Kim is Leaving to Chase Her Dreams

I have a tissue box sitting next me, and it's not just because I'm fighting a cold. I know by the end of composing this post I will lose my composure and tears will soak my cheeks.

Kim leaves this week to move to Virginia to attend the Doctor of Physical Therapy Program at Murphy Deming College of Health Sciences. Her classes begin in one week! I have no doubt that she is ready for this next chapter. She has the drive, determination, and passion to make her dreams of becoming a physical therapist come true. She is super intelligent.  She is willing to challenge herself to work hard because she expects the best out of herself. I have deep admiration and respect for the woman she is and the woman she wants to become. I believe her in her dreams!

Out of all of my sisters, Kim understands me the best. She may be younger than me, but there is a maturity to our relationship that I don't have with other family members. We can be brutally honest with each other and still respect each others' opinions and advice. We can disagree without raising our voices. More importantly, we can disagree and still actively listen to what the other one is saying. I value her perspective on life. We are always there to support each other. I love hanging out and talking with her and I equally love sitting in silence with her. She has the best smile and the most additive laugh I've ever heard. She makes me a better person. When I grow up, I want to be like her.

I'm going to miss her like crazy. I compare this feeling to mourning my good health and Taylor moving away. I know life will go on, but I also know it's going to be different. There's going to be a void, there's going to be an adjustment, and there's going to be a period of feeling lost without her.

I am so proud of Kim for being fearless in chasing after what she wants out of life! I think she is going to blossom during this next chapter of her life, and I'm excited to see her become the woman she wants to be! Go kick ass, baby sis! I love you and remember... https://youtu.be/5tepYJno7rU

Truth Bomb

I saw this quote on Facebook: "You're Always One Decision Away from a Totally Different Life." How is that for a truth bomb? We all could make a decision or multiple decisions that would change our lives respectfully!  Whoa!!! 

In 2017, I want to dream bigger! I need to sit down and ponder what I want out of life when I'm not just surviving, and then I need to (*gasp*) plan how I will achieve these so called bigger goals! A lot of people around me are changing their lives by going to school, moving, having babies, or getting married. Whereas I was thinking along the lines of flossing and eating healthier on a regular basis. Although I'm not currently ready for a drastically different life, I want to plan so that one day I will be. One day, my teeth, gums, and waist line will thank me. 

My Badass is Ready to Live My Dream!

You guys, this it! This is going to be my last blog before I conquer the NYC Marathon. Race day is eight days away. I'm still trying to wrap my head around the whirlwind of emotions that have been washing over me. All of my training comes down to one day, Sunday, November 6th, 2016. There are enough people planning to track me on race day, from co-workers, family, and friends, that it should help encourage me to push through "the wall" when/if I hit it because I know everyone will be watching (tracking) me.  No pressure, right? A part of me loves the attention and another part of me wishes no one knew.

Some things that make me anxious:

• Daylight Savings Time ends the morning of the race, which means time changes at 2AM on November 6th, race day.
• There is a chance of rain on race day. Wet shoes and wet socks are the perfect breeding ground for blisters. Blisters and Marathons are not good friends.
• Aunt Flow could fuck things up.
• The hills and bridges are a bit intimidating.

Some things that make me excited:

• Cooler weather will give me the chance to run my optimal race.
• Frank Sinatra's song 'New York' playing as I cross the start line.
• The energy of the crowd.
• Central Park will be beautiful to run through with the leaves of the trees changing color this time of year.
• Seeing Taylor cheer for me in the Grandstand seats as I near the finish line.
• The sweet taste of victory as I cross the iconic finish line of the TCS NYC Marathon. (I cried as I typed the last sentence.)

On March 8th, when I found out I got into the NYC Marathon, I couldn't run a 5k without struggling. So if you think you could never run a marathon, think again because I'm proof anything is possible with hard work. Since March, I've worked my butt off to prepare for this race. I even overcame some health issues in April and started new medicine in May. Failure is not an option. I'm healthy, I'm strong, and my badass is ready to live my dream!

29 Days Left!!

Where has the time gone? In one month, running the NYC Marathon will be a mere memory. I will have achieved a huge dream of mine by crossing the finish line in Central Park! Even though I'll likely walk funny and be in pain after the race, I cannot wait!!! The pain I feel after I've put forth my best effort is one of the most rewarding feelings and sweetest victories around. After I cross the finish line, I want to be able to say, "I left everything I have out on the course!" I'm hesitant to set a time goal. Perhaps part of me is cowardly because I don't want to set a time goal and disappoint myself. However, I think the real reason it's difficult for me to set a time goal is because I'm not sure I know what a realistic goal would be. Sure, I know which pace group I train with, but there are going to be different factors that I haven't encountered before. The weather will likely be drastically cooler with lower humidity than the weather I've been training in, which will actually increase my overall speed. But then there are the hills and bridges, which might slow me down. The first mile is all up hill on the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge and then the course is relatively flat until mile 15. Honestly, I'm a little intimidated about the second half of course being full of bridges and hills. The other factor that comes into play is the crowd. I've been told the crowd can carry a runner through the race. There are going to be millions of people on the sidelines cheering throughout the race. Once we get into Manhattan the crowd in some places are known to be more than ten people deep just lining the course encouraging the runners! The last factor that has me a bit concerned is the fact that I am almost certain Aunt Flow will be accompanying me during the race.  Won't that be fun??? My main goal is to have fun during race. I want to run in the moment and enjoy the dream I worked so hard for! Although a PR would be nice. lol

The race is 29 days away!!! This is it people! I am really going to run the TCS NYC Marathon! I didn't run this week as I was letting blisters heal from my half marathon on Sunday. To make matters worse, my long run this weekend with the group was cancelled because of Hurricane Matthew.  I don't think a week off will set me back since I've stayed on track with training very well for the most part.  Hopefully, I'll be able to get a run in on my own this weekend. It probably wont be 16 miles like my schedule suggests, but anything is better than nothing. Plus, I have my longest training run on my schedule set for October 15th. I'm going to attempt a 20 miler with my group, so I'm not going to beat myself over taking it a little easy leading up to that long run.

I am super excited about the NYC trip!!! I have a lot of expectations and I have no doubt NYC will deliver and exceed them!

I Take Naps in My Dreams

I thought I got all of my credit card shenanigans straightened out. Thankfully, I remembered my dream last night, which triggered a thought. In the dream, my sisters, a few friends, and I were on vacation in NYC. Apparently, I take naps in my dreams. Anyways, when I woke up this morning, I was lost for second because I thought I was taking a nap in a hotel room in NYC, not in my bedroom in Florida. It made me think about my dream, NYC, and the NYC Marathon. That's when I started to freak out. I remembered that I forgot to change my billing information on the New York Road Runners website where the marathon lottery takes place. The drawing isn't until March 8th. so I did have some time... but it was a close call for someone with a memory as bad as mine. If I didn't update my billing info with a valid credit card and I won the lottery into the NYC Marathon on March 8th, I would have forfeited my entry because I didn't have a valid payment method on file.

I'm all set now! Honestly, I don't know if I'm more nervous about my interview on Thursday or the lottery drawing next Tuesday. All the while, I should probably be more concerned about taking naps in my dreams.

Entering a Different Lottery

I'm going to apply for the drawing of the TCS New York City Marathon 2016 non-guaranteed entry.  Since my marathon time isn't fast enough and I don't want to raise money for entry, I'll have to enter the lottery. The application for the drawing opens tomorrow and the drawing will take place on March 8th, 2016.

Currently, I'm in no physical shape whatsoever, which is why I'm only announcing my entry into the NYC Marathon lottery here. If I happen to get in, I'll blast the news all over the place!  It would be the perfect motivation to get my ass moving again. This race is on my bucket list. Of course, I'm not really expecting to get in, but I figured I might as well try. Hell, if I played the insane odds in the powerball, I can muster up the craziness to play my odds in this. The race isn't until November, so I would have 8 months to train if by some miracle I get in on March 8th.

#maytheoddsbeeverinmyfavor  #daretodream  #daretolive  #daretorun #daretohashtag

Falling Baby Dolls

I walked 2.5 miles with my Team Challenge peeps this morning for the Turkey Trot. We kept a 17 minute pace, which felt like a super fast walk to me. Kim even went with me to "evaluate" if I should be doing the half marathon tomorrow.  I was surprised how well I felt. I didn't struggle to breathe and my legs felt stronger than I expected. Kim and my Team Challenge peeps agree that I should at least walk the half marathon tomorrow since there is a 7 hour time limit for the course. This makes me happy because after picking up my race packet yesterday, the pre-race excitement is running through my veins.

Of course, there's a catch. I'm constipated. I haven't pooped since Wednesday. I took laxatives on Thursday and Friday, but I still haven't pooped. I won't be taking any laxatives today because I don't want them to start working during the race. I just hope my stomach feels okay tomorrow. Two weeks ago I was pooping about every hour and now I can't even poop. This disease makes no sense. My bowel habits are almost always on my mind.

In other news, I remembered the dream I had last night. As much as I sleep I rarely remember my dreams, so this is exciting for me. Tons of naked baby dolls were falling from the ceiling and whoever collected the most in a minute won. I never saw anyone else trying to collect the baby dolls in my dream though. It was just me running around picking up as many naked dolls as I could. It hurt when the falling dolls fell on my head, so I was trying to avoid the falling dolls in the process. It was the longest minute ever... Super strange.

Learn All The Things!

Lately, I've been overwhelmed with how many different things I want to learn. It's difficult because I'm in the middle of a rough semester that doesn't leave me much free time to learn new things outside of school. I think that's part of the reason I'm craving to learn new hobbies.

- I want to learn to draw so that I can illustrate a children's book when I write one in the future.
- I want to learn html coding and web design so that I can create my own website.
- I want to learn a new language. In fact, I just got 50% off all five levels of Rosetta Stone for Spanish. I also plan on purchasing Rosetta Stone for French before the 50%  off sale expires. Two for the price of one!!! That should help me prepare for my future international travels. After I graduate from UCF, I plan on diving in and investing time to actually learn to fluently speak a foreign language.
- I want to learn how to ballroom dance. Perhaps I'll take lessons when time permits.
- I want to learn how to play an instrument; drums, piano and guitar are at the top of my list. Especially drums, so that I can be a badass, female drummer in a superstar band. (I'd totally rock a Mohawk!)
- I want to learn how to solve a Rubik's cube.
- I want to learn how to act. In the future, I'd love to take some acting classes. It will come in handy when I move to Hollywood when I'm 70 years old to get some Betty White type rolls.

Professional Selling

Summer B term is now complete. I'm free for the next 18 days, but somehow I've scheduled so many things that I don't actually have much free time to myself during those 18 days of freedom. I have four classes left to take before I graduate! Shit just got real, folks! Graduating with my bachelor's has been a distant dream for a while now, and it's hard for me to believe that I'm this close to achieving it.

As far as my Summer B class, Professional Selling, is concerned, it was one of favorites. I learned more real world skills in this class than any other class I've taken before. Interview skills, how to read people, how to sell products and how to sell myself to a recruiter. It was one of the most challenging classes I've taken, but it has also been one of the most rewarding.  I'm likely going to get a 'B' overall, and I'm okay with that because I feel like I've learned a lot, I will take away a lot from this class, and I will apply it to making a future for myself. Not only was the class a great benefit to me, but my professor was too.

My Professional Selling professor, Karl Sooder, has a heart of gold. I took advantage of his office hours and just today I spent an hour with him talking about life and my future. Seriously, it made me giddy! I think I'm going to use him as a mentor.  He wanted to know how he can help in my career moving forward. What? A professor cares about my future!!! How awesome is that? We went over my strengths and weaknesses. He has a background in sales and has worked with many high profile corporations in his career like Coca Cola, so he has his foot in the door. He sometimes shares student resumes with these corporations. My goal in the fall is to get my resume in his system, pick his brain about different things, and learn more from his experiences.

Dreams, Goals and Plans

A big struggle of mine has been planning and setting goals to reach my dreams. Heck, I tussle with dreaming in general. I'm more of a visionary today than I was five years ago, but I'd still like to improve my ability to think and plan for the future with imagination and wisdom. A wish of mine is that more people in my life would challenge me to challenge myself and encourage me to strive to dream, set goals, and plan to reach those dreams. I'm addicted to routine as much as anybody else, yet somehow my fear of failure has been replaced with a fear of settling where I'm at. I've not yet reached my potential.  I used to think dreaming was scary because the future used to scare me. However, now I'm more afraid that my present will be my future and I want to dream big enough to make sure I'm not in the same place in five years. So, my three year dream is as follows:

2015:  Graduate from U.C.F.

2016: Work at a corporation with a career ladder to climb; where I can be constantly learning and growing my experience in the industry. If I ever become a stale employee, I will look for other opportunities to further my career. Experience is my top priority.

2017:  Be ultimately independent and move out of state for the ultimate adventure of my life.

The only dream I have a concrete plan for is to graduate in 2015. The other two need blue prints. At least I know what I'm working towards. My 2017 dream has gotten some criticism, but I have faith I will figure it out in time with the help of my bowels. Details aren't really my forte, so I have to work especially hard to work them out.