For more than 12 years, I was great at optimizing other people’s systems — building databases, auditing processes, writing technical documentation that made complex things make sense. Somewhere along the way, I stopped optimizing the thing that mattered most: my own life.
Walking Around the Blog started as a quiet experiment. A little corner of the internet where an engineer could be something else for a few minutes — an explorer, a dog mom, a person figuring out what it means to actually show up for her own adventure. I didn’t restart it because I had everything figured out. I restarted it because I finally got tired of waiting until I did.
My Real Story
My story originally started as a journey toward a healthier, better self. COVID turned the world upside down, plus I noticed my health was starting to hiccup. There were warning signs prior, but they were easily ignored as I turned my attention to work and helping my ailing mother. COVID, as strange as it sounds, was a blessing in disguise — it forced me to stop and look at the one thing I’d been ignoring: myself. It helped me realize I needed that social interaction. I needed to stop optimizing everything else but my own life.
When my mom passed away in November 2020, I didn’t know what to do. You are never prepared for the loss of your mother. The woman who brought you into the world is no longer at your side. Yes, I knew she was leaving us. Yes, I knew she looked tired and fed up with the Parkinson’s Disease that was ravaging her body. But I did not want to lose her.
This blog started to help me prioritize fitness and healing. It was a new journey, a new season in my life, essentially here to help me grow more. I learned how to push myself, how to stand up for myself, and how to live again. Then, in June 2024, I lost my dad. My dad, my protector, my soldier/hero, and my first love passed away in June 2024. I was a “Daddy’s little girl.”
Here’s what I know about planning: I’m very good at it. I can build a project timeline in my sleep. I’ve managed business operations for over a decade. Give me a problem with variables and constraints, and I will hand back a solution with a color-coded legend. But give me a life without my dad; that’s where you lost me. When he passed, something in me totally changed. It was this change that caused me to refocus on my priorities and my life. I never gave myself permission to be a beginner at anything.
What Changed?
I started out small. A day trip. Then a weekend. Then I threw three dogs in the car and drove somewhere I’d never been, with no agenda other than to see what was there. It turns out, a lot is there. Weird, wonderful, completely underrated things that never show up on the first page of Google. Places that feel like secrets. Roads that feel like rewards. And I wanted to share them – not as a polished travel influencer with a ring light and a sponsored hotel stay, but as someone who found a roadside attraction by accident and immediately pulled over.
What This Blog is Now
Walking Around the Blog is my attempt to engineer a bigger, better life for myself. It’s about:
- Offbeat adventures and unusual destinations most people overlook
- What it looks like to travel with three opinionated dogs
- An honest fitness journey from someone starting later than the Instagram highlight reel suggests
- A picky eater’s slow, reluctant, occasionally delightful food education
- And the systems, tools, and spreadsheets I use to make all of it work
I’m not here to tell you how to live. Lord, I have made plenty of mistakes and do not know what in the world I am doing half of the time. What I do know is that I am here to share what happens when an engineer decides to stop studying the map and start driving.
Welcome back to Walking Around the Blog. Let’s go find something weird together.
Click the subscribe button below so you do not miss what’s coming next – including a dog-friendly road trip guide and my honest fitness month-one recap.
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