I’ve been doing a lot of complaining lately. I’m not satisfied with work, there’s too much HW assigned for my classes, I have no time, I’m not eating right, I have no money, I have no time to exercise, or do my HW or my laundry or see my friends or spend time with my girlfriend. Wah wah wah.

Right now, my life doesn’t look anything like I envisioned it looking when I decided to move back to Long Island. I knew that I would have to work hard for school, but imagined doing it by spending long, productive hours at cozy coffee shops, sipping pumpkin spice lattes ‘til I turned orange. 

After getting a somewhat-regular schedule for my job (FINALLY), and comparing my weekly income (low), with the amount of time I would be spending out of the house every day for work (a lot), I proceeded to have my umpteenth panic attack since moving home. And I don’t know if I just got so sick of feeling helpless and hopeless, or if I was just pissed off that I JUST went to yoga last night and had that amazing everything-will-always-be-okay-because-yoga feeling - and already started freaking out unnecessarily again - but I actually got up out of bed, put on my running shoes, and hit the pavement around my beautiful new neighborhood for a walk-jog-walk again session. (Similar to the couch-to-5k program.) This time I’m listening to my body (gasp! what!?) and not the chart. The first time I wound up with really awful shin splints by day 2 and I think it took me almost 6 months to fully recover (because I kept re-fucking them up). I also warmed up for a long time, stretched before and after, and only jogged 30-ish seconds at a time. I walked until I felt satisfied (1.3 miles, determined afterwards), and walked slowly to cool down on the way home.

I don’t think I ever actually knew what a healthy relationship with exercise could look like (for me) before today. So in an effort to share my exciting epiphany, and hold myself accountable for my own happiness and health, I’m going to try to blog more about this amazing new thing (exercising and liking it, because I want to!) 

Thanks for reading!  <3
Alaureltree 

p.s. If you don’t want to hear about me working out because it’s triggering for you or annoying or just too long-winded, tumblr has this awesome feature where you can hide someone’s posts without unfollowing them (so they never have to know!). It’s under the Add and Remove followers section in the little box that says “if you need to, you can block certain users from appearing.” Trust me, I’ve done it. I won’t be offended! Or you can just unfollow. I’ve done that too. Respect yourself first!