It’s no secret that I love writing and my biggest dream is to become a successful published novelist. In a word, duh.

But I’ve also come to the decision that in 2-3 years’ time, I want to be able to make a living from my writing and my writing alone. Yes, freelancing. It’s a tough profession and means I won’t be driving around a Lexus anytime soon, but when I sit down and think about what profession would make me the most deliriously happy – it is writing. I want to write. Novels, articles, columns, blog posts.

So I spent time last weekend, searching around online and coming up empty with how to get this freelancing career off the ground. I came up with a few blogs and online magazines I would love to pitch an article on, but I felt a little lost on what I needed to do first.

And then it came to me.

I need writing samples.

I have barely any. It’s something that always made me feel a little bad about myself when I was in journalism school. We had articles and reports to write, but I don’t find those good examples of my writing. And I know I have tons and tons of writing samples from blog posts, but when I comb through my archives, there is only a handful I would consider using as writing samples.

So where is that leading me? Well, I’m taking a page out of Ashley’s book and putting out the request here. I want to guest blog for YOU. I am aiming to write 50 guest blogs this year on a variety of different blogs. Personal blogs, niche blogs, blogs with hundreds of readers, blogs with no readers. If you have a blog, I want to guest post on it!

I have a form to fill out to keep things organized because this is going to be a pretty major undertaking for me. And it’s a bit terrifying. But if I want to be able to write for a living, well, then, I have to get over this fear of not being good enough and just go for it.

You can suggest a topic for me to write on, or I can come up with one myself. Both ways challenge my writing abilities. I’ll write about health and fitness, faith and religion, cruising, dogs, social media, past experiences, how-to’s, books, pop culture, travel, sports… just to name a few categories. But feel free to suggest other topics, as I’m open to writing about anything that suits your fancy. (Within reason, that is. Obviously, I can’t exactly write about living abroad or why you should run a marathon.)

Once I see your request on my spreadsheet, I’ll send you an email where we’ll nail down some of the finer details such as the topic and due date. I’m really excited about this new venture and I think it’s the first step I need to take to discover how to live my dream.

And that’s it! Just fill out this form and let’s get this thing started.

Bring on the writing!

November is Diabetes Awareness Month and November 14th is World Diabetes Day. Allison of With Faith and Grace explained the importance of  World Diabetes Day on her blog last week. She put in a call to guest post on different non-diabetes blogs to raise awareness about diabetes and I was glad to hand over my blog for one day to let her. Enjoy!

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Every day with diabetes is a little bit different. Different foods, different routines. Different stress levels, different hormone levels (hello PMS!). So it’s hard to find a “typical” day because there really is no such thing. Some days are easier, and some are harder, but they are always a challenge and take work.

The day I chose was Monday, November 12, 2012. Let’s have a look…

7:00 a.m. This wake-up call is a little earlier than other days of the week, but I’m up because my first class is at 9 a.m. and I also have to drive my husband to work. We’re a one car family, so unless he has a work vehicle to use, we have too coordinate our morning schedules. But this morning is also unusual because I have a huge exam at my second, 11 a.m., class, and so I’ve elected to skip my first class so that I can come back to study, eat a good breakfast, and take a shower.

There’s something about a shower that always makes me feel refreshed and ready to concentrate.

7:45 a.m. Before we leave, I have to test my blood sugar. It should be the first thing I do when I wake-up, but sometimes I forget to do it right away. This morning, I’m 161 mg/dl. (That’s milligrams of sugar per deciliter of blood — hey, I never said diabetes was sexy). It’s different every day.

8:53 a.m. I’m back home and ready for breakfast. I’m brew some coffee, and cook up some eggs (sunnyside up) and take a slice of pumpkin bread that we made yesterday. Since I ate the pumpkin bread yesterday successfully (that means I didn’t have crazy high or low blood sugar afterward), I use the same carb count: 35 grams of carbs. Eggs and coffee are thankfully carb-free.

But the work isn’t quite done. Even though I haven’t had anything to eat yet, I suspect my blood sugar has gone up. It’s been a trend in the past, and I think it’s caused by early morning hormones. It’s the diabetes world, it’s called the dawn phenomenon. I check my blood sugar and it’s 225 mg/dl. Up from 161 just an hour ago! WTF? I take an injection of Humalog insulin, a short-acting insulin designed to pair with meals, and dig into breakfast.

10:15 a.m. After breakfast, showering and studying, I’m ready to take off for school. But before I can do that, I need to take my morning injection of Lantus. Lantus is a long-acting insulin that keeps my blood sugars steady when I’m not eating. That’s because the body still produces a small amount of glucose naturally, and so you always have to have insulin in your system. Another way to do this is with an insulin pump, which takes the short-acting insulin and just infuses it 24/7. You can take off a pump for short durations (like showering or sex), but for the most part, it’s always on.

I take my Lantus injection, and I’m out the door!

11:56 a.m. I think I did pretty good on the test! Or at least, I don’t think I failed it. I head to the library to kill time between class. I decide that it would be a good idea to test my blood sugar, even though I’m not eating right now. I clock in at 107 mg/dl. Perfect!

12:30 p.m. I’m starting to feel a little funny. Not sure what it could be, but feeling funny always indicates that a blood sugar check is necessary. I’m thinking I’m low, because I have a weird, “I’ve just run a marathon” fatigue in my legs. But… I’m 205 mg/dl. Say what?! How did I jump 100 mg/dl in 30 minutes! WTF? I test again, just to be sure: 192 mg/dl. It’s not that I dropped 10 points in two minutes, but blood sugar meters are not 100% accurate. It’s one of the many things that make our lives difficult.

Aggravated, I start messaging with some friends. No one has any solid answers, but the reigning theory is that my exam was more stressful than I thought, and my body had a delayed reaction to the adrenaline from taking it. That funny feeling? The rush of adrenaline coursing through me. Fun times. However, I’m not convinced and so I decide not to take any insulin to bring my blood sugar down. Why? Don’t ask me. Sometimes diabetes management is best done by intuition.

3:30 p.m. I get done with my last class at 2 p.m. and drive home. But I can’t test again because I’ve used up the last of my test strips! So I head to the pharmacy to pick some up. When I finally get around to checking, I’m 132 mg/dl. Perfect again! But why did I drop? I have no idea, but I’m glad I didn’t take any insulin for that 205 mg/dl. I would have “crashed” (diabetes-lingo for having a sudden low blood sugar) for sure! I haven’t had lunch yet, and I’m starving, so I nosh on some leftover veggie lasagna from last night, plus a couple of Hershey’s chocolates. I add up how many carbs I think are in them (12 for the chocolates, and I estimate 42 for the lasagna since that’s what I ate last night) and inject… Pop Quiz: What type of insulin do you give for a meal? Got it? Answer: Short-acting insulin!

5:51 p.m. I spend the rest of the afternoon blogging, working on freelance assignments and coordinating an order for Blue Cupcake, but I’m not quite ready for dinner since I ate such a late lunch. Erik, my husband, suggests going to the gym before dinner, rather than after. I check my blood sugar to see if that’s a good idea: 255 mg/dl. Ouch! Higher than I would have liked, but I still have insulin working in my system. Short-acting insulin is actually not very fast at all, and often times your food (like lasagna) will raise your blood sugar before insulin will lower it. This can also happen in a non-diabetic, but to a much lesser degree.

6:53 p.m. My blood sugar tends to stay pretty steady when I do cardio, but when I’m weight training, I can crash like a rock. Half way through my work out, I check my blood sugar, to make sure I have nose-dived. Normally I would try to have less insulin in my system to prevent a low. But look at that, I’m 216 mg/dl! I’ve dropped a bit, but nothing too serious.

8:07 p.m. We’re done, home, and ready for dinner! My blood sugar is now… 222 mg/dl. OK. Now I’m annoyed again. Why didn’t all that active insulin + exercise drop me into the normal range? WTF? Sometimes the adrenaline from working on can make me rise, but it’s very rare (for me) in weight training. Or there’s the possibility that I ate way more lasagna than I thought, and the insulin and exercise just wasn’t enough to bring me down. Sometimes it feels like anything is possible! But we have to keep moving on…

Dinner is trout, mashed sweet potatoes and a caesar salad, but I don’t end up eating everything. Which is bad, because it makes it harder to count what I did eat. Later on, I’ll discover that I took way too much insulin.

10:45 p.m. Time for bed! Yet another blood sugar check for me and I’m 155 mg/dl. This might look like a better number than 216 mg/dl, but it’s all contextual in diabetes.  At the time, I think that I must still have food that’s digesting and that the active insulin still in my body will have some sugar to work with soon. Hindsight is 20/20…

1:16 a.m. Diabetes doesn’t care if you’re asleep. It doesn’t care about holidays or vacations or exams. So just because I’m sound asleep doesn’t mean diabetes isn’t going to demand my attention. My inkling that maybe I should have had a snack is confirmed when I wake up to a low blood sugar. I’m disoriented and my limbs are miserable and uncomfortable from the lack of sugar. I wake my husband and he fetches orange juice while I test to see what the damage is: 59 mg/dl. Far too low below my threshold of 80 mg/dl. After gulping down the OJ, I fall back asleep.

But by morning, I’m 108 mg/dl… and the adventure starts all over again.

Number of Blood Sugar Checks: 10

Number of Insulin Injections: 5

Number of WTF Moments: 3

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Were you surprised about how much thinking and planning goes into just one day for a person living with diabetes? I know I was! 

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I grew up in a tough home environment. Until my parents divorced when I was eleven, there was constant strife and fights and general mayhem. I was always waiting for the next shoe to drop. Always wondering what was going to set my dad off this time. It was an uncomfortable way to live.

I think I’ve blocked that time of my life out from my mind where it seems almost as if another person lived that life. Yet that person was me. The girl typing up this post was the exact same girl who came home from church to find a hole in the wall that her father had punched through. It was the same girl who told her father a dream she had for her future and was laughed at, told she wouldn’t be able to do that. It was the same girl who sat huddled in a corner of her room, a pillow pressed firmly against her ears, tears leaking from her eyes as she tried to block out the shouted words and prayed fiercely that this wouldn’t be the time her father laid hands on her mother.

I had to grow up quickly as a child. It’s not an environment any child should have to suffer through and thankfully, my mom left him when my brother was twelve and I was eleven. It had to be the toughest, scariest decision my mom had to make but she did it for us. To get us out of an environment that was not conducive to our growth. And because of that, we have grown into two awesome adults. Two adults who had all the odds stacked against them to flourish and succeed but we did it.

And while I may not have any children, I was a child who grew up in a tough home environment, and I know I have some advice to offer to parents.

1. Don’t make children deal with adult problems. I learned about things like rent, evictions, and bills way before I needed to know what they are. I was less concerned about wearing the latest fashions than I was about worrying if the rent would be paid this month. Or if my dad would, once again, spend his entire paycheck on gambling. While it’s important for kids to understand the importance of money and that no, they can’t always get what they want — it’s also not their job to worry about the bills and adult issues. Their job is to be kids, to learn and grow, not to stress about the electricity being shut off. Don’t drag them into your fights, because it creates a stressful, anxiety-ridden environment for them.

2. Be involved. If I can give one nugget of advice for parents, it’s to be involved. My experience in this comes solely from how my parents were (or were not) involved and I’ve seen what happens to kids whose parents are not involved in their lives and trust me, it isn’t pretty. Be involved as much as you can. Kids need to know that you like to be around them, it creates a sense of security and wholeness. I fondly remember a time when my dad came into my first-grade classroom and made pancakes for all the kids and teachers. I remember my mom being a chaperone on many field trips. I think my best memory, though, is Saturday Night Game Night. My mom started this when my brother and I were in high school and it has continued on to this day. We all get together for a few games, pizza, and tons of talking. By doing this, my mom was able to keep tabs on our life and it also showed us that not only did she love us a whole lot, but she also liked us a whole lot as well.

Be involved with their homework, talk to them about what happened to them at school, and know when they have tests coming up. It can be so easy to get caught up in all the other things you have going on but be involved. Maybe you can’t be the room mom or chaperone on every field trip, but you can keep an open line of communication with them.

3. Make them accountable. My parents always made me accountable for my actions. No misdeed went unpunished. Even the rolling eyes, loud sighs, and talking back weren’t tolerated. Once kids learn they can get away with one little thing, it becomes a game of what else they can get away with. My parents didn’t play that game. Sure, maybe they were more strict than other parents but it worked. When parents start letting the kids run the show, that’s when the breakdown occurs. The rules mean nothing, the rules their parents set and the rules other people set, including the rules their teachers set. Making kids accountable for their actions is one of the biggest ways to build responsibility and showing kids that the rules you set are for real, creates a sense of security for them.

4. Fights should never happen in front of children. Oh, my goodness. I cannot stress this point enough. Nothing fills a child with more fear than hearing their parents fight. It’s frightening and scary. Most of the time I didn’t know what the fight was about, I just knew that it was time to hightail to my room and try to drown out the sounds of their shouting. Fights should never, ever happen in front of children. Ever. Nothing about this is okay and all it does is create a high level of fear and trepidation in a child who is too young to understand what is happening. One of my biggest promises to myself is that my future husband and I are not going to have screaming matches in front of our kids. (And hopefully, we won’t have screaming matches, period!) You want to create a haven of safety, love, and support for your kids? They need to know that they won’t have to fear their daddy is going to do something terrible to their mommy. They need to know that the problems mommy and daddy are facing are between them only. Fighting in front of them (or even within hearing range) creates the first tip I mentioned: it’s bringing YOUR problems into THEIR world.

What kind of environment did you grow up in? Any tips for how to create a safe, supportive learning environment?

As a member of Clever Girls Collective, I was selected to participate in the Healthy Habits program sponsored by Kimberly-Clark and Colgate-Palmolive. The content and opinions expressed here are all my own. #healthyhabits #cgc

As I’m sailing the deep blue seas of the Caribbean, I’ve asked a few special gals to guest blog for me. Today is the last day of my cruise. Sad face! As I’m spending the day lazily sailing back to Florida, sipping fruity drinks and relaxing, I have another great post for you.

Today’s post comes from Ashley, who blogs at That Super Awesome Blog. She also started the website, Your Super Awesome Life, where she empowers teen girls to live a life they love. Sounds pretty, well, awesome right? Her post today strikes a chord in me, as I’m still trying to decide if I have it in me to tackle a half-marathon someday.

While Stephany is off cruising for a few days and soaking up the sun, I offered to step in and take care of her blog. Hi, I’m Ashley and can usually find me over at That Super Awesome Blog. Since Stephany has been writing a lot about her journey to a healthier lifestyle, I thought I would share a bit about my journey too. Thanks so much for having me, Stephany!

Six months ago I decided to run my first half-marathon. Before that, I was not a runner and had never actually ran more than 2 miles at a time. I knew finishing 13.1 miles would be a challenge, but it was on my Life List and it was something I knew I wanted to accomplish. I also knew that in order to run the half-marathon, I would need to begin training, change my eating habits, and basically, change my lifestyle.

So, I made a plan.

I started with a training schedule. I decided I would run four days a week, do strength training/yoga one day a week, and take two days off a week to rest. At first I was strict with my schedule because I thought that would help me stay on track. But after a few months, I realized that some weeks I needed to switch it up if work was extra hectic or I had plans one evening with a friend.

My first few runs were brutal. Even though I was just running two or three miles, my legs felt heavy the entire time, my breathing was shallow, and it just wasn’t fun. But I stuck with it. I kept running. And after a few weeks, I started looking forward to my runs. I’m not saying it became easy, because it’s not. But I couldn’t wait to get out onto the trails, put on my ear phones, and zone out for a while. I began to love the way running makes me feel and the high that I get after finishing a few miles.

I also learned to be easy on myself. Of course I had to give myself motivation talks during the longer runs and keep reminding myself that I had 13.1 miles to run on race day, so I couldn’t completely wimp out. But I took walking breaks. When my breathing was too shallow or my calves were tightening up, I walked. I listened to my body. When my foot started hurting, I took a few days off to let it heal. I was easy on myself because I knew if I pushed too far, I would get hurt and would stop the entire training process.

Another huge change was surrounding my eating habits. Before training for my half-marathon I was conscious of what I was eating, meaning I didn’t eat fast food for every meal, but I didn’t really care how my body responded to anything I ate. After a few weeks of running, I learned to pay attention to how I felt after meals and which foods gave me more energy. My pre-run snack is a waffle with almond butter and a handful of raisins. I eat lots of fruits and veggies, in salads, smoothies, or green juices. I upped my protein and carbs intake and I found that helped build muscle and gave me more stamina during the longer runs.

I don’t think it was just one factor that helped me become a runner. The combination of a plan, determination, and extra focus on my body and how I fueled it all played a part.

And on February 19th, I ran my first half-marathon in 2 hours and 39 minutes!

I loved the entire experience so much that I’m planning to run another half in the fall and I cannot wait!

What steps are you taking to live a healthier lifestyle? Have you ever run a half-marathon?