January 2014 - Javacia.com

January 2014 archive

The Joy of Exercise

Did you catch me on WBHM today discussing my everyday fitness challenge?
If not, hear an excerpt of the interview here.

This morning on WBHM 90.3 FM, Birmingham’s NPR affiliate, discussing my 365 days of fitness challenge. As I announced at the start of the year, in 2014 I plan to exercise every single day. I am a guest blogger for WBHM’s website and for my latest post — Strong Is the New Skinny — I explained why I’m embarking on this challenge and had a chat with fitness professional Kelly Creel for some guidance. Creel, who is the co-owner of Inspire Fitness Birmingham, actually doesn’t think I’m crazy for planning to work out daily.

“The human body was engineered for movement, so moving it every day in some form, even if that’s at a light intensity, is a wonderful goal,” Creel said. She did, however, give me some tips on how to prevent injury during my challenge. She recommended light workouts such as restorative yoga or a leisurely walk outside once or twice a week. She also said I should let myself off the hook and take a break if I’m sick.

At this point I’ve been exercising daily for a month and I’m loving it! If the idea of working out every day sounds absolutely miserable, you probably need to change your idea of exercise. If I were on the treadmill (or dreadmill, as I call) every day or the boring elliptical 7 days a week I would absolutely hate this and probably wouldn’t have lasted one week. But for the past month exercise has meant going for a run on my favorite trail, going for a walk with a friend, and grooving and moving with the Wii game Just Dance. It’s meant Spinning classes and yoga. It’s meant building strength with Jillian Michaels DVDs.

When I was in college I taught group fitness classes and each time I laced up my sneakers and put on that microphone headset I was in a zone. There was no care or concern that my Funk Aerobics class couldn’t dance away.

But somewhere along the way I started viewing exercise as something that I had to do to shed the extra weight I picked up over the years and tone up muscles that were no longer as firm as they were in college.

This month, however, I have rediscovered the joy of exercise. Exercise is a privilege. It’s a privilege to have a body that, for the most part, moves when and how I want it to. It’s a privilege to be able to afford Spinning and yoga classes, running shoes and even $10 Jillian Michaels DVDs. It’s privilege to have free time that I may use to do things I love to make my body feel good. Working out isn’t something I have to do; it’s something I get to do.

If you missed my interview this morning, I believe it will air again this evening around 5:30 p.m. Tune in!

*Originally posted on January 31, 2014 at The Writeous Babe Project.

See Jane Write See Jane Write Magazine speaking

Join See Jane Write at the Birmingham Authors Expo

Birmingham writers, mark your calendars for Saturday, Feb. 1. On this day the Birmingham Public Library will present its annual Local Authors Expo. This expo gives local authors an opportunity to sell their books, network with other writers, and attend free workshops. This year, See Jane Write will present a workshop on how authors can use social media to reach readers and promote their work.

The See Jane Write social media workshop, set for 1 p.m., will be led by yours truly and authors Stephanie Naman and Kathryn Lang. Naman, author of the novel Murder on the First Day of Christmas, has not only had great success with social media networks such as Twitter and Pinterest but she also blogs as the main character of her book at Chloe Gets a Clue. Naman will discuss best practices for blogging and using social media. Lang, who has published ten books, has a knack for helping people develop self-marketing plans that get to the heart of their writing goals. She will share her writing wisdom at the session, too.

I’m also quite excited about the morning workshop “How to Write While Having a Life.” This session is set for 10 a.m. and will be led by young adult author and full-time teacher Anne Riley. Riley will explain how to make writing a book a manageable task when you also have a job and a family.

See Jane Write Magazine contributor Chanda Temple had a chat with Riley and the prolific author shared that one of the best pieces of writing advice she’s ever received is “Write the book you want to read.”

Saturday she’ll share tips on how to actually find time to do so.

You can read Temple’s entire interview with Riley at See Jane Write Magazine.

The Birmingham Public Library Local Authors Expo will be held from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m., Saturday, Feb. 1 at the Central branch of the Birmingham Public Library, located at 2100 Park Place in downtown Birmingham. Nearly 100 authors will be on site selling their books. This event is free and open to the public. For more information visit bplonline.org.

*Originally published at SeeJaneWriteBham.com on January 27, 2014.

blogging speaking

I’m speaking at FoodBlogSouth

People often ask me how I generate blog post ideas and I’m usually a bit embarrassed to answer this question. My process is really weird. Normal people will tell you to read other blogs and to delve into news and opinion pieces related to your niche and that is fine advice. I do plenty of reading to keep myself inspired. But I also have this uncanny ability to stare at an object, contemplate how I could connect it to my niche and produce a blog post idea from this process. See, I told you I’m weird.

I especially enjoy using parts of the human body for inspiration. I could stare at my big toe and come up with five blog posts ideas. (Really, I can. I tried it before I typed that sentence just to be sure I was being honest.) Weird as it is, I thought this process would come in handy when the organizers of the food blogging conference FoodBlogSouth asked me to come speak about generating blog post ideas. On Saturday, Jan. 25 I’ll be giving a presentation called America’s Next Top Blogger: How Tyra Banks Can Help You Generate Blog Post Ideas. This is a play, of course, on Tyra’s advice to the contestants on her show America’s Next Top Model. Ms. Banks always tells the young aspiring models to model head to toe or “H2T.” At FoodBlogSouth I’ll be giving a 15-minute crash course in what I call blogging H2T. I’m going to show attendees how they can generate 30 food-related blog post ideas by contemplating (or meditating on) different parts of the human body.

I hope you’ll join me at this event. There are plenty of other great reasons to attend FoodBlogSouth other than my weird talk. The conference will feature sessions on photography and food styling, how to turn your blog into a career, multimedia storytelling, and much more. You can view the full agenda online.

FoodBlogSouth 2014 will be held Jan. 24-25 at Rosewood Hall, 2850 19th Street South in Homewood, Alabama. Registration is $175 but See Jane Write Magazine readers can receive a discount by following this link.

*Originally published at SeeJaneWriteMagazine.com on Jan. 6, 2014.

blogging The Writeous Babe Project

How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love My Name

Last week one of my posts from my blog The Writeous Babe Project was featured on BlogHer.com. Yay! The post is titled “How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love My Name” and is about how being a journalist helped me overcome my insecurities about my name. You can read the post below.

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Recently I launched a portfolio website to showcase my writing and public speaking and I decided to simply call this website Javacia.com. Most people would argue that I should have called it JavaciaHarrisBowser.com, since that is my byline. But I chose to go with Javacia.com as a tribute to my first name.

My first name is the only one I can rely on. Little known fact: my name has been legally changed four times even though I’ve only been married once. Let me explain. When I was born I was named Javacia Nicole Price. Then my folks got hitched and I became Javacia Nicole Harris. But my mom lost the paper work so when I got my license I was Javacia Nicole Price again and remained that way for a year until my mom got the necessary documents to have my name changed AGAIN. Then I got married and changed my name to Javacia Nicole Bowser. Then I decided I missed my maiden name and changed my name to Javacia Harris Bowser. It’s a miracle I even know my name.

Despite its dependability, I haven’t always liked my first name. As a girl, while my friends were thinking of names for their future kids, I would sit in my room jotting down ideas for the pseudonym I would use when I became a published author. For years I hated my name. I disrespected my name calling it “ghetto.” When people had trouble pronouncing my name I apologized as if I and the syllables it took to address me had somehow offended them. When they looked at me as if I were a green girl from Mars and said, “Well, that’s different,” I felt ashamed. And when they turned to me with a furrowed brow and asked “Do you have a nickname?” I just laughed and said, “You can call me J.”

Then I became a journalist. And I fell in love with my byline. I became a journalist and that “ghetto” name Javacia was on the pages of The Seattle Times, The Chicago Sun, USA Today, and national magazines.

I’ve been told that having a name like Javacia is a liability. Let’s be honest, as soon as you see my name you know I’m black long before you see me. I’ve been told that having a name like mine could make jobs hard to come by, that I’d be passed over by certain employers. For years I considered going by my middle name Nicole. But then I thought to myself, “Do I really want to work for someone who would discriminate against me because of my name or race?”

Don’t get me wrong. I’m in no way judging people of color who do alter their names for the sake of acceptance or a job. People do what they have to do.

And I decided that what I had to do was learn to stop worrying and love my name.

That same line of thinking also helped me decide to describe myself, on my new professional website, as a writer, speaker, and feminist. Yes, I used the f-word. Doing so made sense even though I recognize it was a risky move. I don’t want to do any writing or public speaking for someone who is anti-feminist. And feminism is not only a part of my work, it’s a huge part of who I am.

My name is Javacia and I am a feminist. Can you handle that?

*Originally published at The Writeous Babe Project on Dec. 31, 2013.