bouncy*

Transformations

I should be writing my novel for NaNoWriMo (I'll tell you about it later.). Instead I am procrastinating by redecorating my blog again. The pretty, simple, white template was just that white...too white. It was actually somewhat daunting to post with it. With such an emphasis on the words, it was hard to want to post anything that was the equivalent to mental fluff, which is a staple of my blog.

So how do you like it?