Thank You Blogiverse

Today as the rain falls down (please, mother nature, can we have a short dry spell between 5:30 and 6pm?) and I sit antsy and unable to concentrate on anything with excitement for my race, my brain turns to websurfing – specifically all the new blogs I’ve found in the last year or so (not that most of them are new, just that they’re new to *me*).  Specifically, how each site I visit on a regular basis gives me a different perspective of the world.

In times like these, we don’t take enough opportunities to say Thank You.  It’s one of the best, cheapest, and most fulfilling gifts you can give.  So let me take this Friday to say thanks to the writers out there that make my internetting good.

Pasta Queen was my inspiration to start running.  Besides losing half of herself, she started jogging and then entering races while she was still in the 200’s.  It made me realize that I didn’t have to get down to a perfect weight before I was “worthy” of running and doing races.

Charlotte of The Great Fitness Experiment showed me many things, but the most important, I think, is to be open, honest, genuine, and most importantly your kooky, but wonderful self through and through on your blog.  Also, that all of us ex-gymnasts still have that little bit of crazy that sticks with you through the rest of your life.

Kasmira at What I Wore Today gave me a little bit of wardrobe inspiration.  See, when I was heavy I trended towards my closet being black, black, black, brown, dark blue, dark red and even after losing weight, I never got out of the rut.  When I was younger, I had a rainbow-y closet of tons of colors and I missed that.  She inspired me to look for a little (lot) more color in my life.  I still can’t pull off a lot of the things she does – the whole inverted triangle body type with a short torso makes a lot of fashions problematic – but I’ve been trying to do more interesting things with my wardrobe.

Hilary at Turtle Progress shares with us her trials and tribulations of getting set up in a healthy lifestyle.  You so often see someone say “I lost 50 lbs and feel great” and then they gloss over what they did to do it by saying “ate healthier and exercised” like it’s the easiest thing in the world.  I do it too when I don’t want to be bothered or I think the asker is just trying to be polite.  Ms. Turtle is another one of those folks that inspires me to try to not just share the happy moments, but the messy ones too because if I’m learning from them, maybe other people can too.

Charlie at Back to the Fridge just makes me laugh.  If there is something that his blogging has taught me, it’s that this “serious business” of losing weight and being healthy can be amusing too.  Sometimes we get the blinders on so narrow that we forget that life, above all, should be FUN.  Also, he shows us that burger and fries and pizza and traditional american breakfast and mexican food can have a place in any healthy lifestyle, they’re just things to be moderated, not eliminated.

MizFit has taught me about the fun of poetic lisence.  Please to enjoy some fun up in herre (she is so much better at that than me).  She is very passionate and driven and seems like she’s all about fun.  Workout is banned from her vocabulary – she does “playouts”.  Also, she’s all about soliciting feedback and asking questions of her bumbling band – something I’m trying to incorporate here because while this is mainly my soapbox, journal, and rant-a-torium, I’m curious about what’s in your brains too!  I’m a psychology major, so that’s not just me being polite…

If you haven’t checked these people out, you should curl up with a steaming cup of internet and dive into their archives.  There’s also a lot of other blogs I *just* stumbled upon that I’m still diving into that are on my daily rotation like Cat’s and What’s for Dinner, and I’m sure there are some I’ve missed that I either used to frequent and some great ones that have gone silent.

Any sites that I should check out to add to my already-too-bloated internet time?  What have you learned from your favorite blogs?  If you have a blog, what do you hope people take away from yours?  Anyone learn any great life lessons in the short 6 months I’ve been yakking away here?

Or…you can just pray to the weather gods to hold back the wetness this afternoon and wish me luck on my race! T-minus 5ish hours to go.  🙂