You know, there’s this small sizable too-big-to-admit part of me that wonders if I should even be writing at all. I wonder what am I doing writing this blog? Who will ever really care what I write here? Am I doing it just for myself?

Would I be able to go on with my life without it? Yeah. [one blog post in the last month. Please.] Sometimes I question my desire, and if it’s event the right thing for me. Sure, writing is an outlet. It absolutely feels cathartic to put it all down on paper blinkey-cursor-thing. But I don’t feel like I NEED it. I can achieve that same cathartic feeling from talking it out with a best friend, a good yoga session or finally letting it all hit the fan and breaking down completely. Am I really a writer? Why do I write? And if I really wanted to be here, in this space, I’d make time to write regular posts. Right?

oh, self-doubt. you are no friend of mine

Here’s what I do know:

• Writing helps me work through things. It helps me figure out what my feelings actually are on something, when nothing else seems to work. So although I’d rather use a real life person to bounce things off of, I know that sometimes to think clearly, I just need to get. the words. out.
• I’m drawn to it. I always have been. I’ve never really not thought of myself as a writer. No amount of self-doubt can really change that.
• I want to get better at it.

So I’m going to [try to] stop doubting myself.  And start trusting myself. The writing will happen. And if I’m afraid it doesn’t, I’m just going to do it anyway, dammit.

First, I have to say, I opened up a new post and then closed wordpress because I haven’t done anything blog-worthy, am not in a writing mood and/or have a headache.  Lucky for me, I’ve lately had this attitude of doing things that are good for me, in spite of my lack of will.  It’s weird.

You would think I’d have learned this by now, but for some reason I NEED to keep reminding myself that the time when I least feel like doing something is when I need to do it the most (writing and riding alike).  So, here we are.

First, I have to give myself public props for riding on my first day back to work, and not just because I said I would.  It felt good.  And I knew it would be THAT much more difficult if I didn’t just jump right in and do it.  So I did (and then because of heavy loads in need of transportation, I didn’t ride the next two days), and again on Friday.

In talking with Brad, I’ve noticed that lately, I don’t even have to think about it.  I’d be fooling myself to say that it’s become routine or habit for me already.  But I’m at least able to appreciate how easy it’s been to just get up and get on my bike (hah–all three times).  It does kind of make me wonder though, why it’s been so hard for me to capture any of this in my blog?  Often something will happen (or not happen) and I think, what a great blog post this will make, but the post never comes.  Maybe I am just THAT busy, but I don’t want to cop out with excuses.

That said, the other blog-worthy things that happened (or didn’t happen) since my last post:

We (Brad and I–my family wasn’t so excited about mountain biking) totally missed out on a mountain biking adventure we were trying to sign up for in Curacao.  I was BUMMED.  I have never been mountain biking before and was really exciting at the prospect of doing it for the first time on a tropical island.**

We did do an awesome kayak day in Aruba though, which was super rad.  I had also never kayaked before (although seeing people do it in the Truckee River sufficiently freaked me out about it).  Kayaking on a nice mellow beach though, I was prepared to handle.  I even volunteered to go first (YES, that is impressive and I’ll thank you to not disagree with me).

IweBrad kicked ass at kayaking.  When I wasn’t showering him with my paddle.  At least we didn’t tip over like my bro and sis (sorry guys ).

Anyway, it was fun.  And almost started to make up for the amount of delicious cruise food I ate the rest of the week. ***

The other noteworthy thing that happened this week is we FINALLY adjusted the seat on my bike so my knees will stop hurting (thank you Jeff Moser for helping to diagnose) and it’s a bajillion times better.

Now that school has started (not for me, but for my boo, who is in class until 7 on Monday and Wednesday) and daylight saving hasn’t ended quite yet, I might do some solo exploring on my bike.  Even though, it’s Monday, my workday has ended and yet, I’m sitting at my desk writing this … um, I guess that means peace out til next time! ****

**AND SUBSEQUENTLY BLOGGING ABOUT IT!!!

*** oh, btw, if you were wondering, the cruise was AWESOME

**** and if you made it all the way down here, thanks!  Now go do something more fun, please! (apparently it’s a footnote kind of day)

So, yesterday’s post was kinda lame.  I’ll admit it.  This is why none of you read it (yes, I’ll wait for you to scroll down and skim) because I didn’t announce it anywhere.  Because it was lame.  I think I knew it when I posted it, but pretended not to.  But then I read my BFF Annie’s blog post, and realized hers tell stories.  Mine didn’t tell a story.  Not that I need to always be telling stories.  But this is not my diary (I could never keep one anyway).  I should only be posting, sharing things that I think other people will want to read and/or find useful.  Not, the daily uninteresting happenings of my life.

Now, that’s not to say I won’t stop sharing my quips about odd happenings in my life.  You’re not that lucky.

But I am going to be more consciencious about what I post here.  I am not 100 percent sure what that looks like yet.  But I do know this–I definitely need to be on my bike a lot more to have better stories to tell.  Now, the learning part is mostly taken care of.  I can ride the bike.  Now I need to start experiencing life from my bike.

Which reminds me!  I had my first experience last week with a driver not paying attention to and/or not caring about sharing the road with a cyclist.  Luckily, I was paying very good attention and neither of us were going very fast.  But, a good reminder about how important it is that I am completely alert and aware of everything happening when I’m on that little red Schwinn.  I gave him the WTF look, he stared back at me blankly and we both went on our way.

I didn’t ride againt this weekend.  But it was yucky weather, which just begs for staying inside.  At any rate, it felt good to get a TON of cleaning done.  It was really, really necessary and now I feel good about my dad and Brad’s family coming in to town for graduation!

BUT, I am promising myself to ride both days this weekend.

On a last note, I really, really, REALLY did not want to ride to work this morning.  So much that, I actually managed to convince myself not to.  It’s gonna be windy, I’m too tired, it’s too cold, I don’t have time, etc.  Then, by some sort of miracle, I re-convinced myself that I should ride!  Not sure how, other than I guess I really wanted to!  Which is very, very good.

So … I think this will be long.  But I learned lots of great stuffs.  I felt like such a noob.  Still do.

I think at some point everyone’s slideshow will be up on the Reno-Tahoe Wordcamp Web site, but they aren’t yet.

First and foremost, the Twitter feed for the entire day can be found here.  If you weren’t there and feel like reading it, I would highly recommend it.  Some good stuff was said that day, mostly by me.  Haha, I only jest.  Most of what I said were quotes from all the fabulous presenters!

First up was the keynote, Matt Mullenweg (aka @photomatt), founder, right?) of WordPress and one of PC World’s top 50 people on the Web.  He told us all about the four things to get hip to on WordPress.  I don’t fully understand all of this JUST yet, but here they are:

1. WP.com – WordPress just obtained this URL after years of trying.  Neat, but not entirely useful to me.  Just redirects to wordpress.com.
2. P2 - This is kinda neat.  It’s sort of a hybrid of WordPress and Twitter.  Good for a casual blogger and convenient like Twitter without a dashboard.  I kind of like having both for now though.
3. WordPress.tv – uhh … YouTube for wordpress??
4. Buddy Press – Part blog, part social network.  WordPress for multiple users, aka MU.

Matt also had a neat little video for P2, but I couldn’t find it anywhere (I didn’t look that hard), but the best part about it was that the sound didn’t work and he had to narrate himself.  It was cute.

So, the entire day there were two tracks.  One for developers and one for business and/or community people.  I mostly stuck to the latter because I don’t speak code very well.

First I saw Michelle Montoya talk about WordPress as a Training Tool (which was mostly an intro to WordPress, which I kinda needed).  She pretty much hits the high points in her slideshow.  In fact, I may just print it out as my notes

On a side note, she is an English teacher at TMCC and I SO wish I had her as an instructor when I was in school.  She is fun and rad.

Next on the business and community track, I listened to Twelve Horses CEO, David LaPlante talk about personal branding.  And if you follow me on Twitter, you know how inspired I was after his session.  Read my tweets about it here for highlights.  I am feeling residual inspiration from this session.  Have buku respect for David and Twelve Horses.

Mostly though, I just was very inspired to fine-tune my personal brand.  I also became very aware of how my company brand has influenced my personal brand.  AND.  I.  LIKE.  IT.

Probably another blog to come later re: my personal brand.  Stay tuned.

We then had a box lunch, chatted it up, talked about how inspiring all our colleagues are and nearly got attached by some ducks who wanted our potato chips.  And I wouldn’t write about the lunch break otherwise, but these ducks were freaky.

See how VIOLENT they are?!

Next up was “Journalism and Blogging” by my friend Mike Higdon (sorry for so many links, btw, but I am only doing it because I really like them!  If you only click one more link though, click this one )

Mike offered great tips on who should blog, why and how.   And also that you can’t reach everyone (which I knew), and that it’s okay that some of your audience might be ignored or even offended (which I did not know).  I don’t think I will ever be blogging on anything that heavy, but you never know.

Next was Chelsea Otakan‘s preso on building themes in WordPress, which I am HOPING will make a buttload more sense once I start using the WordPress software.  She is so cute and tiny and it is totally intimidating to see her spread so much knowledge about something I only understand enough to be dangerous.  However, I have LOVED following her on Twitter.  View her slideshow here.

Next I got to listen to Ed Adkins talk about using WordPress as a content management system (CMS), which makes sense because that’s exactly what it is.  I didn’t know it at the time, but a Web site we recently developed was created with WordPress.  Cool stuff.  Can’t wait for more of that.

Oh yeah, and Ed is hilarious, etc. etc. which I already knew.  He’s smarter than he gives himself credit for though.  He hasn’t posted his slideshow yet, but I’ll provide a link when he does.  That’s where all the funny was.

During that session, there was another session going on called “Blogging for a Living.”  I hear it was great.  No slideshow posted yet, but hopefully my BFF, Annie, will comment here about it.

(Jeez, I just realized how very long this is getting … really sorry)

Um … oh, I guess I’m done.  The last one I saw was called “WordPress & House Arrest,” but I really didn’t learn much from that.  Sorry Glenn.  It was quite funny (if not totally disgusting) but that was about it for me.

If anyone reading this learned other fabulous things from Saturday’s Wordcamp, please feel free to comment here!  I know there was a lot I missed that day, even though I learned so much!

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Update: Click here for a recap from John Hawkins, who attended almost the complete opposite sessions.  He also spoke (at a session I unfortunately missed).  View his stuffs here.

Had a really lovely, energetic, exciting, inspiring day today at the Reno-Tahoe Wordcamp.  I don’t think I will fully understand everything I learned today until I start playing around with the WordPress.org software.  But either way, I had a great time.  Sometimes I can’t BELIEVE that I get paid to go and learn that stuff.  Can’t wait to start implementing everything in the Olsen Blog.  I think later on I will transcribe some notes and give some links to some slideshows … but not tonight because I am way tired.  Just felt the need to get on and gush a bit.

A few highlights:

• Found out just how funny Ed Adkins really is.
• Learned a retarded amount of goodies from David LaPlante about personal branding
• Became very aware of how limited my knowledge is of html code and PHP (to be honest I don’t even know what PHP is).
• Realized I need to do to understand this stuff.  More on that once I have started doing.

Guess that’s all for now.  Guess none of this was about my bike (which, another thing I learned today, according to Mike Higdon, is that bikes and bicycling happen to not be a very good/original blog topics), but I don’t care enough.    Today was a fabuloso day and I enjoyed it very much and just had to share.  Wish I had enough time/felt comfortable enough to ride my bike to the university today for the Wordcamp, but didn’t.

I thought there was something else I had to say .. but not anymore, I guess.

So … here we are.  I am thinking about making this blog mostly about my adventures with my new bike.  I am under the impression it might be easier to write about a particular topic or focus, so we’ll start with that.  But I feel like that might get old quickly–to all of NOBODY that is reading this.  Either way, I anticipate this blog will highlight more than just my bike life.

So, I bought this bike from the Reno Bike Project.  It’s pretty rad, actually.

My late 70s - early 80s schwinn

I am basically in love with it.

So, the last time I was on a bike (not of the stationary-gym variety) was around 1994.  I was 9 and I went “chin surfing,” as my family likes to call it.  Suffice it to say I was kind of over the whole bike thing.  By the time I stopped being afraid of bikes, I never really saw a use/need for them in my life and then the idea just never occurred to me.

So, here I am, living in Reno with gorgeous weather about 3/4 of the year.  I work about five minutes away from my home, which happens to be in a lovely area near downtown.  Why would I NOT have a bike?  So I got a bike.

My outdoor enthusiast boyfriend had NOTHING to do with it either.  Okay, that’s a lie.  He had to teach me how to ride all over again.  At first it was scary, feeling like I was going to topple over if he let go.  But then something overcame me and I wasn’t scared anymore.  I just went.  You really never forget how to ride a bike.

Success!

Turning around on a bike, however, I still have yet to master.  I can’t quite make a u-turn, but am sort of able to do an o-turn.

Days after learning, I was on the real road.  Driving with cars is scary.  And just days after that, I had my first fall.  Note to self: double-knot shoelaces.  I got right back on that horse — er, bike — and rode all the way to Blockbuster!  Okay, that’s a lie too.  I walked with it on the sidewalk on Plumb.  Too scary.

Last night I was a weiner and didn’t really ride at all and now I am regretting that since it’s supposed to thunder/rain/snow through Wednesday night.

Okay, so there it is.  My first blog.  Yay me!