Today is my birthday

These pictures were taken a few years apart.

As you can see by the headline, today is my birthday, so instead of doing a post about 7-year-old me, I think I may talk for a bit about 25-year-old me.

He’s new here, so let’s be nice to him.

I started this blog the first week of July with a two-fold hope. One was to start writing creatively, to break out of the journalism box for a bit and write some things I enjoy. It’s not that I don’t like covering city and county government, because anyone who sees me on a regular basis will tell you that as much as I complain about aspects of the job, I do really like it. At least I hope they would say that. The other was to better myself.

In the past few months that I’ve worked on upholding this weekly schedule (which has been a challenge, but I’m really happy with how well I’ve kept up with it), I have been making little changes as I look back at the things that 7-year-old me did versus what I am doing with my life right now. In many ways I am very serious about that first post, about how important it is to periodically think back to one’s life as a 7 year old and what their plans were for you.

In 2011, I cannot say that I’m an artist, an astronaut or a Ghostbuster (although I would be in a heartbeat, depending on the benefits package), but I have taken some proactive steps, things I didn’t think I would be getting into any time soon. For instance, the last few weeks I’ve taken up jogging. It’s been and getting active may come with way more pain than I thought (I haven’t really done any kind of working out since my senior year of college and not regularly since high school) but it has been  a nice change of pace from just hanging at my apartment all the time.

I also have been doing some writing on the side again as well. About a month ago an idea that was gestating in my mind started becoming more and more clear and I think I have the basis for a decent novel, and possibly beginning of a series. I don’t know where it will go from here, and right now I’m not a lot further than the outline for the third chapter, but I’m liking the progress I’ve made. I’ve been thinking about starting to post some of the chapters on here as I get them more fleshed out and depending on whether or not it gets me behind on the blog.

OK, I’m going to wrap this up before it goes on too much longer, but I think I just wanted to say, and document that so far, this experience has been incredibly beneficial. I also cannot thank all of you who are reading enough for the support. It’s funny when I see people out and they tell me they’re reading the blog, or the comments I get on my posts here or on Facebook. Hopefully you’re enjoying reading this as much as I am putting it together.