Wow, time flies. Carrie’s Fit Life has been on hiatus for all of 2011 so far, but that hasn’t been intentional. I’ve missed blogging and I hope to get back to it on a more regular basis.
My last post was reflections of 2010 and resolutions for 2011. I’m pleased to report that I am plugging right along at two of my resolutions: taking more steps forward than back, and resolving my procrastination issues. The third, maintaining and excelling at Carrie’s Fit LIfe has been not so successful in a fitness sense, but in terms of mind-body, I’m steadily progressing.
I’m not going to lie, I haven’t achieved any of my specific objectives. I haven’t worked on a website, I haven’t lost weight (in fact I’ve gained a few lbs), and I haven’t trained for an Ironman 70.3 I did train and complete my first 1/2 marathon in May, so that counts for something, right? Just because the blog has been idle does not mean I’ve been idle, so here’s an update on a couple things going on with Carrie’s Fit Life so far this year.
2011 is turning out to be a year of travel for me. So far this year I’ve had two mini vacations to Colorado and Hilton Head, SC, and a weekend in Washington DC. The entire summer is delegated to family/friend weekend travels, then in October I’ll go on yet another vacation to San Francisco. I don’t normally travel this much but I love to do it, so I’m enjoying it while I can, even if I do get a little tired sometimes.
One of my struggles over the last few years has been not having a career that is personally fulfilling to me. As much as I want to do meaningful work, I’ve always chosen fitness first, partly because I don’t actually know what kind of work is meaningful to me. Every so often I think I find it, so I jump to pursue it, then abandon ship. Some people see it as procrastination or not following through, but I think what happens is I realize that it isn’t really what I want, so I move on. The good thing is there’s always something else I want to try – the bad news is I often feel like I’m spinning in circles, going nowhere.
One evening a few months ago, frustrated about job searching with no direction, I made a decision to really put some effort into figuring out what I should do. I took the advice of a career coach I listen to on the radio, Maggie Mistal, and did some soul searching. I thought about I really care about, what I like to do, and what kind of work could really make me happy.
I realized that even though I love to learn and talk about fitness and nutrition, I’m not interested in training others, only myself. And I thought about the list of topics and questions I’m always keeping so I can one day research and write about them. After taking some time to research and talk to people, I’ve decided to go back to school to obtain a master’s degree in Public Health, focusing on social behavior and research.
This hasn’t been an easy decision to make, and part of me wonders if I’ve just found another way to procrastinate actually doing anything, at the same time increasing my expenses but reducing resources. But for now, I’m happy to at least be working towards a future I’m hopeful about, and the research I’ve done so far indicates that research itself is a career I might actually be able to obtain. I just hope I’m patient enough to wait the couple of years it will take this path to develop. 
When I glance up at what I’ve written so far, it doesn’t really seem like enough to cover over seven months of time, but there’s only so many hours left in a day after sleep and a full time job, so things develop slower than expected. Nothing happens overnight, and many other things that happen just aren’t blog-worthy but believe me, I rarely suffer from a dull moment and (thankfully) I’m never bored.
So the highlights of 2011 to date are travel, career soul searching and learning to adapt to a fit life without large amounts of actual fitness. The latter has not been as easy to adjust to as you would think, hopefully I’ll write more about that in a future post. Until then, know that Carrie’s Fit Life continues to be fit and living, and I hope to be back with more soon.
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