Blog Redesign and BJNC

As you can probably tell, I just gave my blog a much needed makeover. And, not going to lie, I'm madly in love with it.

I've been thinking about renaming my blog for awhile, simply because I've learned about branding since first logging into Blogger back in 2010. It doesn't make sense to have a URL that says one thing and a header that says another. And besides, I think Freedom of Excess pretty much fits my personality to a T!

Since joining the Her Campus Blogger Network, I've been seeing such beautiful blogs and feeling increasingly uneasy about my own. It looked clunky and amateurish because, let's be real, it was. I'm still using a template provided by Blogger, but I'm so much happier with how clean this one looks. And why get someone else to design a logo for me when I can sort of use Photoshop? I was randomly struck by inspiration, oh, an hour ago... and here we are! I might actually break my arm patting myself on the back for this one, because I'm legitimately obsessed with the Mexico City 1968 logo.

Alright, enough tooting my own horn. I need to update about my time at the 2013 USA Volleyball Boys' Junior National Championships (BJNC for short, 'cause I don't have all day!) before I jet off to Hermosa Beach, Calif. to do the exact same thing at the 2013 USA Volleyball Beach Volleyball High Performance Championships. Seriously. (Hope that one has an abbreviation too.)

I credit this photo to luck and Leslee's awesome fancy camera.

But anyway, my first-ever business trip were some of the more exhausting ten days of my life. I was getting to the convention center by 8 a.m. for first serve every morning, and usually not leaving until about 8 p.m. I also happen to be an introvert, so being around thousands of people for twelve hours a day for ten days sapped my energy and left me basically catatonic every night.

The exhaustion aside, the trip was awesome. I was the sole member of the communications staff at the event so I had a lot of responsibility, which was an amazing learning experience to get as a lowly intern! I wrote match recaps for each championship match, plus one feature a day (my favorites are here, here and here -- this last team ended up winning its division! I was so happy!). I was also taking all my own photos.

Really fun. But I'm not quitting my day job -- getting a good photo of a volleyball match is NOT easy!

So, while Reno isn't a city I care to ever visit again, I'll give my trip an A (would've been an A+ if I hadn't finally gotten hit in the side of the head by a volleyball :P).