Today I bought myself flowers. I was walking through my neighborhood and saw a newly set up flower stand at the deli I frequent.

And you know what I realized? Buying yourself flowers is amazing. I’ve done it before and every single time it feels nice to have flowers in the house.

So let me give you a little healthy living tip: buy yourself flowers just cause they’re pretty. Trust me, you’re worth it.

Instead of making three wishes, I am going to make three goals. Making goals is much more valuable to me, because it’s something that I can work towards achieving.

So here’s my plan: these are three things that I want to accomplish by 12/12/12. That gives me a year, a month and a day to get these goals in action. Here they are:

1. Launch my Health Coaching business and save up for Culinary School in 2013: As I finish my nutrition degree through IIN, the plan is to launch my health coaching business and begin taking on clients in the new year. I am really excited to begin helping people to reach their health coals. But, more than this, what I want to do is attend culinary school in 2013 because I am passionate about food and I want to both strengthen my food writing and also be able to teach people how to make the healthy food I am recommending they eat. And so, in order to get there, I am going to save any extra penny I can (from family birthday presents to freelancing checks to health coaching payments) to achieve this goal.
2. Begin seriously writing about food/health and expand my Published Clips Portfolio: As I am finally writing more for my full-time job at Family Circle, I also want to start freelancing a lot more. It’s part of what I am hoping will help to pay for my chef’s training at the Natural Gourmet Institute (see Goal #1), but in general I just love writing and would like to see my name published more. I am currently taking a Food Writing course at MediaBistro and also considering taking the Memoir Writing course in the new year. I have tons of ideas for personal essays, relationship articles and many more. My main goal is to build up my food writing clips at different magazines and begin to work on a food memoir.
3. Maintain my 100lb weight loss and incorporate a Fitness Regiment into my life: Since I’m finally back at Weight Watchers with a friend, I really want to get back down to my ideal weight of 130lbs. Right now I’m at a good weight, but I know I could be doing better if I wasn’t snacking as much and exercising more. On top of it all, I’ve made a commitment to finally incorporate regular exercise into my life by keeping a weekly fitness video journal. What I’d really like is to have this take off and become one of those people that loves to exercise. In fact, and I know this is a big dream for someone who’s not a runner, I’d like to run the NYC Marathon before my 30th Birthday. That gives me 4 years to fall in love with running!

I really believe in setting daily goals, so setting even bigger long term goals seems like the next step.

Since all of these are related to the aforementioned not-so-secret passion that I have for food and wellness, I hope that you will follow along on my healthy living blog to see how I’m doing.

I’ll be making sure to keep track of them on my calendar and find a way to make it work, while making sure that I maintain a balanced life, of course. But these are my main goals and I am absolutely determined to achieve them.

Well, besides writing (duh), my not-so-secret passion is for food and cooking and healthy living. I mean, I don’t have a healthy living blog where I make tons of delicious recipes for nothing.

I’ve struggled with my weight my entire life and I’ve now finally let go of the fear of trying new foods and have really become a foodie. Nothing (except writing) gets me crazy excited but food.

Whether it’s getting a new cookbook (since I’m seriously addicted), trying out a new recipe (which I loooooooove to do) or watching the Food Network for hours on end, I just love the world of food.

In fact, after I finish nutrition school this year, I am hoping to go to culinary school.

My dream is to combine my love of writing with my love of food and helping people. It’s why I write my blog, actually. And also why I am currently taking a food writing course from MediaBistro. I would love to professionally write about food, teach people how to eat better (thanks to my health coaching degree from IIN) and show people how to make delicious healthy meals (after attending the Natural Gourmet Institute, a whole foods chef’s training program).

Along the way, I hope to never stop learning. Because if I had to say I had another passion, then it’s definitely that I love learning new things. So whether it’s learning more about writing, social media, food, health, nutrition, healthy living, how to lead a happy life, being more confident or any other topic, you can bet your ass that I’ll be looking forward to learning more.

And who knows? Maybe I’ll even write my own book one day.

Wait, scratch that, I will write my own book one day. More than one, actually. But that’s a whole other story…

Honestly, I never had this moment. It’s not that I still think that my home is just like everyone else’s, it’s more that I never really felt like my home was similar to anyone else’s.

You see, I came to the United States when I was 8 years old. So, by definition, my home was different than most of my friend’s homes. I always felt different because I was born in Russia, had a Cuban dad and a tri-lingual household.

My family went from being really poor immigrants to being able to pay for my college education at NYU. Now I live in New York, edit and write for a living, and generally have a really nice life.

Whenever I go home, I still don’t feel like it’s normal. Our Christmas dinner is on the Eve (because that’s how Cubans do it) and we always include a Russian salad and Cuban fried sweet plantains alongside the turkey and mashed potatoes at Thanksgiving.

We also talk, yell and laugh in three languages. Even my brother, who was only 3 years old when we came here and therefore doesn’t really “speak” the other languages, understands me all the same whether I say something to him in Russian or in Spanish or (most often) in English.

But all of the people I meet have a unique story like this. My best friend came from a foster family, another friend lived on a military base in Japan, many come from divorced or complicated “modern” families.

So what is a typical home? I guess I don’t really know because I don’t think there is one. That’s the real beauty of America and why I call this my home: it truly is a melting pot of different cultures, different lifestyles and different people. And I love that.

Um… Well, I guess you could call my shoulder dislocation a bit traumatic.

You see, I have dislocated my shoulder exactly 6 times in my life. It’s never fun because, well, it’s painful and I have to go to the hospital every single time to get it popped back in.

It’s not really like in the movies, where it falls out and then the person just puts it back in on their own. In reality, if I tried to do that I could actually shatter my bone. And, trust me, I don’t want to do that.

So it sucks. Yes, I said it. IT SUCKS. Really, really badly.

Here’s how it has happened so far:

1. March 2004: my 18th birthday party and what started it all– it was a pool party and my friend threw me off of a water floatie, I fell in the shallow end and (instead of hitting my head on the stairs) put my arm out to stop myself from impact. That’s when it popped out. I spent the rest of the day in the pool with another friend trying to get me to fix it myself, but finally I went to the hospital for the first time in my life.
2. June 2005: I was visiting home in the summer and my brother and I went to a water park. We were playing around, I jumped at him and he literally twisted it out himself. The worst part was that he still didn’t have his license and my parents were out of town, so I had to drive myself to the hospital. After he turned the car on, of course, since my right arm just didn’t have the strength to do it.
3. February 2008: Probably the freakiest way it happened out of all of the times. I was visiting my parents on vacation and taking a snooze by the pool. Sleeping on my arms, my uncle’s dog crawled under the chair and woke me up. I got so spooked that I jerked violently and it just popped out. Since then, I have pretty much hated the dog and have not been able to sleep in that position since.
4. September 2009: Okay, this is by far the most embarrassing one to admit but, well, in the interest of honestly and full disclosure I am just going to say it: I dislocated it during sex. I usually tell people that I fell out of bed but, well, the truth is that my long-tern boyfriend of the time accidentally pulled it out in the heat of the moment. He took me to the hospital and I’m pretty sure the nurse thought he beat me. Oh well.
5. December 2010: The 2nd most painful time that it happened and another contestant in the “freakiest way it happened” category– I was walking down the stairs in New York City after the huge post-Christmas snowstorm we had and, well, I slipped on the wet stairs and slid all the way down. I fell pretty hard and actually had to call an ambulance to come get me to take me to the hospital.
6. July 2011: This actually happened on July 4th. What a way to end a FANTASTIC weekend, let me tell you. After a great day in Long Beach Island, NJ, my friends and I headed to the pool. I jumped right in and, on the swim up, my shoulder just easily popped out of the socket. It was the simple act of moving my hands in the “swimming up” motion that got it out. Lots of stress there.

The worst part of this story is that after the 4th time it happened, I actually got surgery to repair the problem. You see, as my doctor explained, the only way to stop the problem for good was to get surgery to artificially repair the labrum joint (muscle?) that tore the first time I dislocated it.

The surgery went really well. I have the scars and 6 months of physical therapy to prove it. It was a difficult and painful ordeal which included 3 weeks out of work and living on pain medication all through the Holidays (since I got the surgery on December 16th, 2009).

All in all, none of this was fun. The painful and somewhat embarrassing fall on those subway steps has haunted me ever since.

But, well, what can I do? I certainly can’t do all the fun things I had planned before: skiing, a triathlon, even bowling can be a challenge. Instead, I just breathe, keep going and… am very, very careful from now on.

I don’t have (nor am anywhere close to having) children at the moment, so this isn’t really a question that is terrible relevant to me. Well, that’s not exactly true. I do still have to balance things.

Actually, balancing my life is something that I struggle with all the time.

I joke to my friends that I have three jobs: the full-time job that I am paid for, blogging as the Fit Flexitarian as much as possible (I aim for 7 days a week) and also studying health coaching at the Institute of Integrative Nutrition.

Besides that, I also try to freelance write, exercise, hang out with my friends and (of course!) actually have some fun. It’s a pretty hectic schedule, so I find that my absolute best strategy for balancing everything is by keeping really hard track of my calendar.

My friends probably think that I’m a bit obsessive with it cause, well, I am. But it’s what honestly keeps me sane.

My iPhone calendar is like my child. I put everything in there and, if I ever lost it, I think I would have a heart attack.

Okay, maybe I’m exaggerating a bit… but I really do mean it when I say that’s how I handle things. I even “schedule” in time to relax. It’s not that I actually stick to it 100% of the time, but it helps me to visualize my day, figure things out and make sure that everything is well balanced. I like keeping track of things, even if I have to move them around sometimes.

Hey, whatever works, right?

It was a really great event (though I was sad to not be watching the marathon runners) and I had a fantastic time catching up with old friends and meeting new ones.

I felt really good and super pumped all throughout but, strangely, the minute I got home I crashed.

I don’t know what it was, but I’ve been down all evening. I literally haven’t been able to get motivated enough to do anything but lay on the couch and watch TV. Perhaps tomorrow will be better? Do you ever get in weird funky moods and you’re not sure why?

Sometimes all a girl needs is to lounge in bed for half the day, pluck her eyebrows and do her nails. I haven’t given myself a mani/pedi in quite some time, but today was just one of those mornings where I needed to do it.

And, since I had barely played around with my new red crackle nail polish before, I decided to do something funky with my nails.

Putting silver nail polish underneath and coating it with red turned out quite well, though I do think it’s a little bit too Christmas-y too soon. Nevertheless, it’s cute and it’s a busy weekend for me, but I’m really glad I took the time this morning to just relax and enjoy some “me” time.

Because, if I don’t take care of myself, who will?

What kind of writer would I be if I actually made a choice in this question? I don’t know that it’s possible, in this day and age, to chose between a pen or computer.

In the first place, what am I actually writing?

When it comes to casual writing, like blogging (which I love), I would have to say that the computer is the way to go.

Writing novels or essays or journalism pieces, it always has to be the computer, doesn’t it? I can’t even imagine this kind of writing being by hand. I mean, wouldn’t my hand cramp?

I’m a pretty fast typer and I’m an even faster thinker. (Wait, does that actually make sense?)

The reason I love blogging so much is because I write the way I talk. If you’re reading this, I can tell you that the words coming out of my fingers are the exact words that are being processed in my head.

Sometimes I take more time to think about something, like when writing an essay or a novel, and so I write much slower.

In that case, I could probably use a pen and take my time. But, honestly, I think it would be a huge pain to then have to re-write it all from paper onto my computer. I mean, after all, isn’t the point of that kind of writing that someone else reads it?

But I’ll tell you this: I do love the pen sometimes.

When it comes to journaling, I find that I can’t really do it on the computer.

Well, that’s not to say that I actually can’t. Blogging is, in many ways, similar to journaling. But even when I blog, I rarely just talk about how my day went. And even if I did, that’s not the kind of journaling I ever really enjoyed.

When I was in middle and high school, I tried to keep up a journal. I tried to write about what was happening in my life and all that, but I could never really do it long enough. It was fun for a few weeks, and then I would love interest.

No, the kind of journaling that I love doing with a pen is the really deep, emotional, personal journaling.

It’s not about my day or what has been going on in my life lately. Well, not exclusively. It’s about my thoughts, my fears, my loves, my hopes, my dreams and everything in between.

I recently started to write in a daily journal for my nutrition school and I love it. I start my day with writing what I’m feeling, what I’m grateful for and what my daily goals are. At the end of the day, I end my night with putting down what I ate that day, what choices I made that were good and bad and a loving thought before bed.

I really love doing this in pen and paper. I can’t explain why, but it just feels good.

The other journal that I like doing with a pen is sort of a brainstorming journal, but it’s related to my schooling.

You see, every once in a while I’ll begin to stress out that I’m not doing enough of this or enough of that, so I like to take this journal and just write down my thoughts. It’s sort of like thinking out loud or brainstorming with friends, except it’s just with myself. I find that it helps me to process all of my ideas in this form.

And I don’t really like to do it that way on the computer. It’s, for some reason, not as effective because it’s just not as personal. But give me a pen and my little “Keep Calm and Have a Cupcake” book and I’m in brainstorming/journaling heaven.

So, really, when I think about the choice of writing with a pen or with a computer, I can’t imagine doing just one or the other.

What can I say? Maybe I’m just indecisive. But I honestly like both. They serve a different purpose completely, so how could I really choose in between the two? In the end, what really matters is that I’m writing.