PastaQueen says good-bye. JenFul says hello.

In 20 words or less: I will no longer be updating PastaQueen.com. I will now be blogging at JenFul.com

I used to be Jenny. To some I was even called Jenny Sue. But there were a lot of girls named Jenny in the early 80's and there was always another one in my class. It made me feel less than special, like I wasn’t the unique snowflake they tell you that you are. I was Jenny F. and the “eff” sounded so harsh, though not quite as harsh as using the first two letters of my last name would have been: Jenny FU.

I’ve been PastaQueen for over six years. Actually, I’ve been PastaQueen since I had to sign up for a Hotmail account during summer camp in 1997. I registered PastaQueen.com several years after that and used it as a portfolio site. Then I set up a blog in its own folder, PastaQueen.com/HalfofMe. Eventually that folder took over the whole domain and that’s where I’ve been writing and talking with y’all for the past 2000+ days in 1207 posts.

I’ve enjoyed being PastaQueen. Jennette was too scared to talk about her fat issues with anyone. Not to her family. Not to her friends. But for some reason PastaQueen could tell the Internet, though no one was listening at first. But the more I wrote, the more confident I became. I started leaving my blog address in comments on other sites. I remember that injection of excitement I felt the first time someone commented on my blog, when someone had read something I wrote. I met lots of cool people. I got to go on trips and stay at fancy hotels and eat lots of oatmeal. I got to write a book and then another book. PastaQueen has done so much more than Jenny Sue ever could have imagined.

I’m at the age when my friends are having babies and then more babies. We don’t go out together as much as we did, and we talk about different things than we did in college. It’s not a bad thing. It just means our lives are changing. Diapers and parenting books have replaced the backpacks and math homework we had in high school. We’re not who we used to be and that’s ok. In fact, it’s natural.

As great as it’s been to be PastaQueen, I realized recently that I’m not PastaQueen anymore. PastaQueen had a lot of issues with her body that she needed to work out through her writing. And she did that. I know she did that because I don’t feel the need to write about my body that much anymore. I’m good, or at least 95% good. Sure, I’d like to lose some weight and it wouldn’t hurt if my skin were tighter, but I can handle all that. It ain’t no thang.

PastaQueen really needed support from her readers. She needed them to tell her she was doing ok and she wrote well and she was valued. And while I’m still grateful for all the support, kind words, and digital love you guys have sent me over the years, I don’t need it anymore, not like I used to. I like it and I appreciate it more than I can say. But you’ve helped nurture me into something stronger, someone who doesn’t need training wheels, someone who knows she can ride on her own.

PastaQueen wrote only about health and fitness on her blog, which was good for pageviews because she had cornered a niche. But in September of 2008 she decided to start blogging about other things, which was probably a sign that she was starting to outgrow the PastaQueen identity, like those baggy clothes stuffed in cardboard boxes she kept at the bottom of her closet to remind her of where she came from. She kept on blogging though, because she liked it. She liked the people. She felt compelled to share her thoughts. She liked being a part of that section of the blogosphere.

People still come to this blog looking for the old PastaQueen and are sort of surprised when they find me here instead. Sometimes I log into PastaQueen.com and I’m surprised to find me here instead. But that’s ok. It’s alright to change into someone new, and it doesn’t mean you have to forget who you were. PastaQueen wouldn’t have been PastaQueen without you. She would have just been some invisible girl chattering to her computer. I don’t want to be an invisible girl, so this isn’t really a good-bye. I’m just ditching my old name, just like Jenny Sue became Jennette. The PastaQueen name has a lot of baggage. It’s baggage I got traveling on one of the most fantastic journeys of my life, collecting nicks and scrapes on my way through the Internet and out a door into the real world. But it’s still baggage, and I’m ready to leave it behind. Buy some new suitcases. Fill them up with new junk.

I’ll still have an online presence at JenFul.com. I decided to shorten my name J-Lo style. Jennette Fulda. See? It’s a blog. I don’t know how often I’ll update it. I don’t know what I’ll talk about. But it will be there if I need it and if you care to listen. And when you go there you won’t be looking for PastaQueen. You’ll be looking for whoever I am right now. I thought about just setting it up at JennetteFulda.com, but only 1% of the population succeeds at spelling my name correctly. So, now I’m Jenful. That’s jenful! It’s my name and an adjective.

I’ve thought about doing this on and off for over a year now. Whenever I mentioned it to someone they’d talk me out of it, telling me not to throw away everything I’ve built here. Sometimes I’d look at my bills and then look at my ad earnings and think I couldn’t leave PastaQueen behind. Really, I was just scared to be something different. I was a hermit crab scared to leave her shell even though she’d outgrown her home. I was scared to lose my visitors and my page ranking and whatever income I feel like I’ve lucked into with every click.

But over the past year I’ve realized that holding onto who I was is stopping me from becoming who I will be. I’ve stopped caring about my stats, how many comments I get, my pagerank, my Technorati rank, my Alexa rank and all that blogging bullshit that it’s so easy to get caught up in. I haven’t logged into my Sitemeter account for months. And while I admit that I like the money, and that the money has helped me be able to freelance full time, I can’t stick around here for the money. I’ve probably stuck around too long as it is. Jerry Seinfeld said there’s a moment in a comedian’s act where you know you have to step off the stage. It’s that moment where everyone’s still happy and laughing. It’s tempting to stay in the lights, but if you keep going you’ll lose your momentum and you’ll lose the crowd. People only remember beginnings and endings anyway, even though most of us live life in the middle. Maybe leaving sooner would have been smarter or more graceful. It would be great if I had a master plan about my career and how to handle all my online shit or if I knew what the hell I’m going to do with the next 30+ years of my life. But I don’t. I’m just muddling along like I always have, discovering who I am going to be and sometimes being as surprised as you are.

So screw the money, the stats, and whatever prestige I might imagine that I have. I just need to do what feels right and this feels soooo right. Making the decision came with a wave of relief as strong as any tsunami, but instead of leaving wreckage behind I’ll leave behind what I created over six fabulous years of my life. Sometimes people email or comment wishing that I still blogged about running and weight loss and the thrill of all that amazing stuff. They wish I were who I used to be. They don’t want me to change, but I have. You change or you die. They want PastaQueen. But what’s great is that she still exists. She’s talking to you in the archives. She’ll cheer you on and maybe inspire you a bit. I’m leaving the site up so you can still visit her. She’ll always be there, frozen in time for you to look upon.

But I’m not frozen in time. Every seven years all the cells in your body replace themselves. Well, I’ve been blogging here for almost seven years, so I am literally not the woman I used to be. All the cells in my body have replaced themselves with copies of themselves. I am a completely different set of atoms that are aligned in the pattern of me.

This decision is mine. It wasn’t made because of any one comment or email. It was made because of the entire gestalt of my life. It’s not really good-bye. I’m not entering witness protection. I’m not going to become the new JD Salinger and do the reclusive author schtick. It’s more like I got a new haircut and went off to college. I’ll still be around, just not in the same way as I used to.

Thank you for everything. Really. You guys are the best. You are awesome. It has been great being PastaQueen. I’m grateful for all she did for me. And I hope that the next time you use her name, it will go something like this:

“Oh yeah, PastaQueen? I used to know her. She was fab.”

So, head over to JenFul.com or subscribe to the feed here. I WON’T be automatically forwarding subscribers of the PastaQueen feed to JenFul because I’d like people to make a conscious decision to follow me over there. I don’t want people who are looking for PastaQueen to find themselves in JenFul’s house instead. But the welcome mat is out and you’re all invited in! (Except if you’re a vampire. No invites for vampires.)

"Smart, unflinchingly honest, and laugh-out-loud funny."– Lisa Genova, New York Times bestselling author of Still AliceComments are now closed on all PastaQueen entries. The blog is an archive only so I don't have to deal with spammers. For fresh discussions please visit my new blog JenFul.

View the original article here

Why Hello Old Friend: 5 Reasons Why I’m Going Old School with my Food Journal.

See that notebook up there? That’s my latest food journal. Yup,  I’m back to good old paper and pencil and I’ll tell you why.

Actually, I’ll tell you 5 reasons why…

I needed a change. Over the years I have food journaled a plethora of ways: paper, spreadsheet, email, twitter, instagram. All work great but if I’m bored with the technique then I tend to start slipping. Sometimes simply changing my method re-energizes and motivates me.It works for my current situation. Each one of the methods I listed above was born out of necessity. When I taught at the community college emailing was perfect because I was always on a computer but  never MY computer. When I worked in an office, a spreadsheet was perfect as I was on the same computer all day. Twitter and Instragram are perfect when you’re on the go, but now they feel like overkill being home. When I’m with the kids, I’m home. When I’m working, I’m home. It’s super easy for me to have a paper and pencil on the counter ready to jot something down and pre-plan in the morning. Speaking of…Makes daily pre-planning easy. When I initially changed my diet and lost 70lbs I would take 5 minutes every morning to plan dinner, make my lunch and jot everything down all while eating breakfast. I found comfort in knowing what I would be eating later in the day. It took the guess work out of it and made it easy to stick to my own daily plan. You may notice dinner listed at the top above. Pre-planning daily has always worked for me. I want the accountability but not stress. If you haven’t noticed, I share a LOT online, and for a long time I posted food journals. More recently I’ve been using instagram, but publicly posting adds more pressure for me. Self-imposed but still very real. I know food journaling works, I like to do it, but I don’t want to worry about snapping the perfect photo or making a bowl of cereal look pretty. I still plan on snapping food photos because I’m a geek, but it won’t be my main form of journaling.I want to reach my goal and I KNOW this works. I know losing “the last 5 lbs” isn’t my most popular goal but that doesn’t change the fact I want to reach it. I refuse to do anything drastic or unhealthy to get there. My philosophy hasn’t changed since the day I started this blog: If I’m going to lose weight I have to do it on my terms, eating things I want to eat, exercising the way I want to exercise and enjoying every step of the journey. Food journaling was a huge part of my success. It’s a simple way for me to be accountable and, well, I know it works.

What’s your thoughts on the food journal? Do you keep one? How?

View the original article here

PastaQueen says good-bye. JenFul says hello.

In 20 words or less: I will no longer be updating PastaQueen.com. I will now be blogging at JenFul.com

I used to be Jenny. To some I was even called Jenny Sue. But there were a lot of girls named Jenny in the early 80's and there was always another one in my class. It made me feel less than special, like I wasn’t the unique snowflake they tell you that you are. I was Jenny F. and the “eff” sounded so harsh, though not quite as harsh as using the first two letters of my last name would have been: Jenny FU.

I’ve been PastaQueen for over six years. Actually, I’ve been PastaQueen since I had to sign up for a Hotmail account during summer camp in 1997. I registered PastaQueen.com several years after that and used it as a portfolio site. Then I set up a blog in its own folder, PastaQueen.com/HalfofMe. Eventually that folder took over the whole domain and that’s where I’ve been writing and talking with y’all for the past 2000+ days in 1207 posts.

I’ve enjoyed being PastaQueen. Jennette was too scared to talk about her fat issues with anyone. Not to her family. Not to her friends. But for some reason PastaQueen could tell the Internet, though no one was listening at first. But the more I wrote, the more confident I became. I started leaving my blog address in comments on other sites. I remember that injection of excitement I felt the first time someone commented on my blog, when someone had read something I wrote. I met lots of cool people. I got to go on trips and stay at fancy hotels and eat lots of oatmeal. I got to write a book and then another book. PastaQueen has done so much more than Jenny Sue ever could have imagined.

I’m at the age when my friends are having babies and then more babies. We don’t go out together as much as we did, and we talk about different things than we did in college. It’s not a bad thing. It just means our lives are changing. Diapers and parenting books have replaced the backpacks and math homework we had in high school. We’re not who we used to be and that’s ok. In fact, it’s natural.

As great as it’s been to be PastaQueen, I realized recently that I’m not PastaQueen anymore. PastaQueen had a lot of issues with her body that she needed to work out through her writing. And she did that. I know she did that because I don’t feel the need to write about my body that much anymore. I’m good, or at least 95% good. Sure, I’d like to lose some weight and it wouldn’t hurt if my skin were tighter, but I can handle all that. It ain’t no thang.

PastaQueen really needed support from her readers. She needed them to tell her she was doing ok and she wrote well and she was valued. And while I’m still grateful for all the support, kind words, and digital love you guys have sent me over the years, I don’t need it anymore, not like I used to. I like it and I appreciate it more than I can say. But you’ve helped nurture me into something stronger, someone who doesn’t need training wheels, someone who knows she can ride on her own.

PastaQueen wrote only about health and fitness on her blog, which was good for pageviews because she had cornered a niche. But in September of 2008 she decided to start blogging about other things, which was probably a sign that she was starting to outgrow the PastaQueen identity, like those baggy clothes stuffed in cardboard boxes she kept at the bottom of her closet to remind her of where she came from. She kept on blogging though, because she liked it. She liked the people. She felt compelled to share her thoughts. She liked being a part of that section of the blogosphere.

People still come to this blog looking for the old PastaQueen and are sort of surprised when they find me here instead. Sometimes I log into PastaQueen.com and I’m surprised to find me here instead. But that’s ok. It’s alright to change into someone new, and it doesn’t mean you have to forget who you were. PastaQueen wouldn’t have been PastaQueen without you. She would have just been some invisible girl chattering to her computer. I don’t want to be an invisible girl, so this isn’t really a good-bye. I’m just ditching my old name, just like Jenny Sue became Jennette. The PastaQueen name has a lot of baggage. It’s baggage I got traveling on one of the most fantastic journeys of my life, collecting nicks and scrapes on my way through the Internet and out a door into the real world. But it’s still baggage, and I’m ready to leave it behind. Buy some new suitcases. Fill them up with new junk.

I’ll still have an online presence at JenFul.com. I decided to shorten my name J-Lo style. Jennette Fulda. See? It’s a blog. I don’t know how often I’ll update it. I don’t know what I’ll talk about. But it will be there if I need it and if you care to listen. And when you go there you won’t be looking for PastaQueen. You’ll be looking for whoever I am right now. I thought about just setting it up at JennetteFulda.com, but only 1% of the population succeeds at spelling my name correctly. So, now I’m Jenful. That’s jenful! It’s my name and an adjective.

I’ve thought about doing this on and off for over a year now. Whenever I mentioned it to someone they’d talk me out of it, telling me not to throw away everything I’ve built here. Sometimes I’d look at my bills and then look at my ad earnings and think I couldn’t leave PastaQueen behind. Really, I was just scared to be something different. I was a hermit crab scared to leave her shell even though she’d outgrown her home. I was scared to lose my visitors and my page ranking and whatever income I feel like I’ve lucked into with every click.

But over the past year I’ve realized that holding onto who I was is stopping me from becoming who I will be. I’ve stopped caring about my stats, how many comments I get, my pagerank, my Technorati rank, my Alexa rank and all that blogging bullshit that it’s so easy to get caught up in. I haven’t logged into my Sitemeter account for months. And while I admit that I like the money, and that the money has helped me be able to freelance full time, I can’t stick around here for the money. I’ve probably stuck around too long as it is. Jerry Seinfeld said there’s a moment in a comedian’s act where you know you have to step off the stage. It’s that moment where everyone’s still happy and laughing. It’s tempting to stay in the lights, but if you keep going you’ll lose your momentum and you’ll lose the crowd. People only remember beginnings and endings anyway, even though most of us live life in the middle. Maybe leaving sooner would have been smarter or more graceful. It would be great if I had a master plan about my career and how to handle all my online shit or if I knew what the hell I’m going to do with the next 30+ years of my life. But I don’t. I’m just muddling along like I always have, discovering who I am going to be and sometimes being as surprised as you are.

So screw the money, the stats, and whatever prestige I might imagine that I have. I just need to do what feels right and this feels soooo right. Making the decision came with a wave of relief as strong as any tsunami, but instead of leaving wreckage behind I’ll leave behind what I created over six fabulous years of my life. Sometimes people email or comment wishing that I still blogged about running and weight loss and the thrill of all that amazing stuff. They wish I were who I used to be. They don’t want me to change, but I have. You change or you die. They want PastaQueen. But what’s great is that she still exists. She’s talking to you in the archives. She’ll cheer you on and maybe inspire you a bit. I’m leaving the site up so you can still visit her. She’ll always be there, frozen in time for you to look upon.

But I’m not frozen in time. Every seven years all the cells in your body replace themselves. Well, I’ve been blogging here for almost seven years, so I am literally not the woman I used to be. All the cells in my body have replaced themselves with copies of themselves. I am a completely different set of atoms that are aligned in the pattern of me.

This decision is mine. It wasn’t made because of any one comment or email. It was made because of the entire gestalt of my life. It’s not really good-bye. I’m not entering witness protection. I’m not going to become the new JD Salinger and do the reclusive author schtick. It’s more like I got a new haircut and went off to college. I’ll still be around, just not in the same way as I used to.

Thank you for everything. Really. You guys are the best. You are awesome. It has been great being PastaQueen. I’m grateful for all she did for me. And I hope that the next time you use her name, it will go something like this:

“Oh yeah, PastaQueen? I used to know her. She was fab.”

So, head over to JenFul.com or subscribe to the feed here. I WON’T be automatically forwarding subscribers of the PastaQueen feed to JenFul because I’d like people to make a conscious decision to follow me over there. I don’t want people who are looking for PastaQueen to find themselves in JenFul’s house instead. But the welcome mat is out and you’re all invited in! (Except if you’re a vampire. No invites for vampires.)

"Smart, unflinchingly honest, and laugh-out-loud funny."– Lisa Genova, New York Times bestselling author of Still Alice

No related posts.

Comments are now closed on all PastaQueen entries. The blog is an archive only so I don't have to deal with spammers. For fresh discussions please visit my new blog JenFul.

View the original article here

Hello from “Where Have I Been?”

My whereabouts since my last blog entry isn’t a great mystery, but I wanted to explain where I’ve been and to let you know this will be my last blog entry for awhile. It’s not that maintenance is more or less important than any other responsibility or event that make up my life. Writing about it, however, takes time, and the things vying for my time this summer are many. My brother still suffers the affects of the series of petit mal seizures he endured in June 2011. As his power of attorney, his complicated and difficult journey is also mine, and the weight of that responsibility is daunting at times. I say this not to garner sympathy, but to send out empathy to all of you who, in addition to living your own lives, caretake in someone else’s. Two pieces of good news are taking up my time: 1) Daughter Carlene is getting married in October! Originally slated for April, they moved up the wedding not because of a baby, but because, quoting Carlene, “We just want to be married.” No better reason than that! Let the frenzy begin. 2) Grandbaby #4 will arrive in February! #4 was not planned, but sometimes the best things in life are serendipitous. To update you on ages, Claire will be 5 in October, Luca was 3 in May, and Maelie is 18 months old. I said to Luca the other day, “So, your mommy’s having a baby?” and he said, “Yeah, but we’re keeping Mae.” I couldn’t tell by his voice if he was relieved or resigned. I hope he gets a brother, but even though he tolerates Mae, he insists he wants another sister. And while on the surface that sounds sweet, I think he knows if it’s a boy he’ll have to share his room.Within the planning, the watching children, my brother’s issues, I’ve managed to read several books ("Good in Bed" by Jennifer Weiner is fabulous!) and ride many miles on my bike. One of my favorite things this year was meeting another Internet friend, Lori from Finding Radiance. She’s as down to earth in person as she is on her blog. The woman knows her way around a bagel and a latte as much as a bike path and dumbbells. She’s taught me more about balance than any gymnast could. Her blog is a highly recommended read!School starts again in 10 days. Chemistry, Algebra... ‘Nuff said. Even though this will be my last post for awhile, our dialogue can continue. I will still post on Lynn’s Weigh on Facebook, so I hope you’ll join us there. If you don’t do social media, that’s fine, too. Know that I wish you well in your journey, wherever you are on that path, and I will be back.

View the original article here

Hello Bike Path!

This morning, I took one helluva test in Medical Nutrition Therapy. 100 points. Math was involved. Yuck. And it was timed. Afterwards, I was shaking and second guessing myself. ‘Dammmit, I should have answered that question another way. Wait…was she asking about PPN or TPN? Ugh! I’m stupid. I’ll never pass.’ It was 60-something degrees outside. Sunny, but a bit windy…25 mph gusts. I’d been up studying since 6 a.m. I watched the sun rise, I checked the weather a million times on my phone, and I thought about Bike. I’ve been eyeing her every time I pull in my garage the last few weeks, wondering if she misses me as much as I miss her. Bike needs a tune up, no doubt. But did she have enough oomph from last year to get me through a late winter ride?

My mind was making me nuts. I had to get OUT of the house, and the only place to go that made sense was the Butler-Freeport Community Trail:  21 miles of personal peace. I worked out a whole lot of arthritis angst there last year. It was the place I said no to sciatica and yes to my thighs when they said, ‘Are you sure?’ while pedaling up a 2-mile incline along the outer edge of a gun range.  I had to go there. So I slathered Vaseline on my face to protect it from the wind, and dressed in two layers of shirts, a jacket, leggings, and tennis shoes. I backed the car out of the garage and loaded up my bike on the rack. I felt strong and in control, even though it had been five months since I’d engaged in the bungee cords and straps ritual.
My body felt good hugged in form-fitting clothes. The snugness reminded me that I had one. A body, that is. It wasn’t lost in the perpetual layers of winter. And while I’ve gained 20 pounds since my lowest weight, my body feels stronger than it did at 125 pounds. I’m no longer afraid I’ll break. I felt so fragile back then.
With the sunroof open and the tunes cranked, I drove to the trailhead, wondering if I’d be the only car in the parking lot. I didn’t think so, but since I didn’t know the answer to question 17 of my MNT test, I figured what the heck did I know about anything?
But when I pulled into the lot, I discovered several people felt the same way I did.
I took my bike off the rack and examined it. It was encrusted in last year’s mud and I wondered if it would carry me for the simple 40 minute ride I had in mind. I’d pumped up the tires before I left, and I had a tube and tire levers in my pack along with a pump attached under my seat, but it had been a year since I learned how to use them. What if I got a flat?
I stood there with my right hand on the saddle and my left hand on the left handle bar. The sun was warming my back, the air smelled so spring-like, and…ahhh!! I figured I’d walk the damn bike back if I had to. Nothing was going to stop me from riding. I had to. It was calling me. It’s like my body and the weather and the trail were a holy trinity offering salvation. Not riding was not an option.
I hopped on Bike my favorite way: with my left foot on the pedal and my right leg swinging over the seat like it was the back of a horse.
Hello picnic table! Hello campsite across the creek! Hello shelter that kept me and another biker I’d never met before and haven’t seen since dry in a torrential thunderstorm last year!
Hello ice and mud and the bug that just flew into my eye! Hello rapids! Hello really tall bridge across Route 28 whose foundations are built like the legs of the Empire’s Imperial Walkers and scare me every time I ride under them!Hello mile markers that remind me how far I’ve gone and challenge me to decide how far I’ll go! Hello Monroe Road that I pedal like hell across because people drive around the bend like they’re racing in the Daytona 500! Hello couple walking their dog off leash! Not cool, by the way!
Hello wind and sun and 65 degrees! Hello faint smell of woodsy western Pennsylvania! You’ll be in full smell soon.
I rode 20 minutes and turned around. While I wanted to go further, I knew my body and Bike needed time to "tune up" into the regular summer rides. I loaded my bike on the rack and drove home in the closest thing to a perfect state of mind I could achieve: Whatever happens, happens. School, weight, relationships, life. I'll figure it out. Maybe not on the trail right now. After all, it’s early. It will rain and it will not doubt snow. But I rode Bike in western Pennsylvania on March 7, 2012 with no repercussion or consequence other than a lot of mud sprayed on my backside.
Bike will be going in for a tune-up next week. She deserves it and needs it. We have a lot of stuff to figure out this year!

View the original article here

PastaQueen says good-bye. JenFul says hello.

In 20 words or less: I will no longer be updating PastaQueen.com. I will now be blogging at JenFul.com

I used to be Jenny. To some I was even called Jenny Sue. But there were a lot of girls named Jenny in the early 80's and there was always another one in my class. It made me feel less than special, like I wasn’t the unique snowflake they tell you that you are. I was Jenny F. and the “eff” sounded so harsh, though not quite as harsh as using the first two letters of my last name would have been: Jenny FU.

I’ve been PastaQueen for over six years. Actually, I’ve been PastaQueen since I had to sign up for a Hotmail account during summer camp in 1997. I registered PastaQueen.com several years after that and used it as a portfolio site. Then I set up a blog in its own folder, PastaQueen.com/HalfofMe. Eventually that folder took over the whole domain and that’s where I’ve been writing and talking with y’all for the past 2000+ days in 1207 posts.

I’ve enjoyed being PastaQueen. Jennette was too scared to talk about her fat issues with anyone. Not to her family. Not to her friends. But for some reason PastaQueen could tell the Internet, though no one was listening at first. But the more I wrote, the more confident I became. I started leaving my blog address in comments on other sites. I remember that injection of excitement I felt the first time someone commented on my blog, when someone had read something I wrote. I met lots of cool people. I got to go on trips and stay at fancy hotels and eat lots of oatmeal. I got to write a book and then another book. PastaQueen has done so much more than Jenny Sue ever could have imagined.

I’m at the age when my friends are having babies and then more babies. We don’t go out together as much as we did, and we talk about different things than we did in college. It’s not a bad thing. It just means our lives are changing. Diapers and parenting books have replaced the backpacks and math homework we had in high school. We’re not who we used to be and that’s ok. In fact, it’s natural.

As great as it’s been to be PastaQueen, I realized recently that I’m not PastaQueen anymore. PastaQueen had a lot of issues with her body that she needed to work out through her writing. And she did that. I know she did that because I don’t feel the need to write about my body that much anymore. I’m good, or at least 95% good. Sure, I’d like to lose some weight and it wouldn’t hurt if my skin were tighter, but I can handle all that. It ain’t no thang.

PastaQueen really needed support from her readers. She needed them to tell her she was doing ok and she wrote well and she was valued. And while I’m still grateful for all the support, kind words, and digital love you guys have sent me over the years, I don’t need it anymore, not like I used to. I like it and I appreciate it more than I can say. But you’ve helped nurture me into something stronger, someone who doesn’t need training wheels, someone who knows she can ride on her own.

PastaQueen wrote only about health and fitness on her blog, which was good for pageviews because she had cornered a niche. But in September of 2008 she decided to start blogging about other things, which was probably a sign that she was starting to outgrow the PastaQueen identity, like those baggy clothes stuffed in cardboard boxes she kept at the bottom of her closet to remind her of where she came from. She kept on blogging though, because she liked it. She liked the people. She felt compelled to share her thoughts. She liked being a part of that section of the blogosphere.

People still come to this blog looking for the old PastaQueen and are sort of surprised when they find me here instead. Sometimes I log into PastaQueen.com and I’m surprised to find me here instead. But that’s ok. It’s alright to change into someone new, and it doesn’t mean you have to forget who you were. PastaQueen wouldn’t have been PastaQueen without you. She would have just been some invisible girl chattering to her computer. I don’t want to be an invisible girl, so this isn’t really a good-bye. I’m just ditching my old name, just like Jenny Sue became Jennette. The PastaQueen name has a lot of baggage. It’s baggage I got traveling on one of the most fantastic journeys of my life, collecting nicks and scrapes on my way through the Internet and out a door into the real world. But it’s still baggage, and I’m ready to leave it behind. Buy some new suitcases. Fill them up with new junk.

I’ll still have an online presence at JenFul.com. I decided to shorten my name J-Lo style. Jennette Fulda. See? It’s a blog. I don’t know how often I’ll update it. I don’t know what I’ll talk about. But it will be there if I need it and if you care to listen. And when you go there you won’t be looking for PastaQueen. You’ll be looking for whoever I am right now. I thought about just setting it up at JennetteFulda.com, but only 1% of the population succeeds at spelling my name correctly. So, now I’m Jenful. That’s jenful! It’s my name and an adjective.

I’ve thought about doing this on and off for over a year now. Whenever I mentioned it to someone they’d talk me out of it, telling me not to throw away everything I’ve built here. Sometimes I’d look at my bills and then look at my ad earnings and think I couldn’t leave PastaQueen behind. Really, I was just scared to be something different. I was a hermit crab scared to leave her shell even though she’d outgrown her home. I was scared to lose my visitors and my page ranking and whatever income I feel like I’ve lucked into with every click.

But over the past year I’ve realized that holding onto who I was is stopping me from becoming who I will be. I’ve stopped caring about my stats, how many comments I get, my pagerank, my Technorati rank, my Alexa rank and all that blogging bullshit that it’s so easy to get caught up in. I haven’t logged into my Sitemeter account for months. And while I admit that I like the money, and that the money has helped me be able to freelance full time, I can’t stick around here for the money. I’ve probably stuck around too long as it is. Jerry Seinfeld said there’s a moment in a comedian’s act where you know you have to step off the stage. It’s that moment where everyone’s still happy and laughing. It’s tempting to stay in the lights, but if you keep going you’ll lose your momentum and you’ll lose the crowd. People only remember beginnings and endings anyway, even though most of us live life in the middle. Maybe leaving sooner would have been smarter or more graceful. It would be great if I had a master plan about my career and how to handle all my online shit or if I knew what the hell I’m going to do with the next 30+ years of my life. But I don’t. I’m just muddling along like I always have, discovering who I am going to be and sometimes being as surprised as you are.

So screw the money, the stats, and whatever prestige I might imagine that I have. I just need to do what feels right and this feels soooo right. Making the decision came with a wave of relief as strong as any tsunami, but instead of leaving wreckage behind I’ll leave behind what I created over six fabulous years of my life. Sometimes people email or comment wishing that I still blogged about running and weight loss and the thrill of all that amazing stuff. They wish I were who I used to be. They don’t want me to change, but I have. You change or you die. They want PastaQueen. But what’s great is that she still exists. She’s talking to you in the archives. She’ll cheer you on and maybe inspire you a bit. I’m leaving the site up so you can still visit her. She’ll always be there, frozen in time for you to look upon.

But I’m not frozen in time. Every seven years all the cells in your body replace themselves. Well, I’ve been blogging here for almost seven years, so I am literally not the woman I used to be. All the cells in my body have replaced themselves with copies of themselves. I am a completely different set of atoms that are aligned in the pattern of me.

This decision is mine. It wasn’t made because of any one comment or email. It was made because of the entire gestalt of my life. It’s not really good-bye. I’m not entering witness protection. I’m not going to become the new JD Salinger and do the reclusive author schtick. It’s more like I got a new haircut and went off to college. I’ll still be around, just not in the same way as I used to.

Thank you for everything. Really. You guys are the best. You are awesome. It has been great being PastaQueen. I’m grateful for all she did for me. And I hope that the next time you use her name, it will go something like this:

“Oh yeah, PastaQueen? I used to know her. She was fab.”

So, head over to JenFul.com or subscribe to the feed here. I WON’T be automatically forwarding subscribers of the PastaQueen feed to JenFul because I’d like people to make a conscious decision to follow me over there. I don’t want people who are looking for PastaQueen to find themselves in JenFul’s house instead. But the welcome mat is out and you’re all invited in! (Except if you’re a vampire. No invites for vampires.)

"Smart, unflinchingly honest, and laugh-out-loud funny."– Lisa Genova, New York Times bestselling author of Still Alice

No related posts.

Comments are now closed on all PastaQueen entries. The blog is an archive only so I don't have to deal with spammers. For fresh discussions please visit my new blog JenFul.

View the original article here

PastaQueen says good-bye. JenFul says hello.

Tell someone about Jennette’s latest book, Chocolate & Vicodin and you could win an iPod Shuffle or a gift card from Amazon or iTunes. Learn more.

In 20 words or less: I will no longer be updating PastaQueen.com. I will now be blogging at JenFul.com

I used to be Jenny. To some I was even called Jenny Sue. But there were a lot of girls named Jenny in the early 80's and there was always another one in my class. It made me feel less than special, like I wasn’t the unique snowflake they tell you that you are. I was Jenny F. and the “eff” sounded so harsh, though not quite as harsh as using the first two letters of my last name would have been: Jenny FU.

I’ve been PastaQueen for over six years. Actually, I’ve been PastaQueen since I had to sign up for a Hotmail account during summer camp in 1997. I registered PastaQueen.com several years after that and used it as a portfolio site. Then I set up a blog in its own folder, PastaQueen.com/HalfofMe. Eventually that folder took over the whole domain and that’s where I’ve been writing and talking with y’all for the past 2000+ days in 1207 posts.

I’ve enjoyed being PastaQueen. Jennette was too scared to talk about her fat issues with anyone. Not to her family. Not to her friends. But for some reason PastaQueen could tell the Internet, though no one was listening at first. But the more I wrote, the more confident I became. I started leaving my blog address in comments on other sites. I remember that injection of excitement I felt the first time someone commented on my blog, when someone had read something I wrote. I met lots of cool people. I got to go on trips and stay at fancy hotels and eat lots of oatmeal. I got to write a book and then another book. PastaQueen has done so much more than Jenny Sue ever could have imagined.

I’m at the age when my friends are having babies and then more babies. We don’t go out together as much as we did, and we talk about different things than we did in college. It’s not a bad thing. It just means our lives are changing. Diapers and parenting books have replaced the backpacks and math homework we had in high school. We’re not who we used to be and that’s ok. In fact, it’s natural.

As great as it’s been to be PastaQueen, I realized recently that I’m not PastaQueen anymore. PastaQueen had a lot of issues with her body that she needed to work out through her writing. And she did that. I know she did that because I don’t feel the need to write about my body that much anymore. I’m good, or at least 95% good. Sure, I’d like to lose some weight and it wouldn’t hurt if my skin were tighter, but I can handle all that. It ain’t no thang.

PastaQueen really needed support from her readers. She needed them to tell her she was doing ok and she wrote well and she was valued. And while I’m still grateful for all the support, kind words, and digital love you guys have sent me over the years, I don’t need it anymore, not like I used to. I like it and I appreciate it more than I can say. But you’ve helped nurture me into something stronger, someone who doesn’t need training wheels, someone who knows she can ride on her own.

PastaQueen wrote only about health and fitness on her blog, which was good for pageviews because she had cornered a niche. But in September of 2008 she decided to start blogging about other things, which was probably a sign that she was starting to outgrow the PastaQueen identity, like those baggy clothes stuffed in cardboard boxes she kept at the bottom of her closet to remind her of where she came from. She kept on blogging though, because she liked it. She liked the people. She felt compelled to share her thoughts. She liked being a part of that section of the blogosphere.

People still come to this blog looking for the old PastaQueen and are sort of surprised when they find me here instead. Sometimes I log into PastaQueen.com and I’m surprised to find me here instead. But that’s ok. It’s alright to change into someone new, and it doesn’t mean you have to forget who you were. PastaQueen wouldn’t have been PastaQueen without you. She would have just been some invisible girl chattering to her computer. I don’t want to be an invisible girl, so this isn’t really a good-bye. I’m just ditching my old name, just like Jenny Sue became Jennette. The PastaQueen name has a lot of baggage. It’s baggage I got traveling on one of the most fantastic journeys of my life, collecting nicks and scrapes on my way through the Internet and out a door into the real world. But it’s still baggage, and I’m ready to leave it behind. Buy some new suitcases. Fill them up with new junk.

I’ll still have an online presence at JenFul.com. I decided to shorten my name J-Lo style. Jennette Fulda. See? It’s a blog. I don’t know how often I’ll update it. I don’t know what I’ll talk about. But it will be there if I need it and if you care to listen. And when you go there you won’t be looking for PastaQueen. You’ll be looking for whoever I am right now. I thought about just setting it up at JennetteFulda.com, but only 1% of the population succeeds at spelling my name correctly. So, now I’m Jenful. That’s jenful! It’s my name and an adjective.

I’ve thought about doing this on and off for over a year now. Whenever I mentioned it to someone they’d talk me out of it, telling me not to throw away everything I’ve built here. Sometimes I’d look at my bills and then look at my ad earnings and think I couldn’t leave PastaQueen behind. Really, I was just scared to be something different. I was a hermit crab scared to leave her shell even though she’d outgrown her home. I was scared to lose my visitors and my page ranking and whatever income I feel like I’ve lucked into with every click.

But over the past year I’ve realized that holding onto who I was is stopping me from becoming who I will be. I’ve stopped caring about my stats, how many comments I get, my pagerank, my Technorati rank, my Alexa rank and all that blogging bullshit that it’s so easy to get caught up in. I haven’t logged into my Sitemeter account for months. And while I admit that I like the money, and that the money has helped me be able to freelance full time, I can’t stick around here for the money. I’ve probably stuck around too long as it is. Jerry Seinfeld said there’s a moment in a comedian’s act where you know you have to step off the stage. It’s that moment where everyone’s still happy and laughing. It’s tempting to stay in the lights, but if you keep going you’ll lose your momentum and you’ll lose the crowd. People only remember beginnings and endings anyway, even though most of us live life in the middle. Maybe leaving sooner would have been smarter or more graceful. It would be great if I had a master plan about my career and how to handle all my online shit or if I knew what the hell I’m going to do with the next 30+ years of my life. But I don’t. I’m just muddling along like I always have, discovering who I am going to be and sometimes being as surprised as you are.

So screw the money, the stats, and whatever prestige I might imagine that I have. I just need to do what feels right and this feels soooo right. Making the decision came with a wave of relief as strong as any tsunami, but instead of leaving wreckage behind I’ll leave behind what I created over six fabulous years of my life. Sometimes people email or comment wishing that I still blogged about running and weight loss and the thrill of all that amazing stuff. They wish I were who I used to be. They don’t want me to change, but I have. You change or you die. They want PastaQueen. But what’s great is that she still exists. She’s talking to you in the archives. She’ll cheer you on and maybe inspire you a bit. I’m leaving the site up so you can still visit her. She’ll always be there, frozen in time for you to look upon.

But I’m not frozen in time. Every seven years all the cells in your body replace themselves. Well, I’ve been blogging here for almost seven years, so I am literally not the woman I used to be. All the cells in my body have replaced themselves with copies of themselves. I am a completely different set of atoms that are aligned in the pattern of me.

This decision is mine. It wasn’t made because of any one comment or email. It was made because of the entire gestalt of my life. It’s not really good-bye. I’m not entering witness protection. I’m not going to become the new JD Salinger and do the reclusive author schtick. It’s more like I got a new haircut and went off to college. I’ll still be around, just not in the same way as I used to.

Thank you for everything. Really. You guys are the best. You are awesome. It has been great being PastaQueen. I’m grateful for all she did for me. And I hope that the next time you use her name, it will go something like this:

“Oh yeah, PastaQueen? I used to know her. She was fab.”

So, head over to JenFul.com or subscribe to the feed here. I WON’T be automatically forwarding subscribers of the PastaQueen feed to JenFul because I’d like people to make a conscious decision to follow me over there. I don’t want people who are looking for PastaQueen to find themselves in JenFul’s house instead. But the welcome mat is out and you’re all invited in! (Except if you’re a vampire. No invites for vampires.)

"Smart, unflinchingly honest, and laugh-out-loud funny."– Lisa Genova, New York Times bestselling author of Still Alice

No related posts.

PastaQueen.com is a fascist regime ruled with a benevolent fist by PastaQueen and the macaroni military. Lively discussion is encouraged, but any comment may be deleted or edited according to the whims of your monarch. Please read the official rules of commenting etiquette for more details. Spammers are publicly beheaded and their blood is mixed into our spaghetti sauce. Comments are occasionally disabled some time after an entry has been posted to keep the blog on a spam-free diet.

View the original article here