A New Year ~ Time to Evaluate

Healthy Journey Cafe celebrated its one-year anniversary on January 5th. Wahoo! With a post addressing New Year's resolutions, I began talking to you about optimum wellness through diet, exercise, sleep and attitude.

A new year presents the opportunity to evaluate direction, purpose and effectiveness with a project. So that's what we'll do for this blog. I want to hear from you to see what you would like to get from Healthy Journey Cafe in 2012.

A Step Back
We've crawled out from under a sea of boxes and are now onto the details of settling in our "new" house—organizing the office, putting up brackets to store the bikes, hanging drapes, etc. Since I took a hiatus from posting to move, it gave me a chance to step back from the frantic activity of thinking about, writing and providing pictures for each post three times a week.

Even though each day was filled with moving, I enjoyed being outside (going back and forth between homes) and seeing people (thanks to the precious family and friends that showed up each day to help). It was nice not to feel the stress of needing to post in a few days.

Not My Only Focus

Two-year-old Cyrus playing with The Prisoner
of Carrot Castle iPad app

Only a few of you know that this blog is not my only focus. I'm a writer and as such have felt drawn to write for children, but I also write stories from life that offer a raw glimpse into issues I've dealt with. I've been published in both genres.

My latest adventure in writing for children has been to turn a picture book I wrote into an iPad app. Aside from writing the story, the process has taken a year with my small team which includes Kate Jeong, illustrator and Nur Monson, coder. The Prisoner of Carrot Castle will debut in the Apple App Store soon.

I have had very little time to write this past year with all the blogging for Healthy Journey Cafe and the energy and time needed to build an app—never having done it before. I have a children's chapter book on bullying left unfinished and another picture book story that I want to write for the iPad with Kate doing the illustrations.

Add to that my active role with Inspire Christian Writers as co-leader of a critique group and treasurer on the board of directors. Inspire has helped me polish my writing through the offered critique groups, workshops and conferences. Plus it has been a tremendous aid in navigating the sea of marketing my work.

I'm also posting to Inspire Christian writers blog, and Paws and Ponder (my writing blog—although its been neglected lately). Tweeting via @chrisathecafe and @prplcarrotbooks. Facebooking at Chris Pedersen, Healthy Journey Cafe and Purple Carrot Books. Googling with Google+ at +Chris Pedersen. Then there's Purple Carrot Books, what I've called myself as the e-publisher of The Prisoner of Carrot Castle.

Okay... Yeah... I'm exhausted!

Evaluation
I started this blog because I wanted to tell others that health is effected by what you do—the choices you make in food, exercise, sleep and attitude. I place diet, or the foods you choose, as the most important factor to consider when avoiding disease, from the flu to cancer. And I've been able to show that you can even change your genetics if you eat a healthy diet.

A review of the posts at this blog tell me that I've pretty much said what I wanted to say—it's all here except a few additional subjects I've not yet addressed. I realize it may be a little hard to find a particular topic or recipe aside from using the search box in the right column, so I will attempt (with my limited html skills) to make it easier to find in the future. Can't promise when.

New Direction
And so my Dear Readers, I have decided to post to Healthy Journey Cafe once a week in the three areas I have established for the blog: issues, recipes, and health tips. There may be no particular order to what I post.

In order to make this blog as relevant as possible, please let me know:

• What subjects would you like me to address?
• What do you like most about Healthy Journey Cafe?
• What questions do you want answered about health (diet, exercise, sleep and attitude)?

Time to hear from you.