Well, you’ll never believe it, but Josh and Josh and I got up and went running this morning. Now, by “got up,” I mean “woke up naturally,” and by “running,” I mean “running and walking, but mostly walking.” But still, for me, that’s pretty miraculous.

Lauren started doing this “Couch to 5K” running program, and Whitney and I have now joined her. Today was my first day, although Lauren had done it a few days already, and Whitney joined her on Tuesday. It wasn’t too awful. We warmed up walking for five minutes, then we alternated running for one minute and walking for 90 seconds. We did that maybe six times? Then we cooled down walking for another five or ten minutes. We were out there in all for about half an hour.

I was really surprised how short the first minute of jogging felt. Then I was equally surprised how long the last minute of jogging felt, but knowing that it was the last one helped. Mostly, I was a little surprised that I did the whole thing having not worked out AT ALL in a long time. A really long time. So if you’re thinking that you’ve gotten flabby lately, and you need to exercise, but you either hate or can’t afford the gym, I’m here to tell you that you can do this. I am not a runner by any means, but I’ve now lived to tell about it.

So I want to keep doing this to build up running stamina, but I’m also going to do some other things to train. I’ve got two private lessons at Arthur Murray coming my way and that pole dancing class. And then, once I start getting paid, I think I’m going to join the Y and hit up some Zumba classes.

Hooray for not dying in middle-age of heart disease!!

To say that I’m “goal oriented” is a horrid, awful understatement. Without clearly defined, publicly documented goals and/or mortifying public consequences for not achieving said goals, I just sort of coast. The last time I really exercised was the Washington, D.C. Avon Walk. In 2008. I’m just not one of those people who likes to work out because of the health benefits or the endorphins or even the smaller dress size.

When Brookie and I were living together, we both wanted to lose weight. I lost 20 pounds, but only because if I didn’t, I would have to wear a bikini at our apartment complex’s pool. In front of boys. And disgustingly tiny 18-year-old girls. I need very strong incentives.

It’s not that I don’t know I need to work out, or that I want to watch my waistline become absorbed in a gelatinous blob of flesh. It’s just that those aren’t concrete enough reasons to get me to the gym. But lately, I’ve been feeling a little sluggish, and I know it’s time I got active again (even though I’d much rather sit on the couch watching an entire season of Bones).

So I guess Amaris just caught me on the right day (the day my brain fell out) when she tweeted:

considering starting training for a half marathon. who’s down???

This started a twittersation that went like this:

• Me: Can we start when it doesn’t feel like we live on the sun?
• Amaris: oh, definitely. deeeeeeeeefinitely.
• Me: Can skipping and spastic dancing be part of the training?
• Amaris: girl…YES.
• Me: Can we celebrate each attained goal with cookies?
• Amaris: YES!
• Me: Can we run it somewhere awesome and make it a vacation too?
• Amaris: like new york? orrrrrr hmmm…seattle?!! San Diego?? puerto rico? i vote the last one. we can, um, “practice” espanol.
• Amaris: so what all did I promise again? Colder temp, cookie incentives, skipping/spastic dancing…anythi OH! And Puerto Rico. That all?
• Me: That’ll do it!

Soooo…Amaris and I are going to go to New Orleans in February and run a half marathon. The way we decided on The Big Easy is that we figured a city called The Big Easy would make running 13.1 miles not as agonizing. No, that’s not how it happened.

First of all, I’ve never been there, so that was an immediate draw. In February, they’ll be getting all hyped up about Mardi Gras (even though it’s not until March 8), so that’ll be lots of fun. Plus, we can make rockin’ green, purple and black running outfits and wear sparkly gold afro wigs for the run! Aaaaand (this is the best part) it’s a Rock-n-Roll Marathon, which means that bands will be set up all along the way to play us on to the finish line. That beats the Avon Walk hands down (Remember how we had to walk up that hellishly long hill past the water treatment plant between miles 18 and 21? Yeah, not inspiring).

So there you have it. We’re still working on our training plan, but I think mine is going to involve some sensual fitness, I know we’re both looking forward to Zumba classes, and of course, we’ll have to jog (except we’ll pronounce it “yog”). If you want to join us, I’ll make you a sweet running skirt too, and you can help us with the choreography for every time we pass a band!

Orrrrrr, you could just come down with us, hang out in the French Quarter, and cheer us on as we pass. We’ll give you a stiff five and a shimmy!

This is one of those classic questions, almost on par with “If you were an animal, which one would you be, and why?” or “If money were no object, what would you do with your life?” It’s one of those questions everyone is asked at some point, but I think some people think about it more than others. Here it is:

If you could do over one thing that you have done or said in the past, what would it be and why?

My initial, somewhat sarcastic response to this is, “What? Just ONE thing?” But I think that I think that’s what I’m supposed to say. Really and truly, I aim to live with no regrets, and part of that means living from here on out so that I won’t have any regrets, but the other part is not regretting anything I’ve done in the past.

Everything I’ve said and done and everything that’s been said and done to me have served in part to shape me into who I am now. And let’s be honest, I like who I am. If I didn’t, I wouldn’t put it up on the internet every day. So even though there are painful parts of my past, and even though I’ve done stupid things, without them all, I wouldn’t have learned valuable lessons that I can carry with me from this point forward.

But I’ll be honest. There have been a few boys I wish I’d kissed, a lot of money I wish I’d saved, and several unfortunate haircuts. So here are a few tips on how to live a life without regrets:

• When considering a hair style, think about how it’ll look on your head for real, and not just how you’d like to imagine it looking in your imagination where you have that actor/actress/hair model’s hair and not your own.
• When considering a hair style, think about what you’ll think when you look at pictures of it in 15 years. Will it just be a sign of the times, or will you think, “WHO ALLOWED THIS TO HAPPEN?????”
• If you’re going to spend more than $200, do your research, and get someone else to help you.
• Be honest.
• Be straightforward.
• Don’t kiss all the boys (or girls) you feel like kissing. Just because you feel like doing something, that doesn’t necessarily make it a good idea.
• Eat your veggies.
• Take risks.
• Have regular adventures.
• Have spontaneous adventures.
• Ask questions.
• Do what you love, no matter the cost.
• Be about something bigger than just your life.
• Hold a baby every chance you get.
• Hug the people you love. Full frontal hugs.
• Sing in the car.
• Write down good memories so you don’t forget them.
• Do unexpected things.
• Surround yourself with people who make you laugh.
• Savor every bite.
• View every experience as an educational one.

And here’s the open question:

What are your tips for living without regret?

As I’ve told you before, I’ve been failing miserably in my attempt to gain fifteen pounds in Italy. In fact, I believe I’m actually down seven or eight now, which works for skinny jeans, so I guess I’ll get over it. Some of you have asked, however, how I have accomplished this. Well, I’ll tell you. It’s a simple 10 step program I’ve invented over here.

1. Get 8-10 hours of sleep every night.

   And I mean every night. There have only been a handful of nights when I’ve gotten less, and my body has been most grateful for the rest.

2. Rarely, if ever, set an alarm.

   I have always been anti-alarm clock, but unfortunately, it is a necessary evil in our world. Left to its own rhythm, my body would naturally go to sleep around 2:00 a.m. and wake up at 10 or 11. However, normal business hours do not generally allow for such a schedule. Tell me. Who decided that we go to work between 8:00 and 9:00 and stay until 5:00 or 6:00? I would happily work from 1:00-9:00 if I could still have a social life, but when your friends have to be at work at 8:30 the next day, they’re not usually up for dinner at 9:30 the night before. I say we start a revolution.

3. When you wake up, lie in bed for an hour before you get out from under the covers.

   I spend the time writing, and I think everyone can do it. It’s not good writing or lucrative writing. It’s just sort of a time to let my brain wake up and get out anything I would otherwise spend the day wrestling with or trying to think remember. I write down weird dreams I had, I make the day’s to-do list, I try to remember how long it’s been since I washed my hair – all the things that my mind would normally just be churning and churning and making me crazy with. This way, they’re out, and I can organize them better, and they don’t distract me from the rest of the day’s tasks.

4. Get rid of your boss. Even if you have a really good boss.

   I had a really good boss in Raleigh. It’s not the person that’s the problem. It’s the stress of having to do things the right way and having someone always there to see that you do. If you’re your own boss, you can screw things up all you want and know that you won’t get fired for it.

5. Have zero stress.

   I think this is the most important one because if you don’t have any stress, you sleep better, and if you sleep better, you don’t feel like you need to pump your body full of sugar and caffeine to give you energy, and if you think you need to fill up on sugar and caffeine, you can make better food choices, and if you make better food choices, you lose weight.

6. Stop worrying about money, even if you don’t have much.

   I don’t have much money, especially since I stopped getting paid by Wake Tech. I make a little money from writing, but it’s not a lot. But I haven’t worried too much about it. I haven’t gone crazy with the spending, but I haven’t stressed about it either. It’s been nice.

7. Stop driving. Take the bus. Bum a ride. Walk.

   I don’t mean you need to put on your tennis shoes and walk like for exercise (see #8). I just mean that when you take public transportation, you naturally walk more. For example, every time I want to go downtown, I walk from my house to the coffee shop where I buy my bus tickets. Then I walk to the bus stop. I ride the bus for a long time, and then I walk from the bus to the train. Once I’m off the train, I walk all around downtown, but I don’t really notice how far it is because I’m walking in and out of shops and museums and pretty churches and restaurants. It’s not exercise. It’s just more activity.

8. Do not exercise.

   I brought exercise clothes with me (against my own advice). I didn’t use them at all, and I mailed them home last week. I don’t know about y’all, but I hate to exercise. I feel like it’s something I have to do, and that stresses me out, and as we have already established, stress is the enemy. Be active. Don’t exercise.

9. Instead of exercising 3-5 times a week, drink a glass or two of wine with dinner 3-5 times a week.

   I don’t know if this is helpful or not, but it is very enjoyable, and I highly recommend it.

10. Eat whatever you want, excluding meat.

    No joke, y’all. I have been eating things that I never ate at home (or so rarely that they didn’t count) – chips, mounds and mounds of (non-whole wheat) pasta, cheese, creamy sauces, peanut butter EVERY day, Nutella, fried things, unbelievable amounts of pizza, cookies, pastries. It’s terrible. I still eat a lot of veggies and fruits (we have orange and lemon trees in our yard for crying out loud), but if diet were the only factor in weight loss, I would have long-since surpassed my fifteen-pound goal. I mean last night, I ate a Nutella pizza. Let me just say that again: NUTELLA PIZZA. I don’t know if you’ve ever seen a TV commercial for Nutella, but they’re hilarious. They are very careful not to claim that Nutella is good for you in any way. They just say that it’s delicious, and that if you eat it on whole wheat bread with other good-for-you things like fruit, it can be part of a balanced breakfast. I think there also may be some claim that it gives you energy, but that is probably due to the 21 grams of sugar per serving.

    Now, clearly, this is not a very scientific weight loss study, and I cannot vouch for the results on anyone other than myself, but I’m just sayin’. Seven pounds. Maybe eight. I’ve got two more days.

I’ve definitely been busy all day, but when I look back over the past several hours, I can point to exactly two things that have gotten done: article prep and laundry.

The laundry is self-explanatory, and the article prep just means I did a lot of the preliminary internet research necessary to write a bunch of articles. That way, when I’m on a plane or in some exotic locale sans internet access, I can still get some work done. They are two big, important things, to be sure, but there’s still SO much to do before I leave Raleigh on Sunday.

Most notably, I have to pack. The laundry was obviously a big prerequisite for that. I started laying out the things I want to take last night. So now that my clothes are all clean, I need to finish that job and then decide which things I don’t need after all. I’ve gotten a lot of good advice on packing, but the best for me is this: Decide what you want to take, and then put half of it back. You don’t need all those shoes or dresses or socks. The only thing you’re allowed to take too much of is underwear because apart from the obvious, it rolls up so small that it hardly counts.

Once everything is packed, I have to find a place to put the rest of the crap that is on my bedroom floor – crap that never found a home when I moved. Crap that is still in a box. Crap I probably don’t need and should just throw out. There. Trash can. Home found. Done.

Then I have to clean out my car so that an Australian doesn’t have to haul around Old Nasty and a bunch of ESL materials for three months.

Then I have to party down. It’s tough work, I tell you, but so worth it in the end. And the party is going to be FUN. My sister and I have worked up a little something special, and I hate to disappoint, but no, it does not involve me singing and dancing. But don’t worry. I’ll make up for it.

It doesn’t sound like that much stuff, but for some reason, it really feels like it, I think mostly because in the midst of all the practical things and professional things I have to do, there’s also a LOT of socializing to be done. Like I’m doing a lot more of the things I might normally turn down just to see everybody one more time before I go.

Ok, enough talking about what I have to do. Time to fold laundry. I’m on a mission.

“Better early than never” is not usually my motto. “Better late,” maybe, or perhaps even, “meh…oh well,” but no one has ever accused me of being punctual, much less early.  I had an algebra class in college once that I didn’t care that much about, and I often showed up 20-30 minutes late to the surprise and amusement of my two friends who were in the class with me. I always went. I just went late saying, “Better late than never, eh?” They would just shake their heads in awe. I got a B in the class, and I know, I know, I could have gotten an A, but like I said, I didn’t care that much about it, so meh…oh well.

But today I feel very differently about time and the timeliness with which I do things in life. And I don’t mean today in a general sense as in “these days.” I literally just mean today, August 13, 2009. I will probably still be late to church on Sunday and just barely make it to work on time on Tuesday, and even now, when I should be packing up the car to drive back to Raleigh, I’m pushing it on time, but I feel like a shift is taking place.

I sat down to write this just now without a clue in the world as to what I wanted to say. I just knew I wanted to blog today, and that if I didn’t do it now, I might not do it until very late tonight if at all. But when I typed the title with that mindset, it dawned on me that it is a very good motto to have in life.

Although it hadn’t occurred to me in those words when I made the decision to go to Italy (see my neato countdown clock??), that was my decision. There is never an ideal time to pack up your life and do something outrageous, terrifying and/or amazing, but if you don’t do it now, you might not get the chance. I’m not sure I’m technically “early” in life any more, but it still feels that way, so I’m going to go with it.

I’ve even been considering over the past few days the discipline of waking up early to read or pray or write or stretch or just sit and feel that I am alive. I think it may have something to do with the fact that I’m reading the portion of Eat, Pray, Love where she’s waking up at 3:00 a.m. every day at an ashram in India, and I know that there are many of you who know me well enough to be busting a gut right now at the very notion of me waking up before 7:45. Believe me, I can’t believe I’m thinking about it either. But there are too many days that go by when I don’t read or pray or write or stretch or feel that I am alive, and like I said, better early than never.

We’ll see how it goes. I don’t currently have an action plan or anything to put into motion, and I don’t really want one. I know that conflicts with the very core of discipline, but I think for me, the discipline at first is going to be in doing these things first thing no matter what the clock says when I wake up. And maybe I’ll work on the actual hour I wake up as well.