Shameless Plugs – Lauren Warnecke

A confession, an admission, and a proclamation

It’s Spring Break at UIC, and I’m taking stock of a few things. Having a few precious hours to reflect on my life, this is what I’ve come up with:

Confession: I’ve broken every rule of blogging lately, and I’ve let this little hub of amusements wither away. As far as the Internet is concerned, this site is totally dead. Today I’d like to confess that it’s only going to get worse.

Admission: I’ve been accepted to the PhD program at the University of Illinois at Chicago (what?!?). So that means my really busy schedule just got a whole lot busier.

Proclamation: I’m resolving today to learn how to say no – to recognize my limits (because I DO actually have them).

Something’s got to give, and unfortunately, for now, that’s One Crafty Lady. Effective immediately, we’re on a hiatus. But that doesn’t mean you can’t keep up with my life… I’ll still be micro-blogging on Tumblr, and you should catch me there. Maybe someday this blog and I will be together again, but let’s be honest: I don’t have time to make a recipe more complicated than instant rice, never mind blog about it.

So I’m asking you to not forget about me, but to make a shift to Tumblr, Twitter, Pinterest, or Instagram (or heck, even Snap Chat). I want and need to stay connected to real people (or at least the virtual ones that I think are reading my blog).

OH, and if you want to follow the PhD adventure beginning this Fall, you can catch me at Art Intercepts too.

Ballerina on Wheels!

So remember last week when I said I’d make a big announcement?

And then, remember how I said I was working on meeting deadlines?

Oops.

Anyway, here’s what the big hubbub is all about:

This July, I’m riding my bicycle 200 miles in 2 days in the Ride for AIDS Chicago! I’ll be slipping back into those beloved padded shorts and houghing it up to Lake Geneva and back in 2 days, and serving a great cause in the mean time.

I admit that bike commuting and I haven’t been the best of friends lately. And this I intend to change. That plus a couple hard core spin classes a week.

Here’s the thing… I can take care of the peddling part, but I need your help, too. As part of my committment I’ve pledged to raise $1000 for TPAN, the organization sponsoring The Ride. This is where you come in. Perhaps you or someone you know has been affected by HIV/AIDS, or perhaps you recognize the great need for increased advocacy efforts. Or maybe you are encouraged by a group of individuals killing themselves on bicycles for a great cause. Whatever your rationale, your contribution of any dollar amount will not go unnoticed.

If 180 people donate $5, I will surpass my goal.

Plus, I’ll throw in a postcard from Lake Geneva.

So if I’ve convinced you to give the cost of your daily latte to a great cause, just visit this here little link:

http://rideforaids.kintera.org/faf/donorreg/donorpledge.asp?ievent=1033952&supId=375704118

I look forward to keeping the lovely readers updated throughout the journey of training and riding in this experience of a lifetime!

My favorite-est posts of all time

This post is short and sweet. I’d like to take a moment and share with you a mini-memoir of a few of my posts. Inspired by one of Dance Advantage’s upcoming circle time, I started reflecting on what I think is my best “stuff”.

Maybe these aren’t the best written, the most impactful, or even the most particularly useful to the greater body of knowledge, but these are the five that stick out to me.

1. On the blog at Art Intecepts I recently wrote a post about stillness, or lack thereof, and compared to the greater context of my life. It was a healthy reminder to me to slow the heck down, but not too much. Read about that here.

2. Shortly after returning from San Francisco this summer and speaking at the Dance/USA conference, I wrote on Dance Advantage about some conference take-aways, and the crtical need for a more effective conversation to take place in order to effect change in the dance community. Read about that here.

3. If you didn’t know I was gay, I guess you do now. Here’s my story, as told by me, on The L Stop.

4. I love to travel, if only to have a reason to write. One of my favorite travel posts came not from the coast of Italy, but from the middle of Wyoming. Read about the middle of Wyoming here.

5. Although first published on 4dancers.org, I love this post because, if for no other reason, it was my first appearance on The Huffington Post. If I had known all it was going to take was a jab at a famous dance critic and talking about naked dancing, I would have done so a lot sooner. You can read that one here.

Ok, so those are mine… what are your favorite posts?

Oh, stop it… you flatter me!

What I meant was, give me YOUR best stuff. For all the other bloggers out there, what is a favorite post you’ve written?

When is it okay to call yourself a writer?

First of all, LOOK! One Crafty Lady went and got herself a facelift… er… a new free theme (!). What do you think of my new digs?

I thought I’d celebrate the recent crossing of 100 posts on the blog (this one here is 110) by dressing her up in fancy new clothes and offering my reflections on the journey to becoming the writer I am today.

Pondering a post. Just another day in the office…

I first started writing online in 2009 while I was finishing up my masters degree in Kinesiology. I was creating static content for Art Intercepts, but began dabbling in blogging to express more opinion-based topics that I wanted to discuss with other dancers. I kept a little private blog between myself and my friend Erin as we traversed life, and One Crafty Lady was born upon her moving to Africa to work for the Peace Corps.

Even though I’ve been writing ever since, I didn’t really start calling myself “a writer” until this summer. I guess I didn’t feel like I could because writing has generally been a hobby, an extra-curricular, something I do for fun. People that play volleyball in their spare time can’t exactly call themselves “volleyball players” on their Linked-In profiles, right?

Over the past three years I’ve gone through four blogs (not including the two I have now), a couple hundred posts, and about 600 tags. I’ve also created 3 columns on other sites (with a fourth pending), 2 magazine articles, and a gaggle of guest posts. It feels really weird getting pitches from other writers and publications; it feels even weirder when you find out you’ve been added to someone’s press list.

You mean, people care enough about what I have to say to send me their press releases? How cool is that?!? I’ve either created a reputation of “crazy and incapable of saying no”, or I am now doing professionally what I like to do personally.

Isn’t that kind of everyone’s dream?

Writing has become an important aspect of my voice in the dance community, my professional life at UIC (each of my 300 students is required to keep a fitness “blog” on our internal class site), and my personal life. What started out as a hobby is now a huge part of who I am and what I do, regardless of whether or not I get paid. Because writing permeates all those other aspects of my life, I guess I kind of AM getting paid – essentially.

I’m embarking on two rather big projects: one with friends and collaborators in the blogging community and one on my own. Starting these (yet to be announced) projects, in conjunction with presenting at Dance/USA with a panel of dance bloggers this summer sealed the deal.

I’m a writer.

When is it okay to give yourself the title of writer? When you have the confidence to own it.

…and I do.

A quick moment for gloating

When I first wake up in the morning, I usually take a big stretch, scratch my belly, and check my feeds. I browse Facebook and Twitter and update my Words With Friends. Occasionally I glance at the news. Then I eventually roll out of bed and get my day going.

So this morning was extra special when I pulled up the Huffington Post’s Arts and Culture page and saw this:

That’s me, the headliner, dishing about naked dancing. ON THE HUFFINGTON POST.

Maybe you didn’t know that this isn’t my only blog… I also write about dance on my own site, as well as here and here. And did you happen to catch the guest spot I wrote here?!? And it just so happened that my recent post on 4dancers.org was pitched to HuffPo and they liked it.

Anyway…

Had I known all it would take was talking about modern dance in the buff to get in at Huffington Post, I would have done it a lot sooner.

In any case, I’m simply tickled to be part of the the team of esteemed bloggers at HuffPo, and couldn’t resist taking a minute to brag.

A quick plug showing some lovin’ for Bloglovin

Much like Mailchimp is the sarcastic, hipster version of Constant Contact, I recently came across Bloglovin as an alternative reader that’s equally witty and totally user-friendly. I won’t faun over it like I did Workflowy, but if you’re looking to coral all your favorite blogs in one place, this might be the reader for you!

Follow my blog with Bloglovin

Cheers!