An anti-lifestyle blog

I love lifestyle blogs and instas where all the photos are perfectly on brand, consistently color themed, styled, and perfectly filtered. Where posts runneth over of beautiful dinner parties with moneys-no-object (neither apparently is time nor patience) table settings, and blissed out, impeccably dressed party guests. This, however, is not that blog. This is about real life.

Welcome to Living the Goody Life, an anti-lifestyle blog. This is unfiltered, real life. I’m nearing 40, starting to gray, getting a few wrinkles, on my second marriage, a step-mom, a cancer survivor, and recently forced to stop working due to chronic health issues from the cancer treatments. My life didn’t turn out how I’d planned, but it’s actually full of so much joy. Living the Goody Life spans my whole life, which sometimes looks perfect, joyous, and privileged, but is always intertwined with pain, limitations, and conscious self-management.

I try to live my fullest life every day, which some days is traveling, planning parties for my family, volunteering for my kids’ field trips, or trying a new restaurant or bar, while other days are spent in bed, working through intense neck, jaw or nerve pain, surgeries, dental procedures, or just intense fatigue.

I like to write and decided to do this for myself, but the section on health will have a lot for those with chronic illness, and those currently going through or past oral cancer.

For those fighting the daily fight to not turn into middle-aged pudge, I’ll write about my food journey, the recipes and foods my husband and I are into, workouts I’m loving or hating, and my new favorite indulgences.

This blog is a work-in-progress, like me. It will always be so and it will change over time. And if I’m dealing with a lot of health issues, that may be all I write about, or I may not write at all. I hope you don’t take offense, but this blog is for me. If you happen to enjoy it, or benefit from something I’ve shared, then that only amplifies my joy. But ultimately, I’ll write this even if the only person reading this is my mom (because my mom loves everything I write and has/will always be my biggest fan).

I’ve been working on this blog for almost a year. I don’t have many posts, because I let perfection get in the way of progress. I was so unhappy with the layout, the fonts, the colors that I kept putting it to the back burner. I just felt “meh” so I avoided it. I have a habit of doing this with projects I feel like I don’t know how to do or how to fix. I finally got the motivation I needed this week: physical and emotional pain. Blogging helps me mentally when I’m having a hard day or week so I reapplied myself and found a layout, fonts and colors I love. For now. 🙂

Writing is an outlet for me and is my therapy. When I had cancer in 2010, blogging helped me through. I don’t have cancer again, but my life has been permanently changed from the surgical, radiation, and chemotherapy treatments I went through. I’m not able to work anymore and so I’m evolving to a new version of me, learning to find my value in this new life, and figuring out how to retain aspects of my life that I loved. I loved working. But with chronic pain, fatigue, and cognitive challenges I can’t apply my strengths in a traditional way any more. It’s been a hard year, but I’ve learned so much about what I need to be happy. One of the most important things I’ve figured out is that I need something in my life that’s just mine. And this blog can be it.

I do hope you enjoy it. But if not…bye, Felicia.