I’m not even going to go into the usual blah-blah-blah about long overdue posts. I’m just going to get right down to it.

I haven’t written in a long time because I’m not really sure what I want to say. Like, not what I want to say in this particular post but more in general. What I want to say as a blogger. As a person. As a seeker of joy, love and badassery in all aspects of life.

In the last year or so I had someone ask me a couple of times what I planned to do with this blog.

Person: The blog is great! I’m a huge fan! What are you going to do with the blog, Steph?

Me: Uhhhhh….

Well, I’m damned if I know.

Because as much as I am a writer at heart and know I have a story to tell (perhaps many stories) I’m just not sure where to go from here. I can tell you for sure that I don’t see myself as “The Fit Fat Girl” anymore. It was a persona for awhile and it worked, but the truth is I’ve spent some time over the last couple of months wondering what else this blog could be if not the journey from fat girl to fit badass.

I mean, I’d have to change the whole theme, right? Sure, I could go on occasionally posting about my workouts, my challenges, my injury and how I’m working to overcome it despite obstacles. But I’ve written that shit to death already, and frankly it doesn’t inspire me anymore. And if it’s not inspiring to me, there’s no way in hell it’s going to inspire you.

And is my goal even to be an Inspiration to the People? Is it my goal to be A Thought Leader on Fat-Related Stuff?

Yeah, no. So that’s kind of over.

What, then, do I want to do with this blog?

Well, I’d like to make people laugh sometimes.

I’d like to talk about my parenting challenges sometimes.

I’d like to throw out my thoughts, good and bad, about happiness and friendships and marriage and body image and how big the universe is sometimes. And how small I feel sometimes, even though I take up a decent amount of space.

I’d like to talk about laundry and dishes, wins and losses, holidays and vacations and all the regular days in between. I’d love to write about hopes and dreams that are bigger than life sometimes.

I’d like to ponder the reasons that some weeks, I am super-humanly motivated to keep my house spic and span with seemingly no effort, but other weeks I just want to sit in the reclining chair under my special blankie (yes, I have one) and read books on my Kindle because the day-to-day responsibilities of being a mom and a wife and a Marketing Communications Manager and the Person Who Keeps the Trains Running In My Family seem so monumental that I have to escape to Panem or Hogwarts or wherever else a book would take me.

Sometimes I’d like to tell you why I love YA lit and airports so much.

Other times I’d like to write about real issues about which I am passionate, like the representation of women in the media. And homelessness. And the inability of us as a species (me included!) to just have some freakin’ tolerance and compassion for other human beings, regardless of their gender, race, political party, religious (or non-religious) beliefs, sexual orientation, stance on global warming or guns or Duck Dynasty or abortion or What’s-Your-Excuse-Fit-Mom-Maria-Kang or WHATEVER else the conflict du jour might be.

Someday I’d like to tell you the story of my special blankie, and the person who bought it for me when I was 16. And how mad I am at her sometimes, and how much I miss her since she died almost 20 years ago.

I’d like to tell you my whole story–not all at once, but in bits and slivers and sound bites along the way, a mosaic of experiences and thoughts and opinions that, put together, create the largely-imperfect-but-still-kinda-cool picture that is me.

So why haven’t I done this yet? (Maybe you asked, maybe you didn’t. I’ll answer anyway.)

Fear, of course.

Fear that the new direction of the blog won’t be as good, or as well-received as the old direction was for the most part.

Fear that when I write about my strong opinions on real issues, people will disagree with me and I’ll look stupid.

Fear that when I let go of The Persona of the Fit Fat Girl, there will just be me. Just Steph. And maybe you will not find that as interesting or funny or cool or WHATEVER as the Person Who Was the Fit Fat Girl.

What if Just Steph is not enough?

This is, like, the burning question of my life.

(I just stopped writing for like 10 minutes and debated the inclusion of the entire last 7 paragraphs. Whatever. Keeping ’em.)

So, having said all this, what now? At this point I think I have no choice but to move it forward with this new direction, no matter how scary it is.

Shedding the Fit Fat Girl armor is some next level shit for me, people.
I’m doing it. I hope you’ll stick around to see how it goes.