Gratituesday: Glad to be back!

Until yesterday, it had been almost two weeks since I had been able to get on here and write anything other than a quick update.  When life was busy at the beginning of those two weeks, I knew blogging had to go on the back burner compared to my husband and my students and my parents.  However, after that I managed to mess up my computer by trying to install a better version of Windows which created an even longer lull in my writing.

During my time away from blogging I learned a few things about what this blog does to help me.  First, it holds me accountable.  Last week, while I was away from blogging I never got around to exercising even once.  My husband and I are helping my parents do some renovations so we were gone a lot of evenings, and I didn't get home until late due to all of the pressure to successfully complete all of my old students' grades and to begin the new trimester in an amazing way.

Each night I would get home late and was too tired to want to exercise.  I would think to myself, get up off of this couch, go upstairs, exercise and stick to your goals.  Until this blog, I never really paid a lot of attention to my new year's resolutions.  But now I can easily go back and remind myself of where I wanted to be, and so these goals are now so ingrained in me that they "nag" me even when I am away from blogging.

I also did not create a menu plan last week.  I wrote a bit about this experience in my menu plan for this week.  For some reason, adding the chaos of not knowing what was for dinner on top of everything else, just made the evenings much more stressful.  I laugh because just a year or two ago I would have thought that a person who can't handle an evening with an unplanned dinner is weak.  Now I know that it is not being weak, but rather being smart.  When dinner is already planned I can use my "brain power" on so many more interesting things.

In conclusion, this blog helps me in so many ways.  I feel more accountable, organized, and at peace when I am blogging.  I also am encouraged by all of the other bloggers out there.  They lift my spirits and inspire me daily.