What? A year already?

Amazing.

I threw this little blog site together last October and published my first blog on October 15th, 2018. In that first blog I tried to answer the question “Why Practically Well?”. Why do this, why put my thoughts on paper (metaphorically). I said I wanted to help people find their way the the health and wellness they were looking for, and why I think that “the health they are looking for” is a significant thing. I said that I wasn’t doing this to make money through endorsements or followers, and I have succeeded wildly in that regard.  Over the last 12 months, some of the subjects  I have addressed included;

Youth

Age

Running (over and over again. I know…)

Chocolate

Sex ( I should have combined the chocolate & sex blogs. That might have been more interesting.)

Yoga

Gluten

Dentistry in Japan

I haven’t limited myself to wellness blogging. There’s been a little of me thrown in as well. My life, times and opinions on things. I have said goodbye to both of my parents this year, and expressed those feelings. You’ve learned about my traveling, the races I’ve run and my take on  those experiences. Food is never very far from my thoughts, and you’ve heard a fair amount about my love / hate relationship with what I eat & drink, and how I make peace with fitness vs enjoyment.

Over the last 12 months I have written 47 blogs. Not quite 1 a week but close enough. There are times when I wonder how long I can come up with new stuff without repeating myself. Then I see a post, or an article, or a t-shirt that inspires me and off we go on another little expositional frolic. Do I have a list?

No

Right now, I know that I want to write about the phenomenon of “life coaches”. What they are, what they do, and how do you become one. But that’s for next week. This week is for reflection, evaluation and navel-gazing.

Do I think that this blog is a success?

It gives me a creative outlet as well as a chance to express myself on a number of wellness related subjects. I live out here in the land of kombucha, kale and vaginal steaming. In Cali we may be about to criminalize gluten. So I think just being able to call “bullshit” every once in a while is good for my emotional health. Also…

…I used to teach fitness classes at least 5-6 times a week. Most of the time it was a version of cardio-kickboxing. And, just as an aside to you guys (and a couple gals) who felt the need over those years to tell me that I wasn’t really teaching a martial art?

Yeah

I actually knew that turning on music, moving in pre-choreographed movements that involved punches and kicks that worked in time with the music wouldn’t really work in a bar fight, unless the exact right song came on the jukebox at the exact right time….

…but I digress

I taught I lot of people. And every once in a while, you’d see someone turn their life around. Someone who wanted to make a change, but hadn’t been able to before. I had a woman start in my class at, basically, zero. Overweight, out of shape. She’d always be in the back of the room…until she wasn’t. She made the class a habit, gained more confidence in herself, and liked my odd oldies and world music mixes. She came to the front of the room, made incredible changes in her fitness and her outlook on life and showed me her group exercise instructor certification when she became an instructor herself.

All those classes

All those people.

There were more stories like that, to one degree or another. But her’s was the most obvious one, and the one that she shared with me as the person who got her started.

So, will I keep blogging? Yup. I don’t really know who, if anyone, is being impacted. I can’t see if you’re in the back of the room or the front. But I think I’ll keep doing this, on the off chance that one piece affects one person in one way.

That’s worth it. At least to me.

Talk later,

Bob