I’m late adding this to my blog, but I still want to note it.

Two weeks ago, I agreed to help out the Leap for Life campaign to raise money and awareness for cancer research. To do this though, I did something I have never done before; I jumped out of a plane.

You can read all about the project here, but suffice it to say, the result was this:

I’m thrilled to have been a part of this experience and this worthy cause. Thanks especially to JoJo Wright and his team for letting me join on this crazy adventure.

I have more planned on the charity front. Stay tuned.

I’d like to take a moment to point to a great post Mashable’s Jolie O’Dell wrote on her personal blog: Fat Bloggers: My Own Weight Loss Journey.

Here is an excerpt:

Here’s the graphic point I’m trying to make: Bloggers live a fundamentally unhealthy lifestyle. We are bound to our office chairs, chained to our laptops, and whipped into a froth of stress at the drop of a hat. Our social events revolve around that most healthy of habits, drinking. And we idolize bacon, for some reason.

This is an issue near and dear to my heart: I used to be 40 pounds overweight — the chubby kid — until I decided to take control of my body and drop the weight with smarter eating and regular workouts between my junior and senior years of college.

At the end of ’08, I wrote about how mental sharpness is directly linked to physical health. I was surprised by how much my world changed after I dropped the weight — so many aspects of my life just became better, and my confidence has never been higher. I definitely feel sharper.

So, if you have a desk job like us online journalists … do consider what your habits are doing to your body, as well as to your mind.

While I spend a lot of time on entrepreneurial projects (two iPhone apps and a novel I’m trying to get picked up), I am best known as the Co-Editor of Mashable. I started writing for Mashable in 2009 before becoming Associate Editor in March 2010. Now I am the Co-Editor of a nearly 30-person company, and rapidly growing (by the way, yes, Mashable is my full-time job).

One of the most frequent questions people ask me is what do you do on a typical day? or what area do you focus on or how much of your time is spent writing?. Until now, I’ve never really answered those questions, but I thought today would be as good as any to talk about my life as a Mashable editor.

So what do I do on a typical day as the Co-Editor of Mashable? While my role has evolved considerably as we’ve grown, the short answer is this: I am the counterpart to our illustrious Editor in Chief Adam Ostrow, responsible for helping manage the newsroom, synthesizing editorial direction, finding the news, writing stories, and filling in the gaps whenever they’re needed.

Now for the long answer: I’d say that most of my activities fall under one of three categories:

- Writing: I don’t have a specific focus or “beat” at Mashable. I pretty much write about all of the subjects Mashable covers through the relationships and expertise I’ve built. You could find me writing about breaking news from Facebook or diving into a thoughtful opinion piece on the structure of the web.

- Editorial: I help Adam manage the news room, assign stories, and edit articles (though I want to take this time to say that Brenna and Lauren are amazing editors that make us all look good). I also work and manage a range of editorial projects to support the entire team’s efforts.

- Biz Dev/Strategy: Mashable has a lot of moving parts. While I leave the biz stuff to COO Adam Hirsch and the overall vision to Pete, I’m constantly helping out with events, internal projects, and figuring out our next steps.

There are many other aspects of my job (business relationships, speaking engagements, media appearances, story research, fixing bugs…), but my ultimate goal as Co-Editor is to support the team in any way I can so they can do their job of writing and publishing killer stories. That, I believe, is what being a good editor is all about.

img credit: Ken Yeung

It’s taken way too long, but I finally made an account on Quora, a well-engineered crowdsourcing and collaborating Q&A website. It’s a chance to ask your burning questions about technology, media, or a variety of other subjects.

I’ll be around, answering questions and watching the feed. If you want to connect with me on Quora, you can find me here.

Live, learn, love. Be bold, be strong, be brave. Take chances, leave regrets behind. Most of all, be kind and just to others.

A quote of mine that people rallied around on my Facebook, so I wanted to share it on my blog, too.

After a few months of hiatus (and a very broken blog), BenParr.com is (mostly) back, and so am I.

Whether because of time or lack of effort to fix my blog (it got hacked), I haven’t maintained it. This weekend though, I got BenParr.com back up and running, and I’m going to take a different approach to this blog.

You’re going to see a lot more social elements and integrations on BenParr.com. You’re going to see a lot more short-form blog posts. You’ll see me using it as a platform for starting discussions. You’ll see more of my off-the-cuff thoughts and quotes, along with my longer thought pieces.

It’s going to take me some time to get back into the swing. So consider this my re-introduction post for the website, and look forward to a lot more changes in the coming weeks.

- Ben