Personal Development

“Is this supposed to press down on my nose so much,” I asked Ryan, the trainer administering my metabolic and VO2 max test. “Yeah, it needs to be snug enough so air doesn’t get in through the sides,” he explained, adjusting the straps and checking the seal of the mask.

This marks the end of my second full year editing Experience Life. Two years of reading and writing about wellness, fitness and quality of life.

Hey, did we get an abridged-version of summer this year? I swear it was July before I even got my garden in, and then it seemed like the next time I looked, all my plants were already going to seed.

Maybe it's my imagination, but I've begun to notice this weird phenomenon in my editing work. If I start working on an interesting story, or I get into researching a new topic, I'll often have some sort of direct personal experience with the subject matter. Some of these serendipitous encounters are quite pleasant. Others, not so much.

For the past few months, my neighborhood has been slowly filling with signs. Lawn signs, mostly – signs about war and peace, signs rallying support for different points of view. One morning last week, I went out for my morning run and noticed that all the signs belonging to one camp had disappeared. Overnight, I presume, one side took down the other side's signs – an effort that would have required both trespassing and stealing.

In the game of Scrabble, there’s a very handy rule that allows you to exchange some (or even all) of your letter tiles for brand new ones. In my experience, this rule is chronically underemployed. People often forget about it altogether – until they find themselves looking at the board and their available letters, and discovering that about all they can spell is plfhxt.

This being the Take Charge issue and all, it's tempting to claim that when we relaunched Experience Life magazine a little over a year ago, we knew exactly what we were doing – that we planned it out and made it happen just so.

When I was a kid, my mom referred to me affectionately as her "worry wart." This was because, from a very early age, I fretted and worried myself silly over just about everything, from whether my toddler tights were on straight, to whether or not other kids would like me, to whether I would grow up to be the sort of adult I imagined I was supposed to be.

EFT — or Emotional Freedom Technique — is a technique for getting over cravings, phobias, pain, and more.

So I'm watching a rerun of the X-Files the other night (doesn't Scully look hilarious in those early episodes) when the dreaded Arby's commercial comes on.

It starts when some nice clerk ma'ams you at the supermarket. Then you notice waitresses aren't asking to see your ID quite so often. Next thing you know, you're saying things like, "When I was younger," and it no longer sounds even a little bit silly.

I confess, when I first began editing Experience Life, I thought the magazine's name was a little odd. Perplexing, actually.

Well, this is my second issue editing Experience Life , and I’ve decided that working on a health-focused magazine is pretty great. You get to meet all sorts of interesting, healthy people and read all sorts of interesting, healthy books. And you learn an amazing amount about health and fitness. Of course, sometimes it’s more than you wanted to know.