Eat, Play, Love More

There’s a scene in the movie, “Eat, Pray, Love”, where Elizabeth Gilbert (played by Julia Roberts) is sitting in the lotus position meditating after weeks of trying to learn how to quiet her mind. Her entire face was a smile, from her closed eyes, to her cheeks, to the relaxed corners of her mouth. Her look of serenity zapped me like a lightening bolt.

Later that evening, myself and four members of my family went out to dinner and I did something I never, ever do. I ate a huge bowl of pasta and followed it up with dessert. By 9pm that same night, I crawled into bed to read a magazine but fell asleep instead. Sixteen hours later, I woke up.

My family was concerned. Was I sick, my husband asked several times during the day. Nope. I was completely at peace.

There is a Season…Mine is Football and Partial Empty Nest

I accepted a part-time independent consultant position as an in-house SEO for a local company that I enjoy, although it’s with my second love (SEO) and not usability (my first). (They’re letting me combine SEO/IA/UX – yay.)

I’m putting a hold on new usability audit work.

When I started out, I was in my small townhouse kitchen, unemployed, newly single and determined as hell to raise my kids well.

Today, my eldest is moving into her college dorm room this weekend as a transfer student at Kutztown University.

I already know I’ll sleep in her bed at home whenever I miss my little girl.

Anyone who has an athletic child knows what it means to sacrifice for that kid, especially when they consistently earn it. My son, Stefan, has played soccer, hockey and wrestled. He’s could skate at 3 years old and was a hockey goalie at 5. Every baseball season he balances his time between 4 baseball teams and I go to every game humanely possible. He’s played football since the fifth grade.

Now, as a high school Junior, he’s on the Varsity football team. Yesterday, the last day of “2 a days” (grueling football camp from 8 am to 6pm in August heat), coaches assigned him to first string Offensive Quick Guard, second string Defensive Line Back and “backup everything”. At a scrimmage last Saturday Stefan rammed the other team’s Running Back hard enough to knock the guy out of the game.

I’m nurse, massage therapist, taxi (until he gets his license next month), nutritionist and cheerleader.

My youngest son has a heart defect that prevents him from most activity. However, he has a gun and a fishing pole. Target shooting and torturing fish are his main loves. I strongly dislike killing anything, even when it’s blowing things up in video games. He thinks I’m overly protective and silly.

I’m not writing about tech stuff because I after seeing the look on Julia Roberts’ face on a big ass movie screen, it hit me that I want to do that too.

I’ll be back.

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Bio:

Kim has been working with web sites since 1995, running a free web development forums since 1998 and been self employed as a consultant since 2001.

Besides the volunteer nature of the forums, she’s on the Board of Directors for her local baseball Little League and is their volunteer head webmaster. She’s the volunteer creator and admin for the local high school’s football Facebook page. She built and maintains several family and friend web sites for free or barter.

Presently she’s building a brand new web site for the general public – to generate revenue.