Intro

I had a blog before this, but I decided to start over fresh just to see what happens. I named it 'Not by the book' because my life has zig zagged in so many directions that you might say I've not 'gone by the book' in terms of following one certain path. And I've not followed a traditional timeline for certain milestones (like marriage, kids, career, etc.) (But traditional timelines are becoming less and less common, aren't they?) I'm 31 right now and in my second semester of grad school at USF. I'm going for a master's in exercise science because I want to work as a health fitness specialist in a corporate wellness setting. I got my bachelor's in theatre at FSU almost a decade ago when acting was my intended pursuit. The time between then and now is quite a story.

Some highlights were that I moved to L.A but quickly gave up acting. While I was there, though, I worked as a movie extra, a talent agency intern, and office temp. I dabbled in fiction writing on the side because I really wanted to be a writer. But I felt I didn't have a lot of material / life experience to draw from. I had some which I used in short stories, but it's almost as if I was trying to live the most adventurous life I could just to have material. (And because I was in my twenties and didn't want a typical career and wanted to be an artist... you know, that kind of thing).Well, I did end up getting some material which I turned into a memoir. I won't go into the details here because it's unpublished and too personal, but suffice to say it was perhaps a coming-of-age type of thing. (If you can call the years I was 24 and 25 'coming of age'. Whether they were or not, they were definitely life-changing).

From age 26 to 30 I was back in Florida where I grew up. Just so it's not misleading, I didn't write the memoir while I was still in L.A. It was after I got home. It was during my quarter-life crisis (yeah, I kinda had one of those) when I was REALLY unsure about what I wanted to do with my life. After all, simply writing a memoir did not make me a writer. And I didn't have anything else to write. And what marketable skills did I have? Customer service type jobs seemed to be the most fitting thing for me at that point, but I didn't want that to be my life. I considered trying to get into publishing, but that was a difficult task. I did have one short-lived job in marketing, but that wasn't my cup of tea. Finally, I had the idea of getting into fitness. It was perfect because health and eating were already things I was passionate about. I hated being restrained by desks and/or cubicles and wanted a job where moving around was part of it. Exercise and getting paid for it? Awesome! (Also, I used to figure-skate as a kid before I got into drama in high school, so that's always been something that's defined me in a way). So I researched college degree programs for that and found exercise science. I took some online prerequisites that I needed and got accepted! I still felt a little behind other students who had come directly from an undergrad program in the same field, and almost wanted to give up when I found there were some crucial classes I wanted that weren't offered at the graduate level. But I talked to some advisors, made a plan, and kept going. So that's where I am now!