I Hike Now

… and man do I enjoy it!! 

Sunday I went for a hike with a friend and it was fantastic! We did a mile and a half loop (although we didn't know until we were a mile in and realized we hadn't looked! Oops) and considered doing it a second time because it felt so great! Not sure how our muscles would feel the next day we chose to stop instead and I already can't wait to go again!

I often miss Chicagoland and the people I love there, but spending a Sunday in God's creation in TN? That's a little bit of heaven in its own...

Friendship

When I became friends with R... The very beginning of our friendship... it was over music. She knew one of my former roommates and came over to our house and after everyone else went to sleep we sat on my living room floor (because floor sitting is the best!) and she had her iPod out and I had iTunes opened on my laptop and we talked music. Which led to movies. Which led to this crazy awesome friendship. I truly treasure it. 

One of the things we used to do was take walks together. For hours. For miles! We would get started talking and there was no telling where we'd end up before we turned around. At some point that got lost… we became less motivated maybe… who can remember? 

Last night we went for a walk in our old stomping grounds. A neighborhood with sidewalks and a multitude of street lights. We're not as fast as we once were, but we walked 2.3 miles in not quite an hour... slowly we're working on it. And as we go, we've decided to add in running. We're going to sign up for a 5k in October. 

Working on it... telling ourselves we can do it and making plans!  

It's a start. And I'm grateful to have friends working on this journey. I'll take all the help I can get!

Pottery

Have you ever had to do any kind of arts and craft project that used clay? Specifically wet clay? 

I've taken a lot of art classes in my life, but my favorite was always pottery. Just a wheel, some clay, water, and your hands creating out of it... I always insist that someday I'll have a pottery wheel of my own. Maybe a kiln, or just using clay you can fire on a grill. 

Sorry for the tangent. Clay. Wet clay on your hands that starts to dry. 

That's what dry sweat feels like to me. 

I hit the gym for 2 hours tonight to watch So You Think You Can Dance (one of my favorites!) and I was all kinds of a disaster. My hair was in pigtails tied with yarn because I had no hair ties at work and I had janky earbuds that I don't like... Sweat was literally dripping from my scalp down my pigtails and dripping onto my shoulders and back. 

Lovely picture, I know. 

But the sweat post workout... sticking to my face and shoulders... starting to dry in the air conditioning of my car... it felt like I could scrape it off like drying wet clay. 

Just an observation for a Monday night... 

Sometimes..

I forget that I have blogs. I forget how much I used to like to write... to put myself out there in some small way for the world. I haven't blogged here in well over a year. A year I spent not going to the gym and not caring... really in just a hard, bad, dark place. I kind of just gave up. 

You see, I love my job. I really genuinely love what I do and the people I work with are like my family, but I was working crummy hours (by my own doing) and I just stopped doing anything else. I worked and I slept and that's almost it. I didn't do much more. I worked 10 hour days until 10 at night and then I'd be awake until 5 am and spent my days off catching up on sleep. 

I was depressed. 

But things are a lot better now. Over a year later. I'm working 8 hour days and I'm off work at 7. Those 3 hours make more of a difference than you'd ever imagine. I'm sleeping regular hours and my stress levels have gone down dramatically. I even want to go out and do things with my friends again. I rejoined the gym that I had quite because of the hours of operation and I'm so glad I did. 

Even before starting up the gym again, I dropped about 15 pounds just because of my stress levels and sleep habits. I'm so thankful that my company cares about their employees and that my boss and coworkers invest in me. 

So I continue in this journey called life... and I'm embracing re-found joy in small things... and I thank God for that joy.