Who rules your empire?

Welcome back! Coffee's always on around here. Pull up your favorite chair and a grab a cup. Enjoy your visit today! And don't forget to stop back by again soon.

I will be the first to admit building a life of trailblazing proportions isn’t easy. It’s bound to make your palms sweaty, your heart beat faster, your mind work overtime thinking of all the worse case scenarios that could happen (but probably won’t, by the way).

But you know what? Fear isn’t a bad thing . . . unless you let it be king and rule your empire.

While fear might be your biggest problem to overcome, it’s not worth letting it stop you. It doesn’t necessarily mean being fearless . . . instead it means, work through the fear and just go for it anyway.

One thing I’ve learned is that if I can just push through the fear and take a leap into the unknown, the net will appear to catch me. When I come out on the other side of that fear, I feel like a champion – like I rule my world. And that’s a good feeling that will help propel me further forward.

Fear doesn’t have to rule you. And neither do other people. You don’t have to lead your life based on other people’s expectations.

Let me tell you something – regret comes not from what we’ve tried, but from what we haven’t. It’s because we tried and gave up instead of trying one more time. When you fall down, get back up and try again.

The bottom line is . . . .

Don’t just deal with life – make life deal with you.

Until next time . . . keep blazin’.

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I can’t believe I’m this old already! (Or . . . Hello September!!)

Okay y’all, I think I’m possibly having a bit of a mid-life crisis!

How on earth is it possible that I have an almost-17-year-old-daughter going into her Junior year of high school already??

And who gave permission for my baby, who just turned 6 a couple weeks ago, to start FIRST GRADE??? Who?

I want to know!

On the other hand . . . Hello September! I thought you’d never get here.

Elementary open house tonight, jr. high orientation tomorrow and school starts in a week! Hooray!

 

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New logo

Just thought I’d share with you the new logo I designed for myself yesterday afternoon. There are 3 versions and as soon as I decide which one I like best, I’ll probably be changing the one in the header to this one in the near future.

Let me know what you think! (And which one you like!!)

Version 1 –

New Logo 2010

Version 2 –

Name Logo - V2

And Version 3 — (which I think I like best)

Name Logo - V3

What you can’t see, is that version 1 and version 3 have borders around the outside just like the pink around version 2, only it’s white so it’s unnoticeable on this white background. ;-)

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Becoming an early riser

I am not a morning person. Not by any stretch of the imagination. Never have been. My mom says even as a baby and young child I was more of a night owl. Of course, I can get up early when I really have to but it’s a chore for me – a task I really hate doing. I just don’t “do” morning.

Yeah, I’ve had jobs and other essential times in my life where I have been forced to get up early and I always just plain hated it. And now, what with children having to get up early for school, I’ve become a semi-early riser even in the summer and non-school days. Most of the time, I’m awake by 7:30 when there is no school. During the school year, I’m up shortly after 6.

But what I’m talking about here – and my intention – is to change that. Not that I like waking up early any better, it’s just I’m ready to bite the bullet and do it anyway. Instead of it being a chore to get up at the crack o’dawn or sooner, I want to actually do it because I WANT to. Not because it’s essential or because I HAVE to.

In short, I’m trying to change my attitude towards mornings and getting up early.

Instead of thinking of it as a chore, I want to think of it as fun and exciting. I want to get things started in the morning and just have time to do things in the quiet before everyone else is up. I want to relish in that quiet moment.

I was thinking about this yesterday and I realized that if I get up at 7:30-8 here on the West Coast, it’s already 10:30-11 a.m. on the East Coast. Practically lunch time! If someone over there is an early riser and gets up at 5-6 in the morning, they’ve already been up for about SIX HOURS before I even get out of bed! LOL Imagine what I could do in that amount of time! While I’m not going to get up 3am just so I can be on the same schedule as someone in Eastern time zone, I do want to get up early enough that I can feel a sense of accomplishment every day. Becoming an early riser is all about blazing trails, pushing the envelope and breaking all the rules.

Because sometimes, it’s our own constraints that need to be broken in order to move forward.

What are you going to do this week to break the constraints of your life? Tell me in the comments . . .

Until next time . . . keep blazin’!

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What this blog is about . . . or I revamped the categories

In my post more housekeeping yesterday, I mentioned that I had revamped the categories. So far, I’m happy with those changes (which were actually made Friday and Saturday) but I thought perhaps you’d like to know a little more about them so you can find what you’re looking for.

I’m still not sure what I’m going to do about tags, though. For now I am not using them although they still exist on the blog. But I do have 19 20 categories since adding a new one yesterday. I may add one more but I will be keeping the total number of categories at 20 or less. They may change over time depending on what happens with the content direction and from feedback I get from you. So once again, don’t be shy – speak up! I want to know your thoughts, m’kay?

Anyway, the categories are: (I feel like I’m announcing a grammy or oscar winner or something! LOL)

  • Announcements. This is pretty self-explanatory, I think. It’ll be for announcing new things and changes I’ve made (like this post, for example).
  • Around the Web. If you’ve been following this blog for a while, you know I (try to) regularly post a list of links from good reads around the web and that’s exactly what this category is for – so you can find all those link posts!
  • Creativity. A new category, it’s purpose here is to share with you creative things, give you ideas to enhance or develop your own creativity and possibly to share my own artwork with you from time to time.
  • Food. We all enjoy talking about food and as I continue revamping my family’s meals, I want to document that. My other aim with this category is to give you a resource that you can use with your family too.
  • Health & Fitness. I am trying to incorporate more health and fitness into my family’s lifestyle so I will discuss those things here as well as continue to document my own ongoing health needs. Again, it’ll also aim to be a resource for you as well.
  • Ideas. Everybody needs to get better at developing ideas and then actually acting upon them and with the goal of this website to live my life authentically and to help you to live yours that way too, there will be lots of times we need to share ideas and thoughts and sometimes we’ll need to discuss how to get ideas and what to do with them.
  • Intentions. Since I do not do goals, this is my category for . . . intentions. (You can read why I don’t do goals here.) Every week, we’ll talk about our intentions for the next week or two.
  • Life. Because the whole premise here is to live the best Life possible, we have to talk about heavy things once in a while that affect everything else. We’ll do that here.
  • Mindset. Probably one of the most important categories. Mindset is everything is learning to blaze new trails and live life at full speed. We’ll be talking about this A LOT.
  • Miscellaneous. Sometimes, I’ll post about things that just don’t go with any other category (like music or family or something like that) so I’ll be using this category for those types of posts.
  • Motivation. Once in a while (or sometimes, a lot, if you’re like me), we need a little nudge – or a huge shove! So this is where we’ll talk about keeping ourselves going on this new adventure.
  • Personal. I often talk about things that are more personal in nature and sometimes we’ll discuss getting personal in your new walk with life too. This category will hold all of that stuff.
  • Personal Development. We will use this one very, very often as we get going here. This is where we will talk about all that self-help, self-realization, self-reliance type stuff as well as the resources we’ll use as we develop our best life and set the world on the fire with our ideas.
  • Relationships. And this one is because we all have relationships that need nurturing. Part of living authentically will include developing our relationships to their fullest potential – from networking relationships to kids to significant others and more. Relationships play a vital role in going full speed ahead.
  • Risk. Remember I told you a few days ago that there will be risk involved? Well, we’ll talk about all that stuff here.
  • Self. Isn’t that what this is all about? Getting the most of our life and being true to ourselves? Yep! So, we’ll be talking about this all the time.
  • Spirituality. Whether you’re religious or not, there often is some sort of spiritual influence in your life. It’s another one of those very important things in nurturing body, body and soul so we’ll be discussing it regularly as well.
  • Trailblazing. That is what we’re doing! Blazing new trails! Life, love and the pursuit of happiness.
  • Work. Another one of those things we all need to be involved in, in some way. We’ll talk about traditional work, working from home, my work and everything else that deals with work.

And I just thought of the 20th category! LOL

  • Entrepreneurship. Some of us work for ourselves or SHOULD be working for ourselves. My aim is to give you insights on my own business as well as help you develop your own, if you want to do so.

SO, there you go! That is the focus of this blog. From here on out, we’re Trailblazers, setting the world on fire by taking the road less traveled.

Until next time . . . keep blazin’!

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Blazin’ a trail

You know what I want to do?

Wait . . . before I tell you, let me say something else first . . .

I am getting so excited! Everywhere I look lately, my friends and online acquaintances are really beginning to take some big steps in their own lives. And the more I see that and begin taking big steps in my own life, the more excited I get. It’s so fun to watch!

Ok, so, now that we have that out of the way . . . LOL . . . what was I going to say?

Oh right – you know what I want to do?

Be bold! Live life out loud! Take risks! Shout from the rooftops! Push the envelope! Go out on a limb! Break all the rules! Blaze a new trial!

And that’s what we’re doing, right? Trailblazing! Living life at full speed! Creating a life on fire!

I love it! And I’m so glad you’re along for the ride.

Take some time today and connect with Spirit (aka God, the Universe, Goddess – whatever you wish to call the Creator). Just relax, pray and seek some quiet space to connect. Ground yourself in that love.

Then tomorrow, get back to setting the world on fire! ;-) Make a list tonight before you go to bed with 3 things you WILL do this week to move you closer to your dreams and intentions. And if you feel like it, tell me what your 3 things are in the comments. I’d love to hear them so I can help cheer you on!

Until next time . . . keep blazin’.

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More housekeeping

You may notice as you’re browsing around, I’ve narrowed down my categories and tags. They were getting out of control and sometimes there is such a thing as TOO organized. ;-) LOL It’s a fault of mine. I’m ultra organized most of the time and every once in a while, it actually just ends up creating too much chaos and clutter.

So, I have whittled the categories down to 18 instead of the 36 or whatever I had before. And the tags are now down to something like 116 from several hundred. But I’m not satisfied with the tags yet. I think, actually, that I may just do away with them. My aim here is to keep things simple and cut down on the overwhelm. But I haven’t really decided yet about the tags. I’m going to try revamping them a bit more and if it still isn’t working, I’ll likely just cut them out altogether.

I’ve also added a new toolbar thing at the top of the page. It’s got some great search features as well as social bookmarking/sharing features that I thought you’d enjoy. You can email, facebook or tweet anything on this site with the toolbar. Makes it super simple!

There are a few other things I may do in the next week or two but they’ll be small changes too. I’m not doing a drastic overhaul of anything, don’t worry!

The only thing which really may be all that different is the topics I’ll be covering. Along with what I already discuss, I am planning to focus more on topics like personal development, mindset, self, creativity, entrepreneurship and motivation. I’ll also be talking about spirituality, work, relationships, risk, and health and fitness as well as life, intentions and personal things.

Listen, though – this blog is as much for you as it for me. If you don’t like the direction I’m taking things, PLEASE speak up and say so! I don’t just want to hear the nice comments – I want to hear the critical ones too.

This past week, I’ve spent a lot of time really going over what I want out of this blog. What I’ve come up with really isn’t all that far off from what it is now. Basically, I’m going to be sharing with you the steps I’m taking to “build a better me” like I wrote about last week. My hope is that it offers you some ideas for your own life.

Like I wrote in “Throwing convention to the wind,” I’m blazing a new trail and I’d love to have you along!

Enjoy your Sunday! See you again very soon.

And please, let me know what you think and if there’s anything in particular you’d like to read about here.

Be blessed,

{ write * design * blog }

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