Personal trainers, exercise, and blogging

November 16, 2007

Two months ago I hired a personal trainer to teach me how to exercise more efficiently and effectively. I have been an off-and-on exerciser for years, maybe keeping the motivation for a month at best (with the wonderful exception of when BNY Clearing, my employer, gave us 10 months notice that they were laying us off but needed us to stay until the end; it’s easy to workout when yo are only “working” a couple hours a day.)

But having this personal trainer with me while I exercise, and knowing I had a session coming up, kept me motivated to work out in between sessions, and really bust my gut during the sessions. There is no way before I started these sessions that I would have pushed myself like I have in these sessions. Today was my last session, but I’m pretty sure I’m going to have check-ins with her either every month or every other month.

I think the aspects of having someone looking over my should that improved my exercising, are for many people, myself especially, a key reason to blog. Putting my thoughts and ideas ‘out there’, getting in the game, joining the conversation, (insert cliche here), is motivating to write better, think better, engage better. And that is a good thing. I can see why the blogger for http://www.backinskinnyjeans.com/ puts herself out there, or why I like the site www.traineo.com for sharing your exercise routine with others.

So, welcome to anyone who has stumbled across this, friends and strangers alike.

I will write on four topics, Design, Development, Web 2.0 and Where I live:

• Design: I work for Gomoll Research and Design, a highly regarded User Experience Design firm located in the Midwest. I love working with clients to create passionate and elegant solutions for their users. I’ll write about examples of this but primarily will write about design in general. We’re putting up a blog on the Gomoll site so I’ll put you to that once it’s up.
• Development: My other hat is to continue growing Texo Dev as GRD’s development partner. If a blog goes up there, I’ll point to that one as well.
• Web 2.0: yes it’s an over-used term, but most people have a sense for what it is, and I haven’t heard a better term. I’m an early adopter and will talk about new tools, without hyping them.
• Where I live: I’m violating blogging rules by throwing in something completely unrelated, so we’ll see if this sticks or not, but I live in Victoria, MN and love living here. I will write about experiences in the Twin Cities, and in suburbs where I live.

In my next post, I’ll tell you where I am on the web, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn et al.

Posted in Blogging