Fall Goals

How did summer completely pass by? It's gone. I didn't even write summer goals, I just did summer.

The last month was honestly a blur. I had just under 20 events over the first month of school. This past two weekends were the first that I could enjoy and I am happy to report that I did absolutely no work! Which also has me focused on making the most of these beautiful fall days that we have left. Fall is absolutely my favorite season, and I want to take full advantage before that winter coat comes back out of the closet. I also want to get back into a regular routine for school, work and fun.

Eat: The last post about goals that I wrote was in the spring after I had just finished a Whole30. And now I just finished one again. After stomach issues all spring/summer, I'm feeling the best that I've ever felt. And so I think I'm going to try to keep up with my mostly meat/eggs/veggies/fruit/nuts/seeds diet, with the much less frequent piece of pizza or donut thrown in. Because health. I ate an english muffin on Sunday and thought I might die. More on that later. Plus I need to continue eating through the abundance that is our CSA. If I could do it during my busiest time of year, why not keep it up?  

Drink: Pumpkin Spice coffee from Trader Joe's. TJs has pumpkin everything right now. Most of it didn't fit with Whole30 (although I was totally tempted by the pumpkin spice cookie butter). This was a great find. And Chris bought me a pour-over so that I can drink one cup at a time, since he will stick to regular coffee and thinks this stuff sounds totally gross. More for me. Totally fills my pumpkin spice latte craving without the sugar or milk.

Read: More books! I slacked off a bit on my reading challenge, but have been picking it back up lately. I've finished 24 of the 52 for this year in the Pop Sugar Ultimate Reading Challenge, most recently re-reading Eat, Pray, Love. Right now I am reading The Princess Bride by William Goldman. Totally a family favorite movie - I'm excited to read the book. I am also reading Rising Strong by Brene Brown and can't wait to purchase Big Magic by Elizabeth Gilbert.

Watch: Scandal! So excited it's back. It's the only show that I try to keep up with from week to week. I binged on a lot of different shows over the summer, including all five seasons of Game of Thrones in a very short time period. And The Newsroom, which I loved and am sad to hear is done. After all of the binge watching, I'm actually really excited to go back to watching something on a weekly basis - I enjoy the suspense and cliff hangers, rather than jumping right in to the next episode. Also - who else is excited about The Muppets being back on tv?!

Listen: To a few different podcasts. Right now my two go-to podcasts that I listen to while washing dishes are "Happier" with Gretchen Rubin and Elizabeth Craft and "Magic Lessons" with Elizabeth Gilbert. That's right - I do a lot of soul searching while washing dishes.

Wear: All of my fall clothes. It's my favorite wardrobe! Scarves. Sweatshirts. Jeans. Boots. It's the best that my closet has to offer and I'm singing about it! "All the fall things.."

Finish: Dissertation interviews! That's right. I'm in full swing on the research. Round one of interviews are wrapping up this week. I'll get all of my transcription and coding underway, and then proceed with Round Two before the end of the semester. Momentum is a great thing.

Purchase: Some serious winter boots. I've had my current pair for over five years. It's time for a new pair before the snow falls.

Stop: And snuggle kitties. Because kitties.

Go: To Boulder! I am SO excited to get to spend a long weekend with three of my favorite people in the whole world. They give me life. And we see each other far too infrequently. So we are going to live it up in the mountains, do nature-y things, and enjoy every minute together.

Focus: On friends and family. : )

What are your fall goals?

Best Gadgets for Whole30

I am currently on Day 5 of another Whole 30 and feeling great!

I did my first Whole30 back in the winter, and felt the best I had ever felt. I vowed to keep up the healthy eating, but definitely got back into some of my bad habits and decided it was time for a reset again. And what a better time to do it, than when there is tons of fresh, seasonal produce available? 

I have had a lot of friends asking me about my Whole30 experience and any tips that may make it easier. One of the biggest adjustments that I found with Whole30 was meal planning and prep. I definitely have to map out my meals for the week. And when you can't eat processed foods or eat out many places, it's a lot of cooking and dishwashing. Anything that makes it a little easier, is a plus. And having been through this once, I feel much more prepared for a second round. 

Here are the Top 3 gadgets that I recommend: 

1. A Salad Spinner

I know a lot of folks who have one and don't use it, but mine gets a ton of use. Especially with our CSA greens. I have found that if I prep greens right away, I am much more likely to eat time. We got this one as a wedding gift.

2. A Spiralizer



This thing is awesome! I asked for one for my birthday last year, just as I was finishing my first Whole30. I was gifted this bad boy, and have found it super easy to use and clean. Although watch out because those blades are sharp! Spiraled beets are some of my favorite, but there are so many things that you can spiralize. And it just makes things fun.

3. Poach Pods



My mom got these for me as a gift awhile back, and I initially thought they were totally weird. But I love to make poached eggs and they keep the eggs nice and contained while cooking, making clean up much easier. No more floaty egg white to sift out of the water. During Whole30, I tend to eat eggs pretty much every day, so these are getting a ton of use right now.

Do you have any favorite kitchen gadgets?

PhDs and Perfectionism

Encouragement from Dr. Brown is gonna get me through this!

Something big happened this past semester. I made a commitment to taking the next step with my degree, and completed my oral exams. I am officially a PhD candidate and have been approved to move forward with my research. If you know me, this is pretty momentous.

I've been sitting on this egg for awhile. So long, in fact, that I learned through the process of setting up my exams that I actually ran out of time to work on my degree two summers ago. I am currently waiting to hear back on my appeal for an extension. As I wrote the letter explaining my need for more time and outlining my steps to complete my degree in a timely fashion from here, it was an opportunity to reflect on this journey to PhD. Where I have been. Where I am at. Where I need to go.

I feel like a totally different person now than the person I was when I started back in January 2008. That woman was a brand new student affairs professional who somewhat reluctantly agreed to take a class with some colleagues who just wanted to "try it out." All three of us then found ourselves enrolling in a program. I didn't know what it felt like to not be in the classroom. My entire identity had revolved around being a student for 24 years.

When I look at who I am now, it is just so different. Since starting PhD program, I have moved back to my hometown, changed jobs, changed my research topic, changed my advisor, got married, and am now looking to what is ahead for me and my newly-formed family. As I wrote about life changes in my appeal letter, part of me really wanted to write: "What I most look forward to is being done and not being a student any more. That's my assurance to you that I will work to achieve my new deadline. I've got other sh*t to do and dreams to achieve. I am finally ready to check this one off the list. P.S. No one is more annoyed than me that I've taken so long."

I also couldn't bring myself to write that one of my delays is because I have had more than one moment of feeling like "who the heck am I to be doing this?" I have written about that before. It took me two years to get to a place of confidence to have someone else look at the proposal I had written and give feedback, and another 9 months before I was ready to send it to my advisor for the first time. I was so nervous about her feedback, that I wouldn't open her e-mail and notes for months after that. I was afraid her edits would question the worthiness of my proposed study,

It's not that I've ever forgotten that I'm a student. It is that it is easier to push that identity aside rather than spend time dealing with why this has been so hard. To fill my life with other distractions like reading books for fun and kitty snuggles. I am not lazy - in many of those moments of kitten snuggles, I was up in my own head, thinking about my work. I was not procrastinating for the heck of it. It is the perfectionist in me that pushed aside my work and thought that it wasn't good enough to share. That if I passed it on to my advisor, she would tear it apart or deem that the topic for which I am incredibly passionate and that I was ready to invest my time into researching further wasn't a worthwhile study. After I finally opened them, I kicked myself because there wasn't even that much I needed to change. I could have completed my oral exams months earlier and already have been well into my research.

This is my constant struggle. I wish that I could guarantee that the self doubt is gone. I am sure it isn't. But I just have to push past it and chug along. Passing my exams gave me that first big push. And now IRB has given me approval to proceed, participant recruitment is underway, and I've set my finish date as May 2016. I couldn't be more excited to actually be able to start collecting data and learning from the participants' experiences.

Momentum.