First Goal: 21-day Yoga Challenge

Interesting how you make a conscious decision to focus your life and things just fall into your lap! Thank you Twitter, and Yoga Journal, for bringing this to my attention: 21-Day Yoga Challenge!

Starting January 9th, 2012, I will receive daily newsletters describing that day's practice. I'm told it will include a video link, practice tips and information about the week's direction.
There are three parts to the challenge:

• Meditation
• Yoga
• Nutrition

The challenge will guide me through different mediations, new forms of yoga and once a week I will eat a vegetarian diet. 

I'm really excited! I already believe in the importance of yoga and mediation and I've been toying with the idea of eating raw for a month, so this will be a great way to start the new year.

Who is interested in doing the challenge with me?! This is a social thing!

Strong Women Career Advice

These are passionate people who lead the dramatic changes going on in our industry and are taking new approaches and using new tools and channels.

-Melissa Waggener Zorkin, SEO, President and Founder of Waggener Edstrom

One of the ways I will grow and develop during the deployment is to focus on public relations. I was astounded at how perfectly my personality fits the public relations mindset. I wrote some thoughts about advice from successful women in public relations on my other blog, here. Check it out, and let me know your thoughts about balancing life, love and career.

New Goals: A Military Wife

I have purposefully waited to write this post because I wanted things to be finalized before I made anything "blog official." Taylor will be deploying with his Utah Army National Guard unit to Afghanistan on January 15, 2012. Yup, less than a month after we get married.

Needless to say, things are crazy right now. I'm in the final count-down for the wedding with last minute to-do lists and coordinations and I'm mentally preparing myself with long term goals and short term goals for his departure. Weird that I'm going to be a military wife. The military spouse transformation will be complete with military ID, power of attorney and military spouse benefits.

The thing that keeps me going is knowing that things are going to be okay. We'll be married, we have been separated before and we love each other. Plus, the overriding feeling (even at times stronger than the pain of him leaving which I already feel) is that he is suppose to go. I can't fight it, and it makes his national guard duties easier to accept and support.

Next week I should have some down time because he starts training so I am going to do a "strong women" list of my goals or ideas of how to be successful for the next year of full-time army. If you are, were or know any military spouses, feel free to connect us. If there's anything I've realized in the past month it's that support networks are the only way to stay strong during a spousal separation.

Lots of love,

Hilary

Evolution

I came across this poster when I was doing some research about former Bogota politician, Antanas Mockus.

All politics aside, I think this is intriguing. I believe in evolution (a silly thing to say unless you remember that the stereotype of religious people is they believe the modern theory of evolution is inherently exclusive from the creation story and that I am a religious-type person) and I am engaged to a military man and I identify with the girl on the bike.

The future of our world must be the little girl on the bike. Things have to change, either by our decision or by circumstances.

I'll get off my soap box. I just felt like sharing.

Electronic Validation

Last week, the Huffington Post College section posted a tweet asking if anyone would be interested in writing a post about the Occupy Wall Street Movement. I answered and put together a 500 word op-ed. I don't do well at writing my opinion about a popular and complicated situation because I don't feel I'm qualified to make judgments. A very Socratic mindset of the more I learn, the more I realize I have no idea. But I knew I had to take advantage of the opportunity; if a college educated woman who seeks out education and understanding is afraid to say something, who is educated enough? I know I'm not the most educated and I'm definitely not an expert but I am smart enough.


So here it is: I was published on the Huffington Post. I am more proud of this than I seem to be.


http://www.huffingtonpost.com/hilary-hurst/the-disappointing-sheen-o_b_1023744.html

A Vintage Winter

I love autumn outfits and I love vintage pictures so obviously this picture is perfect and I want everything about it. Brought to you by my late-night thoughts. You're welcome.

Welcome, Fall

I have not been ready for Fall. The biggest problem is we had a 30˙ drop this last week so mentally I was still clinging to Summer and then I was tossed into Winter: cruel joke. Well the other night after work I had to head north to get measured for my dress so Taylor and I missed having dinner together. When I got home we went to Slab Pizza so I could eat a ginormous piece of Hawaiian pizza. It was dark and rainy as we left the partially sub-level restaurant and my mouth wasn't satisfied so we headed towards our favorite frozen yogurt place. When we got to the parking lot of Yogurtland it didn't seem right. I knew it would be delicious but I wasn't sold and I knew Taylor wasn't in the mood. As I sat in the car debating dessert I saw Starbucks across the street and I decided I wanted a Holiday themed drink.

The entire Starbucks experience that night hit both Taylor and me. We walked into the small shop, Taylor wearing his hooded jacket (something deeply sentimental for me for lots of reasons I won't discuss) and me in a jacket and scarf. The shop had enough people filling the chairs it felt welcoming but not enough to have a line or destroy the home-y feeling. We got our drinks from a hipster guy and a magenta-haired girl and we walked out into the cool mist of Fall. I slipped into the high that comes with a cozy feeling in the middle of California-winter weather and Taylor imagined the variety of similar places we could discover if we lived somewhere like Chicago or New York.

We were not meant for Provo. Today, Taylor came and took me to lunch (I work in American Fork). There's not that much distance between the two places but there is so much freedom the closer you are to Salt Lake City. It will be a temporary fix in December when we're married and leave Provo, making things better until we can leave Utah for good. Until then, we are both now fully enjoying the cooler weather and all it offers.

Winter Shoes

Yesterday Taylor and I went to TJMaxx in search of some knock-off Uggs for me. I figured out few winters ago it's best to get $30 Fuggs because I'm so tough on boots it doesn't make sense to (as much as I'd love to) buy the name brand ones when they're going to be shot in six months.

As we walked through the shoe racks he pulled out every pair of not-Ugg boot. Apparently he thinks Uggs are awful, but every boot he pulled out I would never be able to get myself to wear, cold feet or no. At one point I found a cool pair of Ralph Lauren shoes that looked a lot like the traditional Puma style.

Me: "These are cool."
Taylor: "Yeah. They're summer shoes though."

pause.

Summer shoes? Oh yeah. This is my fifth winter in Utah and I still see any pair of close-toed shoe as a "winter" shoe.

This is why: Rainbows.

As a California kid, I wore these pretty much year-round. That picture is of me, my brother, Philip, and my sister, McKenzie, during our family portrait session last summer. Unplanned, and yet to no surprise, we all wore Rainbows. (What you don't see in this is that my sister-in-law, Elizabeth, and brother-in-law, Austin, were also wearing Rainbows.)

That's why it's so hard for me to buy "winter shoes". I always want to wear flip flops and cold weather means I need to wear any type of shoe, so my feet are always cold.

These are what I did buy, though:

They're perfect: a little weird, waterproof, fully lined and warm and I want to wear them.

words.

New favorite website: tagxedo.com

Go. Play. Share. You're welcome.

the creative yogi

Last summer my brother, Philip, and I took a ceramics class together. He (which then passed on to me) fell in love with ceramics in high school and it's something he and I continue to bond over. I won't get into the unexpectedly raw freedom that comes with a wheel of porcelain, but I will talk about a thought that class created. One of our assignments was to read "The Creative Habit" by Twyla Tharp. (Get a hold of it and read it. Especially if you are creatively (or have aspirations to be) driven.

In the essay she discusses the power of habit. In creating and maintaining a habit to begin anything from the day to a practice session to a moment of creativity, we allow ourselves to progress more quickly and efficiently. Basically, the power of routine.

As I mentioned it in my other blog, but I am now a working not-so-stiff. It feels really good and freeing to be in a routine that I like and isn't school. I love school, and I plan on going back someday, but I was really ready for something different.

I'm not great at routines, because I see them as constricting if I don't have flexibility. But I've always wanted one I like. So, with this job, I have created a simple morning routine: I do yoga.

I was converted to Yoga when I lived in Virginia and did Bikram Yoga. Sadly, there isn't a Bikram studio close by, so I have been doing small half-hour sessions via the Yogamazing podcast. It felt good, but I didn't think much about it until I skipped my routine last Friday. It was really ridiculous how useless I was. I couldn't focus and my day was way less productive than the rest of the week.

Lesson learned: Whether routine, yoga or both, I'm sold on my morning ritual.