Twenty-four hours.

It's probably ironic and ill-timed that I am choosing to write about this topic now, at this moment which is the Monday morning after a completely non-productive weekend spent socializing with friends and avoiding schoolwork or any serious thought whatsoever like the plague. However, it was a wonderful weekend, and I can honestly say I feel refreshed and invigorated. Weekends like that remind me why life is so good. I've also got a photo album full of me and my friends dressed up as members of the Jersey Shore cast, so the weekend was far from a total loss.

Ethan Klapper: "Why do you guys keep talking about Paula Dean?" ... "PAULY D!" On the 1's and 2's.

Yeah. Anyway.

I met with my independent study advisor, Terry Sankar, who is my life-coach/green-guru/inspirational-professor. Previously my Practical Environmentalism professor, Dr. S has agreed to take me on in my journey to learn as much as I can about sustainable food production and draft some sort of paper that will detail how we can make it a reality. A practical reality. Like, one that will make everyone happy (except corporations like Monsanto but I'm actually quite positive they aren't real people. Or at least, they lack souls.) Dr. S actually thinks I will be able to get this paper I write published. I laughed when he said this and he looked me dead on and told me he was being serious.

Then he reminded me of this one class last semester where we had gotten off on a tangent (typical but always enlightening) and he said to us all, "Everyday, you wake up and you've got 24 hours of your own time to spend here on Earth. It's entirely up to you how you are going to spend it." One girl in the class put her face in her hands and then burst out, "That's so depressing!!" (I believe she felt this way, because we have only so many hours on this Earth, and the thought that we end up "wasting" so many of those precious hours is sort of frightening.) "But why?!" he replied. "I find it so liberating!" He told us how the thought that he is in complete control of his life, what he does, how he spends his 24 hours, one day after the next, makes him feel so powerful and free.

So he reminded me of that moment and told me to go into this independent study, to sit down to read and write, knowing that this is something I can eventually contribute to the world. To sit down and write with the intention of having my words read by others. With the intention of enlightening others, and making a difference in some small way. While the idea of this happening makes me feel so giddy and lit up inside, I'm not confident enough to think this is possible. But if Dr. S, (who designed this wind turbine, by the way) thinks that I can, I might just have to as well.

So you've got 24 hours, how are you going to spend it?

This post dedicated to Mr. Martin Luther King Jr., who sure as hell spent his time here on Earth making a difference.

Practicing What I Preach

So I started writing a column for The Scene section at The Eagle this semester. So far I have written five. I have gotten a few compliments on them from people other than my mom, so that is encouraging. I even got a few emails in the first couple weeks.

I like writing columns, because it basically allows me to talk about whatever I want to talk about, kind of like a blog, but do so in a more 'legitimate' way, in printed form, in a newspaper. Also, I always bring in real research, whether it be from an interview or from the Google machine, and I always bring in my own personal connection to whatever topic is at hand. This is easy for me to do with health topics because frankly, I have done and tried it all. Good and bad, healthy and unhealthy.

It's the unhealthy things I have done that I like talking about most, which is what I did this week. When I write about my mistakes, I think it shows I'm not perfect, just like my readers, just like everyone. None of us are perfect.

[That's another thing I like about blogs, you can get off on mini-tangents and it's OK because there's no word limit.]

Anyway, I am particularly nervous, but excited for my most recent column about the dangers of tanning, because as a person who has gone tanning since the age of 15, I always knew it was bad for me, I just chose to ignore that fact. Now, it's kind of like, grow up and get over yourself. I'm not invincible and on top of that, I don't ever want to have my skin look like my mom's friends' down in Florida. Yuck.

So, in a sense, my column has been about being the change I want to see in other people. Sort of like Gandhi said. If I want my readers to change, I have to change myself. Clips aside, experience aside -- I think that is where the real benefit of writing this column will lie.

Not enough photos.

I admit defeat. As much as I love photography, I simply do not love it enough. I have not been taking enough pictures lately and I can't keep updating this blog with photos from long ago. Or even just ago. If I want to try to keep a daily blog, or even one I can update once or twice weekly, I will have t0 write about more things.

From here on out, this blog will be more like a traditional blog. I will live my life. Things, events and people will come into it. I will report back on what I think about things I enjoy thinking and talking about, which include but are not limited to: health, the environment, sustainability, financial responsibility (see this letter to the Post for a bit of my take on this topic), journalism, new media, relationships, love, personality, and food. And any and every place those things may intersect.

I am excited. Motivated. (Not busy.)

By the way, I re-titled this blog. Here is the backstory: When I was a little girl, whenever my parents would be talking about something, I would pipe in with questions or my own commentary. I was precocious. (Or annoying? I was notoriously known as Kell from Hell. On bad days.) Anyhow, whenever I tried to butt my way into grown up conversations, my dad would look down and say, "No comments from the peanut gallery." I never knew what this meant. Until recently when I researched the meaning of the phrase. Now, I am older, I have learned a thing or two. I feel I have made my way out of the peanut gallery. And I've got a couple cents I'd like to throw into this tangled web of the Internet.