Ultimate Blog Challenge – The End

And it’s over. 30 days of writing. 30 days of posting. Well, more like 15 days of posting for me. I started late with the challenge and had to do some catching up. By the 19th of the month I was on track to post once a day.

But hey, there’s a reason this little space on the Internet is called Life Takes Over. It happens. It’s a fact of, well, Life.

I lost five days in the last part of the month to mundane important parenting responsibilities. (Feeding my kids healthy meals does take a lot of prep time and a certain amount of planning genius, especially when dealing with picky eaters.)

But here’s what I learned by taking part in the Ultimate Blog Challenge:

Dragged back out again

You ever feel like just writing? Just going blah blah blah blah to get something out of your head and into the world where you can face it and deal with it and have done with it once and for all? Not worrying about spelling or grammar or sentence structure, or who’s going to read it or what they will think of it or anything like that?

Sitting is bad for your health

There has been a recent spate of articles in the media about how “sitting is the new smoking”. (freshjuice.ca, news.discovery.com, theglobeandmail.com. There are more articles. You can Google the topic if you want to read them all.)

Generations before us, the majority of people used their bodies to make a living, get around, survive, etc. Nowadays, most of us just use our minds. Our bodies aren’t as active as they once were. So we have to fit in a daily visit to the gym to get the exercise we once got just by going about our daily lives.

Tomorrow’s the big day

I’m off to the ShesConnected conference in Toronto.

I have been looking forward to this since September!

What I expect to get out of the next two days:

When you’ve had enough

Missed deadlines at work. Late picking up your youngest at daycare. Late getting to the school to pick up your oldest. Construction on every road and highway you take. Rush hour traffic that behaves more like a shopping mall parking lot at Christmas. No time to stop at the grocery store for ingredients for dinner and no suitable food in the house with which to create at least a semi-healthy dinner for your family. Screaming kids in the backseat because they are hungry-thirsty-tired-bored-cranky-hot-cold, etc.

Sometimes, it really can be too much.

You just want to scream, I’VE HAD ENOUGH. I CAN’T TAKE IT ANYMORE!

A writer’s words and letting go

Of stuff. Of ideas. Of anger. Of resentment and jealousy.

When I started blogging, I recorded every idea that came to me on a voice recorder on my phone. I didn’t want to lose the moment or the thought that was so precious and would surely lead to an insightful blog post. I love blogging. I love writing. I needed content and each idea that came to me was like gold.

Life Takes Over…in more ways than one

So I’ve been thinking a lot lately about the name of my blog and how it came to be.

My husband and I came up with it because it’s something I used to say to him before we were married. Life takes over. You can’t escape it. Eventually, you have to take on responsibility and grown-up attitudes, and do things like get a steady job, buy a house, get married, have kids, etc.

A river in the city – some Time for Nature

My family and I live in a city. You might be picturing a concrete jungle without much opportunity to connect with nature. Yet our neighbourhood is teeming with nature and my kids love it.

We live not far from the Humber River and spend many a lazy day sauntering along the path enjoying what nature has to offer. We have met deer, frogs, snakes, geese (always geese), chipmunks and squirrels. I think we may have even spooked a beaver by accident once.

Recently, my husband and I took our kids to a local park to do some climbing and swinging. There’s a path at this park that connects to the Humber River. Thinking our kids would rather play at the playground, we settled on a park bench to watch them and enjoy the sun.

My Words – the power of connecting

I don’t know about you, but as a writer I do a lot of reading. And when I read quotes, I always think, “Wow, someone thought that what this person said or wrote was important or inspiring enough to quote them.”

I can also only speak for myself (although I suspect that most writers share my feelings on this) when I say that the words that I write, the phrases that they combine to make, are my babies. And when I hit “publish”, I’m sending my babies out into the world to impress, to inspire, to connect with readers.

Connect – FMF with Lisa-Jo Baker

I’m linking up with Lisa-Jo’s Five Minute Friday over at lisajobaker.com today.

The word we’re writing about for 5 minutes is connect. The deal is to write for five minutes without editing out our creative voice. Just write. Don’t use the backspace key, don’t worry about spelling or grammar and no do-overs, editing or over thinking. Then link back to Lisa-Jo and invite others to join in. Oh, and you must visit the person who linked up before you and comment on their post! And visit as many other bloggers as you like, too. We could all use a little encouragement when we just let go and write. This is about community and connecting and beautifully unedited words!

GO: