In a rash decision this morning – after reading a number of blog posts from fellow NaBloPoMo participants – I decided to sign up, too: 30 blog posts in 30 days (during the month of November). You can read more about it on San’s blog about it here. The reading session this morning reminded me of how much I enjoyed it the first time I participated. It made me feel connected in a way the online world usually does not make me feel. Part of me is a little guilty when I don’t post the rest of the year. It’s like getting out of touch with old friends. I hope, like with good friends, we can catch up where we left of. It’s about priorities. This month one of my priorities will be to post daily and trying to keep up with everyone’s blog posts. I also hope to give my readers a better idea what my day to day life looks like. My sister was asking me the other day what my routine is like. This is something that gets drowned out if you don’t see each other on a regular basis. So hopefully this will be a kind of a daily check in for this crazy month of November with all the holidays looming in the near future.
What other priorities I have you might wonder?
First and foremost my family – they will always come first. I have two teenagers this year, one of them working on their driver’s license what I feel is slightly scary. In the US it is just us four, me, my husband and the kids. The rest of the family is in Germany but we try to stay in touch as best as we can.
Then there is my work. Since we moved here in 2005 I work in the same research lab at UC Berkeley and I really love what I do. I am the lab manager/cell culture fairy/ jack of all trades for them and as the years went on a little bit of a the lab mom because by now a lot of the students could be my own kids and I love them dearly (most days). I work 80% and that seems about right most of the time. I really would miss it, would I stop but sometimes it’s a struggle to keep up with life outside work and all its responsibilities like dinner, laundry and gardening not even to mention keeping everyone’s calendar straight.
Creating something with my hands is my favorite past time – let it be knitting, sewing, painting, baking. I have also started to read more again thanks to a book club I joined. When I was a kid I was a real bookworm.
Last year I started learning Spanish on Duolingo and even though it’s not perfect it helped me learn the basics. I am still keeping up with my streak (453 days) but recently switched to French.
Last month I signed up for a gym that offers classes only. I can talk more about the why and how it is going another day, but this is something that is not negotiable this month so it makes the list.
If you are doing NaBloPoMo this year what is year motivation? What is one of your other priorities in your daily life?
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