Tag: Lane 8

Five A Day – Part Three

“Why did you create five blogs in the first place, knowing that you’d never be writing in all five everyday anyway?”

Two logical reasons:

  1. My model for balance had four parts, not two
  2. I’d link each of them to all the others, for SEO

Mid Life Celebration is about balancing life’s big choices, and there are four:

  1. Mind
  2. Body
  3. Spirit
  4. Money

This fifth blog, jeffnoel.com, was created because I thought there should be an “office” or “headquarters”, so to speak – one that didn’t have a theme and wasn’t part of the model.

And when the previous jeffnoel.com didn’t renew after having that domain, www.jeffnoel.com for seven years, it was a natural choice to pick my given name as a dot com.

That’s it.  That’s how it happened.  And now, I can’t stop myself.

In a sea of blogs that drone on about whatever, I’m carving out a space among the few who have five-a-day, droning on about whatever.

Five A Day – Part Two

… continued from yesterday.

So that’s what happened, mostly, I wrote five blogs daily, for 100 days. Started late February or so and by June 1, the goal was accomplished.

Whew.  It was hard some mornings. Easy other mornings. At the end, I was counting every day.

On the 101st day, I scaled back to three-a-day for the next week. The two I didn’t write in were the two that had the fewest visits. Made sense, right?

Guess what?  They made a difference in the big picture, meaning that overall web site stats went down more than you might have thought they would.

The solution? Start back up writing five-a-day.

Could I do it?

Should I do it?

Was it worth it?

Would anyone even care?

Well, I did it.

And have never stopped.  It’s been ten months and 1,500 blog posts later.

Okay, so this begs a question no one has asked yet. “Why did you create five blogs in the first place, knowing that you’d never be writing in all five everyday anyway?”

It All Comes Down to This

With so much to say, where does a person start?  Well, if you’re a runner, it’s easy, you start at the starting line.  But if you’re not a runner and you’re several decades into your life and your job or career, then what?

Then maybe start here, in Lane 8:

There, I said it. Hope this doesn’t scare anyone off. It is what it is.

You Mean He Just…

“You mean he just decided to ride his bike across the country by himself?”, my wife’s friend asked her recently.

Well, not exactly. In fact, not even close. The idea of a cross-country bicycle trip had been with me since 1973.  The actual trip began nearly a decade later.  So, no, I didn’t just decide.

It was more like a dream seed that was planted while on a three-week Boy Scout bus trip across the United States.  From Pennsylvania to northern Idaho and back.  A week out, a week there, a week back.

It was while crossing the Colorado Rocky Mountains when the dream seed was planted.

Out our chartered bus window, on our way across the continental divide (elevation some 10,000 feet) I saw three cyclists at about 8,000 feet on their way to the summit.

Their bicycles were loaded down with saddlebags full of camping gear, tents, sleeping bags.  They appeared to be taking a break from their long climb, enjoying a snack and the spectacular scenery.

We sat on a bus, were young teens, and at the mercy of the bus schedule.

They were late teens, early twenties, sitting on bicycles, stopping when ever and where ever they wanted, for as long as they wanted.

To be able to not only see the majestic Rocky Mountains from that height, but to smell them, touch them, hear them….

Happy Thanksgiving To All

Happy Thanksgiving to every single one of you. It’s a wonderful time of the year to remind ourselves of everything we have to be thankful for.

Since this is the last of the five-a-day blogs I’ve written today, all sharing the thanksgiving theme, I’ll simply share them here with you.

If you already follow the others, here’s something new. It’s your choice, every day, to be thankful. This is one of the first rules adults should teach children.

And the best tip for teaching children, is for your life to be your message.