10 years ago

Today is 10 years to the day when I graduated high school on June 14, 2004!

It’s funny- people say that time goes by fast, and it does, but it also feels like that was a lifetime ago. I was in such a different place as an 18 year old as I am as a 28(!) year old.

April 2004 celebrating Emily's Birthday

I remember the day semi-clearly. My whole family was in town, including my grandmother, and I had the early graduation that day at 10 AM. I sat on the right side of the seating in the Siegel Center at VCU (all high school graduations in the area are held there) and my family was in the stands beside me. They cheered when my name was called across the stage and after obligatory pictures following the ceremony, we went home to have lunch and a Cold Stone Creamery cake (obviously, since I was working there at the time)! I don’t remember much afterward, but it was a nice day and the weeks leading up to it had been a lot of fun due to all my friends’ graduation parties! It is weird I still remember what I wore to those parties?! J

High school was a hard time for me. I did very well academically and had many good friends, but I put a lot of pressure on myself. I didn’t accept anything but the best in terms of my grades and extracurriculars and that kind of pressure can have negative effects. I was so caught up in being “perfect” that I remember so clearly simply wanting to be happy. I didn’t have a career or college goal at the time except to let go of my perfectionistic personality. To show you how aware I was of my faults at this point, I even wrote in my senior year scrap book (which I still have and looked through the other week- I am so glad I made one!) that my dream job was: To do anything and live anywhere that makes me happy. That is probably a little different than your average high school goal, right?

Humanities Senior Banquet  in June 2004

My life has only improved in the last 10 years. I went to two great colleges and met so many amazing people from undergrad and grad school and even more amazing people through my work. I cannot imagine how my life would have been had I not met all these people. They have definitely invigorated my life and helped me grow into who I am today! I am also lucky to still be friends with many people from my youth and to get to experience the highs and lows in their lives- all across the country. Friends are definitely the family you pick for yourself.

My change and growth has been gradual over time. I am still a perfectionist by nature, but I am much more relaxed about success and work. I have a good job and a stable income that enables me to do all the things I want to (for the most partJ), so I am very content and grateful (besides my usual "itch" for change). I think stability in and of itself has brought happiness to my life, because I have full control and am not relying on parents, teachers or admission offices to determine where my life will head. It is all up to me now (and the mercy of employers)! I also do not let work rule my life like school did. I still aim to do my best and do a good job, but I work so I can live my life and not the other way around. Most of my life goals now are not related to work but are more for my own personal fulfillment. This has helped me achieve balance, and I also think running and wellness/health has helped me overcome health barriers that were once struggles. I am, as always, a work in progress.

Posing in 2002 with my Algebra 2 class

So on this 10 year anniversary, I would say I am very glad to have high school behind me and would not trade where I am now for any other point in my life. It probably helps that I now work in high schools- I get enough of my school fix on a daily basisJ. My life keeps getting better and better, and I like it that way. No need to live in the past.

#somerslovin

I had a great weekend in Duck (Outer Banks), celebrating the soon-to-be Mrs. Somers (aka Lauren Malakoff)!I have known Lauren since the end of high school and am so happy for her August wedding to a great guy! It was so wonderful to celebrate at the beach before the crowds of the beach season and when the weather was PERFECT (70's and no humidity)! I am so anxious to get back in a few weeks for the 4th of July:)

As is usually the case, pictures do the weekend more justice than my words, but it was a great weekend full of morning runs, days at the beach and pool, nights with good drinks & music (karaoke, anyone?), and of, course great (and lots of) food!

Out for drinks along the sound with the bride-to-be!

Fun ladies!

My love, Sarah Rose.

Our sweeeeet house!

Pool!

View from top deck:)

The Currituck Sound:) Crystal clear afternoon!

Favorite part of Duck!

Richmond ladies!

With the bride before dinner!

Fun at dinner!

Congrats to Lauren! Thanks for such a great Bachelorette weekend!

Minimalism

I really do prefer to write my own posts, but sometimes I come across someone else's words and I know that my thoughts would be less articulate than theirs . So here is a great post from www.theminimalists.com that gives many great messages about what really matters in life- many things that I have been thinking of a lot lately as I enjoy my "life of leisure" and simplicity.

30 Life Lessons from 30 Years

1. We must love. You know the saying, “tis better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all,” right? I know, such statements sound so banal and vapid on the surface that we often dismiss them with a wave of the hand. But it’s the cold truth, a truth so profound that perhaps we can only discuss it with little cliched statements. But we must love, even if it breaks our hearts. Because unless we love, our lives will flash by.

2. Love isn’t enough. Although we must love, love is not enough to survive. We must take action to show others that we care, to show them that we love them.

3. Happiness is not for sale in any store. We can’t buy happiness. Hell, it sounds cliché to even say that, and yet we search the aisles and shelves and pages on eBay in search of something more, something to fill the void. But we can’t fill the void with stuff. It doesn’t work that way, no matter how hard we try or how much stuff we buy, because that stuff won’t make us happy. At best it will pacify us momentarily. At worst it will ruin our lives, leaving us empty and depressed and even more alone, alone among a sea of material items—sometimes a crowded room can feel the most alone. The truth is that we are all going to die, and heaping our tombs with treasure will not save us from this fate. Ryan and I wrote about happiness for Dave Bruno’s 100 Thing Challenge: The Minimalists On Happiness.

4. Success is perspectival. I used to think I was successful because I had a six-figure job that my friends and family could be proud of. I thought the house with too many bedrooms would make me look even more successful, and so would the luxury car and the tailored suits and the nice watch and the big screen TV and all the trappings of the material world. But I got all that and I sure as hell didn’t feel successful. Instead, I felt depressed. So what did I do? I bought more stuff. And when that didn’t work I figured out that I had to do something else with my life, that I had to stop living a lie and start living my dreams.

5. You must make change a must. I knew that I wanted to change my life for the longest time. I knew I was unhappy, unsatisfied, and unfulfilled. I knew I didn’t have freedom. Not real freedom. The problem was that I knew these thingsintellectually but not emotionally. I didn’t have the feeling in my gut that thingsmust change. I knew they should change, but the change wasn’t a must for me, and thus it didn’t happen. Anthony Robbins has a good aphorism to describe all these shoulds in your life: he says “after a while you end up shoulding all over yourself.” But once you understand these things on an emotional level you are able to turn your shoulds into musts. I believe that that is the pivotal point, that is when you get leverage, that is when you are compelled to take action. Thus, a decision is not a real decision until it is a must for you, until you feel it on your nerve-endings, until you are compelled to take action. Once your shoulds have turned into musts, then you have made a real decision.

6. Growth & contribution is the meaning of life. Giving is living, I said that before. I believe the best way to live a meaningful life is simple: continuously grow as an individual and contribute to other people in a meaningful way. Growth and contribution. That’s all. That’s the meaning of my life.

7. Health is more important than most of us treat it. Without health, nothing else matters. It took me over a year and a half to lose 70 pounds—70 pounds of disgusting fat—but that was seven years ago and I’ve kept the weight off and I’m not turning back. I’m 30 years old now, but I’m in the best shape of my life, by far. And it’s only going to get better from here. I wrote about my exercise and diet in this essay: Minimalism Is Healthy: How I Lost 70 Pounds

8. Sentimental items are not as important as we think. My mother died in 2009. It was an incredibly difficult time in my life, but it also helped me realize a lot about the unnecessary meaning we give to stuff. I realized that I could hold on to her memories without her stuff, that I don’t need Mom’s stuff to remind me of her. There are traces of her everywhere: In the way I act, in the way I treat others, even in my smile. She’s still there, and she was never part of her stuff. I wrote an essay about that experience: Letting Go of Sentimental Items.

9. Your job is not your mission. At least it wasn’t for me, though I thought it was for the longest time, I gave it so much meaning and worked so much that the rest of my life suffered. I wrote an essay about leaving my corporate job to pursue my passions and live my mission: Screw You, I Quit! You can also check out Day 19 of our journey for further explanation.

10. Finding your passion is important. My passion is writing. Maybe you already know what your passion is, maybe you don’t have a clue. Do yourself a favor and figure it out, it will change everything for you. Read the above mentioned “Screw You, I Quit!” essay for more discussion about finding your passions.

11. Relationships matter. Not every relationship matters all that much, but there are a few that really, really matter. There are a few relationships we should focus on (for most of us there are a handful of relationships that truly matter, probably no more than 20). I’ve found that minimalism has helped me focus on these relationships. And I recently learned how to establish deeper connections with people.

12. You don’t need everyone to like you. We all want to be loved, it’s a mammalian instinct, but you can’t value every relationship the same, and thus you can’t expect everyone to love you the same. Life doesn’t work that way. Julien Smith articulates this sentiment very well in his essay The Complete Guide to Not Giving a Fuck: “when people don’t like you, nothing actually happens. The world does not end. You don’t feel them breathing down your neck. In fact, the more you ignore them and just go about your business, the better off you are.”

13. Status is a misnomer. Similar to “success,” our culture seems to place a lot of emphasis on material wealth as a sign of true wealth, and yet I know too many people of “status,” too many “rich” people—hell, I’ve been to some of their dinner parties—who are miserable, who are not wealthy at all. They are only ostensibly “rich,” but they are bankrupt inside, emotionally drained and broke almost everywhere except in their wallets. But perhaps Chuck Palahniuk said it best: “You’re not your job. You’re not how much money you have in the bank. You’re not the car you drive. You’re not the contents of your wallet. You’re not your khakis.”

14. Jealousy and envy are wasted emotions. This one might be easier for me than it is for you. I’ve never been the jealous type. In fact, it has hurt some relationships for me in the past, because I didn’t articulate this fact—that I’m not the jealous type—to the other person. It’s strange but some people expect us to be jealous to show that we care. Instead, I choose to show that I care about someone by showing that I trust them and telling them that I trust them. Just be up front with people, tell them you don’t get jealous because you love them and you trust them. It makes everything easier.

15. Everybody worships something. My favorite fiction writer, David Foster Wallace, said it best: “In the day-to-day trenches of adult life, there is actually no such thing as atheism. There is no such thing as not worshipping. Everybody worships. The only choice we get is what to worship.” Many of us chose to worship our stuff. That’s what led me to minimalism. Ryan and I wrote an essay about it at the beginning of the year: Everybody Worships Something.

16. I am not the center of the universe. It’s incredibly difficult to think about the world from a perspective other than our own. We are always worried about what’s going on in our lives. What does my schedule look like today? What if I lose my job during the next round of layoffs? Why can’t I stop smoking? Why am I overweight? Why am I not happy with my life? Suffice it to say that we are acutely aware of everything connected to our own lives. That’s why Ryan and I wrote an essay about consciously removing yourself the center of the universe; it’s about paying attention to what’s going on in front of you and around you and inside you: I Am Not The Center Of The Universe

17. Awareness is the most precious kind of freedom. This is yet another reason why minimalism is so appealing to so many people. It removes many of the obstructions and allows us to focus on what’s important. Minimalism is a tool to rid ourselves of superfluous excess in favor of a meaningful life, it is a tool to take a seemingly intricate and convoluted world, cluttered with its endless embellishments, and make it simpler, easier, realer. It is unimaginably hard to remain conscious and attentive and aware. It is difficult not to fall back into a trance-like state, surrounded by the trappings and obstructions of the tiring world around us. But it is important to do so, for this is real freedom. Ryan and I wrote an essay about awareness and conscious freedom for Nina Yau’s site earlier this year: Awareness: The Most Precious Kind of Freedom

18. Be On The Mountain. This is the term I use for “living in the moment.” I wrote an essay about it a few years ago: Be On The Mountain.

19. We are often scared for no reason. Just ask yourself “what am I afraid of?” We are usually scared of things that don’t have a real impact on our lives (or that we can’t control, so we’re worrying for no reason).

20. It’s OK to change; change is growth. We all want a different outcome, and yet most of us don’t want any change in our lives. Change equals uncertainty, and uncertainty equals discomfort, and discomfort isn’t much fun. But when we learn to enjoy the process of change—when we chose to look at the uncertain as varietyinstead of uncertainty—then we get to reap all the rewards of change. And that’s how we grow as people.

21. Pretending to be perfect doesn’t make us perfect. I am not perfect, and I never will be. I make mistakes and bad decisions, and I fail at times. I stumble, fall. I am human—a mixed bag, nuanced, the darkness and the light—as are you. And you are beautiful.

22. The past does not equal the future. My words are my words and I can’t take them back. You can’t change the past, so it’s important to focus on the present. If the past equaled the future, then your windshield would be of no use to you; you would simply drive your car with your eyes glued to the rearview mirror. But driving this way—only looking behind you—is a surefire way to crash. Ryan and I wrote an essay about letting go of the past: Your Past Does Not Equal Your Future.

23. Pain can be useful; but suffering—there is absolutely nothing useful about suffering. Pain lets us know that something is wrong. It is an indicator that we need to change what we’re doing. But suffering is a choice—one that we all choose from time to time—and we can choose to stop suffering, to learn a lesson from the pain and move on with our lives.

24. Doubt kills. The person who stops you from doing everything you want to do, who stops you from being completely free, who stops you from being healthy or happy or passionate or living a meaningful life is you. We can doubt ourselves to death.

25. It’s OK to wait. Leo Babauta always reminds his readers to slow down, thatwe don’t need to hurry. Sometimes it’s OK to wait a little longer for something. Why rush if you don’t have to? Why not enjoy the journey? Example: These days, when I’m walking the streets of Dayton or Portland or Oakland or wherever, I don’t rush across the crosswalk when I see the flashing red hand warning me that I need to hurry up and cross the damn street! Instead, I wait. I let red hand turn solid, warning me to halt! and I let the traffic light change color from green to yellow and then red, and I wait. I look around, I breathe, I think, and I wait. It’s OK to wait. We wrote an essay about waiting earlier this year: Reasons For Waiting. Also, clearing my plate helped me tremendously with this.

26. Honesty is profoundly important. Honesty, at the most simple level, is telling the truth, not lying. It’s incredibly important to be honest, and it’s hurtful when you’re not, but…

27. Openness is just as important as honesty. Openness is more complicated than honesty. Openness involves being honest, while painting an accurate picture, shooting straight, not misleading other people, and being real. Openness is far more subjective, and you have to be honest with yourself before you can be open with others. This doesn’t mean that you must put your entire life on display. Some things are private, and that’s OK too.

28. Adding value to other people is the only way to get their buy-in. We recently wrote an essay about adding value to other people. It’s something I’ve lived by for a long time. When I managed a large team of people I constantly asked them questions like, “how did you add value this week?” I also asked that same question of myself, and I would share with my team how I added value that week. That’s how I got their buy-in.

29. Hype is cancerous. While eating lunch with Leo in San Francisco he said something that stuck with me: “I’m allergic to hype.” That sentence touched my nerve-endings and resonated in a special way. So often we fall for the hype (e.g., “Buy More, Save More” and “Three Day Sale!”) and we are suckered into rash buying decisions because of scarcity and a false sense of urgency. But we can train ourselves to not only resist such hype, but to have a vitriolic reaction to the hype, to elicit a response so off-putting that we avoid anything that’s hyped. This goes back to being aware, which is, as I mentioned above, the most precious kind of freedom.

30. I’m still trying to figure it all out. I don’t intend to promulgate my views and opinions as some sort of life maxims or absolute lessons by which you should live your life. What works for me might not work for you (hell, sometimes it doesn’t even work for me).

I am definitely finding as I get older that I enjoy living with less. Smaller car, smaller condo, buying fewer groceries, eating out less (or eating cheaper when I go out), doing less expensive activities (expensive concerts and such don't do it for me), knowing everything I own and where it is and paying for experiences rather than THINGS- those are all important things to me. I think their blog has wonderful advice on getting out of what you think you "should" do rather than what makes you happy. What makes me happy may be different from what makes you happy, but I have grown in that I don't care as much on what other's think of my lifestyle or what I am expected to do and am enjoying figuring it all out on my own:)

A Life of Leisure

Lately, I have been doing a lot of working (my real job and pool managing), running, eating/grilling out with friends, wine drinking and watching my new obsession, "Damages." It's a tough life!

Don't mess with these chicks!

This past weekend I even got to go back to Prom! Even though I do not work at MBK anymore, my friends still let me accompany them to dances:) They are so nice. 

My mentee and I at dinner

Some MBK ladies.

Posin' with the admin!

Fabulous friends!

In other news, I am officially DONE with selling tickets after school at MBK for sporting events...once my new school opens, the location won't be convenient for me to go back to Meadowbrook to sell tickets after school. I had my last game last Tuesday. It was a good 3 years of ticketing/coaching! I will still visit. And I will no longer get as much reading done...

Also, even though I have a 12-month position now, I am still helping to assistant manage at the pool I worked at last summer. This long weekend I was there every day! My certification is still good and it is an easy gig, so I figured I will work 2 shifts a week through the end of June and then only once in a while in July and August when my vacationing and work schedule pick up. You know I am a sucker for extra traveling money and a tan:)!

Enjoy the end of May!

May Days

Hello! 

May is flying by- but doesn't every month? We are in a heat wave here in VA, so I am miserable on my runs and sweating when I sleep (I refuse to keep my condo cooler than 75- so fans it is!). Welcome to summer- spring come back! I knew that as much as we complained about the cold winter, we would soon be complaining about the heat. I am only happy when the highs are 50-80 degrees, so I am almost always unhappy with the weather! I do enjoy the sunshine early in the morning for my runs, though, but I do not like it being light so late in the evening. I think the sun should be totally down by 8 PM because that is when I want to be in "bed" mode.

I have been working, running, hanging out with friends, eating and reading the last few weeks. Not much else is new! I am not traveling anywhere this month, so that is sad, but June and July should be two good months of weekend trips to the beach and a big trip to Greece:)!

I did go to a baby shower this past weekend, and I must say, I am getting better at buying baby shower gifts. I also have one at work this Friday. My go-to items are WubbaNubs, changing pads/covers, bedding, bibs and onesies. Can't go wrong!

Also, I found an awesome fajita recipe on Pinterest that you must try. Chicken, onion, bell peppers and fajita seasoning in the Crockpot for 6-8 hours on low. Delicious. I mix mine with rice, but you could be legit and actually make fajitas. That is a few too many steps for me. And I always forget to buy guac and salsa. Oh well.

I also am re-watching the entire series of Friday Night Lights. If you are one of the few people in this world that have not seen it, please make that a priority. It is such a good, REAL show, and I cry more watching it than I do any other show. Some episodes give me the chills. SO GOOD.

Here is an awesome montage that played before the final episode. Chills! 

Have a great week!

Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.

Since spring is here and summer is approaching, a lot of people I know are trying to get back on the bandwagon of eating healthy. All the fresh in-season fruits and veggies are making it much more affordable! A few summers ago I read a lot of books about nutrition and the one that stuck with me the most is "In Defense of Food" by Michael Pollan. I am linking the most important food tips from Mr. Pollan that I mostly follow (hey, not perfect over here!) when selecting what to buy and eat, especially when trying to maximize my healthy eating habits.

Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.

To medicalize the diet problem is of course perfectly consistent with nutritionism. So what might a more ecological or cultural approach to the problem recommend? How might we plot our escape from nutritionism and, in turn, from the deleterious effects of the modern diet? In theory nothing could be simpler — stop thinking and eating that way — but this is somewhat harder to do in practice, given the food environment we now inhabit and the loss of sharp cultural tools to guide us through it. Still, I do think escape is possible, to which end I can now revisit — and elaborate on, but just a little — the simple principles of healthy eating I proposed at the beginning of this essay, several thousand words ago. So try these few (flagrantly unscientific) rules of thumb, collected in the course of my nutritional odyssey, and see if they don’t at least point us in the right direction.

1. Eat food. Though in our current state of confusion, this is much easier said than done. So try this: Don’t eat anything your great-great-grandmother wouldn’t recognize as food. (Sorry, but at this point Moms are as confused as the rest of us, which is why we have to go back a couple of generations, to a time before the advent of modern food products.) There are a great many foodlike items in the supermarket your ancestors wouldn’t recognize as food (Go-Gurt? Breakfast-cereal bars? Nondairy creamer?); stay away from these.

2. Avoid even those food products that come bearing health claims. They’re apt to be heavily processed, and the claims are often dubious at best. Don’t forget that margarine, one of the first industrial foods to claim that it was more healthful than the traditional food it replaced, turned out to give people heart attacks. When Kellogg’s can boast about its Healthy Heart Strawberry Vanilla cereal bars, health claims have become hopelessly compromised. (The American Heart Association charges food makers for their endorsement.) Don’t take the silence of the yams as a sign that they have nothing valuable to say about health.

3. Especially avoid food products containing ingredients that are a) unfamiliar, b) unpronounceable c) more than five in number — or that contain high-fructose corn syrup.None of these characteristics are necessarily harmful in and of themselves, but all of them are reliable markers for foods that have been highly processed.

4. Get out of the supermarket whenever possible. You won’t find any high-fructose corn syrup at the farmer’s market; you also won’t find food harvested long ago and far away. What you will find are fresh whole foods picked at the peak of nutritional quality. Precisely the kind of food your great-great-grandmother would have recognized as food.

5. Pay more, eat less. The American food system has for a century devoted its energies and policies to increasing quantity and reducing price, not to improving quality. There’s no escaping the fact that better food — measured by taste or nutritional quality (which often correspond) — costsmore, because it has been grown or raised less intensively and with more care. Not everyone can afford to eat well in America, which is shameful, but most of us can: Americans spend, on average, less than 10 percent of their income on food, down from 24 percent in 1947, and less than the citizens of any other nation. And those of us who can afford to eat well should. Paying more for food well grown in good soils — whether certified organic or not — will contribute not only to your health (by reducing exposure to pesticides) but also to the health of others who might not themselves be able to afford that sort of food: the people who grow it and the people who live downstream, and downwind, of the farms where it is grown.

”Eat less” is the most unwelcome advice of all, but in fact the scientific case for eating a lot less than we currently do is compelling. ”Calorie restriction” has repeatedly been shown to slow aging in animals, and many researchers (including Walter Willett, the Harvard epidemiologist) believe it offers the single strongest link between diet and cancer prevention. Food abundance is a problem, but culture has helped here, too, by promoting the idea of moderation. Once one of the longest-lived people on earth, the Okinawans practiced a principle they called ”Hara Hachi Bu”: eat until you are 80 percent full. To make the ”eat less” message a bit more palatable, consider that quality may have a bearing on quantity: I don’t know about you, but the better the quality of the food I eat, the less of it I need to feel satisfied. All tomatoes are not created equal.

6. Eat mostly plants, especially leaves. Scientists may disagree on what’s so good about plants — the antioxidants? Fiber? Omega-3s? — but they do agree that they’re probably really good for you and certainly can’t hurt. Also, by eating a plant-based diet, you’ll be consuming far fewer calories, since plant foods (except seeds) are typically less ”energy dense” than the other things you might eat. Vegetarians are healthier than carnivores, but near vegetarians (”flexitarians”) are as healthy as vegetarians. Thomas Jefferson was on to something when he advised treating meat more as a flavoring than a food.

7. Eat more like the French. Or the Japanese. Or the Italians. Or the Greeks. Confounding factors aside, people who eat according to the rules of a traditional food culture are generally healthier than we are. Any traditional diet will do: if it weren’t a healthy diet, the people who follow it wouldn’t still be around. True, food cultures are embedded in societies and economies and ecologies, and some of them travel better than others: Inuit not so well as Italian. In borrowing from a food culture, pay attention to how a culture eats, as well as to what it eats. In the case of the French paradox, it may not be the dietary nutrients that keep the French healthy (lots of saturated fat and alcohol?!) so much as the dietary habits: small portions, no seconds or snacking, communal meals — and the serious pleasure taken in eating. (Worrying about diet can’t possibly be good for you.) Let culture be your guide, not science.

8. Cook. And if you can, plant a garden. To take part in the intricate and endlessly interesting processes of providing for our sustenance is the surest way to escape the culture of fast food and the values implicit in it: that food should be cheap and easy; that food is fuel and not communion. The culture of the kitchen, as embodied in those enduring traditions we call cuisines, contains more wisdom about diet and health than you are apt to find in any nutrition journal or journalism. Plus, the food you grow yourself contributes to your health long before you sit down to eat it. So you might want to think about putting down this article now and picking up a spatula or hoe.

9. Eat like an omnivore. Try to add new species, not just new foods, to your diet. The greater the diversity of species you eat, the more likely you are to cover all your nutritional bases. That of course is an argument from nutritionism, but there is a better one, one that takes a broader view of ”health.” Biodiversity in the diet means less monoculture in the fields. What does that have to do with your health? Everything. The vast monocultures that now feed us require tremendous amounts of chemical fertilizers and pesticides to keep from collapsing. Diversifying those fields will mean fewer chemicals, healthier soils, healthier plants and animals and, in turn, healthier people. It’s all connected, which is another way of saying that your health isn’t bordered by your body and that what’s good for the soil is probably good for you, too.

 

Average

I saw this commercial while watching TV last night, and I loved its message (minus the GNC part, though if this gets you to buy some GNC supplements, then go ahead):

Part of my new year's resolution this year was to get out of being "average." I want more to my life than work and friends and exercise and fun, I want it to mean more than just the day to day routine. I wanted to devote more of my time to helping out organizations that I am passionate about and to give back to my community. Since I have been in the working world for almost 4 years, I know what my schedule is like and how much time I can realistically volunteer, and the truth is, I think everyone has time to give back. It just needs to be a priority. Yes, you want to spend time with your friends and family; yes, you want to work out; yes, you want to be able to catch your favorite shows, but that still leaves time to give back.

The hardest part for me was finding an organization that I was really passionate about. I didn't want to volunteer just to, I wanted to do it because I truly cared about the cause. So far this year, I have been involved in two causes, RVA Earth Day, which benefits FeedMore, and the VCU Massey Challenge, which was a specific part of fundraising through the Monument 10k for the VCU Massey Cancer Center. While I enjoyed recruiting volunteers and helping out during the festival for Earth Day, the Massey Alliance is the committee that I want to continue to devote my time to. I like that it is a local organization but stands for a cause everyone can relate to- the fight against cancer. There are events throughout the year that Massey sponsors and needs volunteers for, so I will be doing that as the events come to fruition. I also volunteered at the Food Bank through the UVA Club of Richmond and am continuously looking for other opportunities through that group and through my school-based community (I helped out at an event this Saturday hosted at my old school for the Children's Hospital). It has been fun meeting new people through volunteering and learning more about the causes!

So this is what I am doing to become a little more than just the average joe going about my daily life. I think it is always good to give back and do more for yourself and your community if you are able.

What do you do to be more than "average?"