Hello world!

I’m Karen, and I am a first year doctoral student in biomedical engineering at University of Virginia. Yes, it’s a mouthful, but I promise you I am just a mad scientist by day, and in the evenings I live a relatively normal (slightly nerdy and hectic) life. I’ve been blogging in some form since junior high. In those days the blogging scene consisted of emo blogs on livejournal about how no one understood me. In the last year I’ve been blogging randomly about my life, social conventions that bother me, and reviews of awesome things. But in the last few weeks, I’ve noticed how interested I am in health and wellness, and that these are the topics I really want to be writing about.

The more I look at the world around me the more angry I get about how society is set up in a way that is making it easy for us to get fat and be unhealthy and stay that way. We are overworked and are expected not to make enough time for ourselves. Lots of us are in financial pickles at the moment and it’s hard to justify the added cost of healthy wholesome foods. Companies stuff our food with gross hormones, pesiticides, and chemicals to make it cheaper and last longer – stuff that we don’t know the effects of long term, but I’m guessing it’s not good. The hospital I work in has a depressing cafeteria stocked primarily with fried greasy entrees served on large slabs of syrofoam. Eating there makes me want to cry for our bodies and the planet. When are we going to say ENOUGH ALREADY?!

I’m starting this blog as someone who is starting basically at square one. I eat far from perfectly. My workouts are few are far between. I don’t make enough time for my health or for things to preserve my happiness. I hope that my readers will help me learn and that I may inspire some of you to start your own healthier journey. It’s never going to get any easier than it is at this moment. There will always be sources of stress, angst, and anxiety holding me back. There will always be those friends or family members who don’t understand. But starting today, I need to fight for my health and for myself.

Cheers,

Karen