If you are a new reader to Stellar Path, welcome!

If you are a former reader of Stellar Path, welcome back!

This blog has existed in a few different incarnations.  The first time I did a blog, I literally wrote it out in html.  It didn’t allow for comments or any type of interaction at all.  I got tired of that blog REAL quick.  (This was about three years ago, and it was just about whatever was going on in my life.)

Last year, I had a blog on Blogspot.  I already owned my own domain, stellarpath.net, for my webpage, but I had no idea how to put a blog on it because my web host was just not helpful.  I knew I wanted to make a blog, so I created stellarpath.blogspot.com, and I used that for a few months.

I finally learned that I could put a blog on my domain, and stellarpath.net became my main blog.  I used it for roughly a year, but as time went, I found my interest waning.  It wasn’t that blogging no longer interested me.  Frankly, I love it.  It’s practice for writing, it’s a way to find friends with common interests, and it’s a level of accountability for weight loss that you just can’t get too many places.  A few factors, however, led to the slow decline in my posting frequency.

Number one – my host company sucked.  They sucked hard.  It was frequently down, and I would often have to wait DAYS to submit a post because of some technical glitch.  My contract with them was ending in October 2010, and in early September 2010, I changed to a more reliable host recommended by a tech-savvy friend (and it turned out to be cheaper, too), and that is what has led to this new incarnation of my blog.  (More on that in a moment.)

Number two – I was depressed.  I don’t think it was true clinical depression, but one set of circumstances in my life had me in a MAJOR funk.  I had (and still have) a wonderful fiance.  Her name is Tina, and she is truly the best thing that has ever happened to me.  We are getting married on October 8th of this year (just a few weeks away!), and I can’t wait to spend the rest of my life with my best friend.

For the past year, we’ve been planning a wedding and starting our lives together.  This should be the greatest time of my life.  Why on Earth have I been so down in the dumps?

Put simply, I had the shittiest job EVER.  (Pardon my language.)  One day, I reached my breaking point.  I had a crappy salary, I was on call essentially 24/7 (for a job that should not require anyone be on call – who in the field of Education is ever on call 24/7?!), and I had an assistant who was openly hostile toward me and a boss who would not even let me do anything about it.  I was done; I walked in on Monday, quit, and walked out.  I “technically” gave two weeks notice, but when I explained my situation to the deputy director about why I needed to leave, they allowed me to use my vacation hours as my two weeks notice.  The relief I felt as I walked out that door for the last time was AMAZING.

I had very recently been offered a part-time job by Western Kentucky University, my alma mater, that was going to provide about 2/3rds of the full-time salary I had been making.  That was what ultimately led to the decision to leave.  I know I could find a part-time job to make up the difference, so I could still pay my bills.  But God truly had something amazing in store for me, because on Thursday of that week, I was offered a full-time job with benefits at WKU.  Best yet, I’m working for a professor that I’ve worked with before, and she is amazing.  I am the Coordinator for the Center of Literacy at WKU, and I can only see this position growing more and more amazing as time passes.  I truly plan to make this my career.  (Oh, and another perk?  18 hours of free tuition every year!  I will even be able to get my doctorate, virtually for free!)

Okay, so now that I am working in a job that I love and finally feel like I am making a difference, I’m finding that I don’t dread going to work.  I’m getting less sleep, but my body doesn’t need more sleep.  I am finding joy in more places now than ever before.  I didn’t realize how badly one aspect of my life could taint the other amazing components of my life.  But I’m out, things are great, and I decided to turn back to my blog and make it the awesome webpage I always wanted it to be.

I did find myself posting less and less frequently.  A big part of it was the depression over my job, because when I was home after work, I just wanted to veg out and do nothing.  Going to the gym was a freaking obstacle; I just didn’t have the energy to blog.  But you know what?  I do now, and I have great plans for this blog.  The past year is gone, and while I wrote some great posts (I think so, anyway) over the past year, it was going to be a huge pain in the butt to migrate everything over, so I’m just calling it a fresh start and beginning here anew, on September 10, 2010, with a fresh slate.

I’m actually going to be running several blogs, but this is my main blog.  I have a lot of things I want to blog about, but I don’t want to overwhelm my main weight loss blog with everything that I know some of you won’t be interested in.

My plans for this main blog?  I’m still not sure how often I’ll post, but I plan to post at least every few days.  One thing I will be doing, but in a different way – Weigh-ins.  I’m not going to do weekly weigh-ins.  Instead, every time I post, I will share what my weight was that day.  I’m not someone who can go a week without getting on a scale; I have an addiction.  Plus, when I weigh weekly, I would find myself skimping on the day before weigh-in day to make the scale read less.  To me, that’s a stupid behavior.  But if I weigh in daily, then day-to-day fluctuations don’t freak me out.  I know that if I’m up a bit today, it’s okay, because in a day or two, I’ll be back where I should.  So every post will, in essence, be a weigh-in post.  I’ll definitely have celebratory weight posts, too, because every five pounds is going to be a goal.

I’ll also post recipes, weight loss and exercise tips, and a few other random things about my weight loss journey.  It will basically be what my blog was before.

Oh, and one thing I’m very excited about – I’ve begun training to be a personal trainer!  You’ll definitely get to follow me on that journey, too.  I’ll be starting that in mid-October, when I’m back from my honeymoon in Antigua!

And as I mentioned, I will have other blogs as well.  To give you a quick rundown:
1. Food Blog – I plan to blog what I eat daily (or at least near daily) with some pictures of my food.
2. The Rejection Journal – I love to write, and I want to be a published fiction writer.  Right now, I am focusing on short stories.  This blog won’t be updated as often, but it will be where I keep track of what I’m writing, what I’ve submitted, and my rejection (and hopefully acceptance) notes.  Why the title?  There is a writer’s adage – “If you haven’t received rejection letters, then you haven’t been writing.”  I don’t necessarily know that I’ll post works of fiction here, but I may.  We’ll see.
3. Mason’s Miscellaneous – I love pictures.  I love both pictures I have taken, I love pictures others have taken, and I love just random pictures I find on the internet.  I’ll post to this one whenever I find or take a picture that I want to share.  And because the title is so broad, if I find something else I want to share that doesn’t relate to weight loss (say a cool webpage or funny video), this is where it will end up.  Oh, and as for why the name Mason – well, I’m a huge dork, so you’ll just have to go check it out and see.  (And you will then receive direct verification that I am, in fact, a huge dork.  If you didn’t already know.  You probably did.)
4. Ice Blog – Yes, I plan to bring Ice Blog back and keep it updated.  I know where the story is going, and I want to get it all out there on paper.  Er, the web.

I hope to get these other blogs going this weekend.

I may create other webpages here at Stellar Path at well, and I’ll share those as they are created.  Right now, I do have a webpage posted from October 2001 called Project: October, which was a little psychological experiment I conducted on myself in regards to horror movies.

So yeah, I’m happy to be back.  I’m happy to be happy.  And while I’m not where I thought I would be weight-wise when I got married, I know that I’ll keep chiseling away at my weight until I am where I want to be.

Related Posts:

• We’re back!
• A Fresh Start Weigh-In
• Window Seat: Antigua Honeymoon, Day Two, 10.10.10