Oh hey, mid-July. I didn’t see you there.
Is anyone else shocked at how quickly this summer is flying by? I haven’t blogged in almost a month (the horror!), but don’t get your panties all in a bunch. I’m still here.
I’ve also been feeling slightly overwhelmed and discouraged by blogging at times. If you’re a blogger too, you know – it’s hard. Really hard. Especially if you have an actual day job where you may work 50 hours a week, or, I don’t know… kids (I hear they’re a lot of work too). Everything there is to learn, the social media, SEO and promotion, the pressure to post great content, and OFTEN, gain followers and traffic can be just plain exhausting. That’s why I found it pretty refreshing to hear some different perspectives from Hannah and Kristen. Two of my favorite bloggers, both very successful, and with different stories to tell. Their situations may be quite a bit different from mine, but bottom line, they reminded me that it’s OK to do this because I enjoy it. I also have a big blog crush on Lindsay. I love reading her blog because it’s genuine, fun, and HILARIOUS. Just try to read this stuff and not laugh. So I’m trying to remember to just do me. Blogging can be crazy time-consuming, but I think it’s more important that I’m having fun – even if I only have a few readers – than to stress out wishing that I could do more and make money and become famous.
Now enough with the sappy stuff. What the heck have we been up to?! Glad you asked.
I thought I’d try something new, and do a little Friday Five. Mid-Summer Edition. Here are some of the things I’m into slash upto this summer:
1. Beer! The Wyoming Brewer’s Fest is held annually in Cheyenne, this year it was June 19-20. There were 27 Breweries on the attendance list, mostly from Wyoming and Colorado. Plus a few randoms like Deschutes out of Oregon, and Green Flash from California.
Jesse and I were lucky to have some brewer/distributor friends that were able to get us complimentary tickets, and we poured for several booths, met so many cool people, basically acted like we owned the place. SO MUCH FUN!!
2. Visits with Friends! After our 1/2 Marathon in June, we went to a wedding reception in Lead, South Dakota. It was so great to see lots of friends that we only manage to get together with a couple of times a year. We drank moonshine, hung out, and of course, cut a rug.
We spent a few days in Downtown Denver, while Jesse attended a conference and I planned to take a couple of days off to lay around but ended up having to actually work (womp womp). I was able to commute into my company’s Denver office, so it was a change of scenery at least. If you’re looking for good eats in Downtown Denver, go to TAG. Taco Sushi, Kobe Sliders with Duck Fat Fries, and Jalapeño cocktails. GUHHHH.
We got together with one of my best friends from college, who is now living in Denver and completing his medical residency along with his wife and being super awesome in general. We stayed out drinking way too late for a work night and it was totally fun and totally worth it.
We also had one of Jesse’s groomsmen in town for a couple of days from Montana, and we got to meet his girlfriend for the first time. Also drank some beer. Also super awesome!
We spent the 4th of July in Denver at our friend Marshall’s folks’ place. They threw a big party, complete with BBQ, glow sticks, and car bomb races. ‘MERICA.
3. Not running. Dammit. Yes. It’s true. I did it again. I always tell myself I’m going to keep running after a half marathon. And I always take more time off than I should. We were considering running a second half this summer in South Dakota (would have been last weekend). After our brutal race in June, we figured we deserved a week off. One week turned into a few, and we hadn’t registered for the SD run, so we opted to stay home. It’s now been almost a month, and I’ve run a total of 3 times. One of which was a 5k race, which I somehow ended up winning my age group even though I was quite hungover from catching up with friends the night before (see #2).
I am, however, signed up to run the Ragnar Colorado on August 7th-8th, a 200(ish) mile relay with 12 person teams, 3 legs each. Yikes. Time to get it together!
4. Gardening. Slowly but surely. One of my goals for the year was to grow some stuff. We finally replanted our little corner bed, which had about 3 little bush type things in it when we bought the house. They died. (Maybe because we never watered them, ever?) So it was nice to finally pick out some perennials that should require very little maintenance, and come back every year.
We also re-seeded about 2/3 of our lawn, which was pretty much destroyed due to not having a sprinkler system and having a crazy dog who ran her ball along the fence and around the yard all winter. We’ve tried to re-seed before. A couple times. Apparently we did something right this year, because we are growing grass like fricking CHAMPS.
LOOK AT IT. It looks so good. The insane amount of rain we have gotten since late spring didn’t hurt. I also planted my tiny vegetable garden (which I started in the house from seed), and while it’s a little late, it is looking pretty good. FINALLY, I got some flowers for the pots on our front steps. Whew.
5. Pretending I’m a photographer. I took Ashley Ann Photography’s SnapShop phone course. It was short and sweet, a self-paced reading course that you have access to for 3 weeks. The content of the course was pretty basic, but I really loved how she explains things in conversational terms, and provides lots of examples and inspiration. The fact that the course was specifically for phone photography was awesome, because I’m not about to buy a DSLR and haul it around. For now anyway. While my photos aren’t always the best, I picked up some great tips on composition and lighting, as well as some super practical stuff like – tips to organize and archive digital photos, phone editing apps and printing options. More than anything, I’ve been consciously taking more photos. Kind of fun.
So that’s what has been keeping me busy! Hopefully it won’t be another month until you hear from me again.
What have you been up to this summer? Any tips for when blogging gets overwhelming?
Linking up with: Erika, Karli, April, Katie
