Some Nights

Some nights are definitely lonelier that others. Some nights I wonder why I moved and why I would go so far from my friends and family.

Tonight is one of those nights.

Sometimes I just want to pack it all up and move back to Wisconsin. But I know it'll never be the same as it was in college. We don't all live in the same city anymore. We aren't all in classes and working part time anymore. Most of us have graduated. We've moved on. But I wonder if I have.

I may be 1300+ miles away, but that doesn't mean I've emotionally moved on. And I have to wonder if I want to move on in that way. I know that in certain aspects, I need to. But I miss the way things were. I miss sitting around doing nothing and not having to worry about adult things. It was so much easier when I didn't have that kind of stress. A stress beyond will I get this project done? Will I make it to my class on time? Etc.

I think I'm also feeling lonely because I don't have anyone close by that I can talk with and hang out with. I have my work friends, but that's a work relationship. It's different. I think this is one reason why I'm doubting whether moving was the right choice. Because I haven't met anyone here yet. I don't have those close friendships. But it took me a while to form them in college. So it makes sense that it will take me a while to form them in Austin too.

Gah. Why can't life be simple? I guess that would take away the fun of it. But still.

Same Old Song and Dance

As I read over the past 4 posts on this blog, most of them sound the same-- "wow, I haven't been writing on this thing in a while" or "I'm going to write on this more often".

Funny. That hasn't happened.

You would think I would learn a lesson and stop making promises because one part of me knows I won't keep them.

Maybe I keep making them because another part of me, knows that I want to.

But which wins? Usually the part that knows I won't. I feel like this is a metaphor for everything I do in my life. I try to be so many things, making so many promises, even though I know I can't keep them all.

I want to be so many things. I want to try so many things. But, as I learned in economics, wants are infinite, and resources are scarce.

So what' important to me? I guess I need to figure that one out.

I've been participating in an online community for young professionals for some time now. I updated my profile there to discuss my goals, both short term and long term. When I wrote those goals, I thought about them and I knew they were what I wanted. But, funny (and sad) enough, when I looked at them tonight, I had completely forgot that I wrote them there. I didn't even remember them! Talk about important goals.

The thing is, I know they're important to me. I really do. But it's the everyday stuff and stress that gets in the way. Or at least, that I LET get in the way. I know what I want. I just don't want to make it priority.

So it comes down to this: How much do I want it?

Until I want it so bad I can taste it, nothing is going to change. I am going to continue living my life in the same gerbil wheel until I decide to stop running. But what's going to make me stop running and start living with a purpose??

Until next time...

My Own Whirlwind.

So I have been pretty busy the past 6 months or so. First, as I mentioned earlier, I graduated from college. I received my Bachelor's in Personal Finance and I am happy to be done with school for a while! My last semester, was busy and bittersweet. I got to spend time with my friends, but also felt like a chicken with her head cut off because I constantly had to get things done, whether for a group, or school, or work. But I made it through alive and with better grades than I thought! Ha.

But the end of the year was fun, but stressful. A group that I was in made it to the national competition in Philadelphia. I was a speaker for the presentation, so I had to develop my speech, practice and memorize it, plus plan for the trip. Since it was over finals, I had to move one of my finals to a different date. Plus, we were driving, so we needed to plan for a 15 hour journey there and back. But Philadelphia was a blast. the drive was long and tiresome, mostly because there were only two people, of the four who went, who were able to drive. So that was very tiring. But the city is beautiful. I loved it there. The competition was ok. We gave the best presentation, but we up against some really great competition, so we didn't advance. It was kind of a disappointment to drive that far and also present some really great results to not get that far, but it was a good experience. Plus, I got a lot of free stuff from the career fair.

After Philly, I finished my finals, and had my graduation. It was a long ceremony, but Bud Selig, the baseball commissioner, was our commencement speaker, so that was cool. My family came down and took me out to lunch and we took a bunch of pics all over the campus. Then, my sister stayed to help me pack. My last week was very busy. Sunday was filled with packing. Monday I had work. Tuesday I worked my last day at one of my internships. Wednesday was my last day at the other internship. It was sad to leave them because I had been with one for 3 years, knew the people and liked the place, and the other I liked the people and what I was doing. So it was hard to say goodbye. Wednesday night, I moved out of my apartment, drove back home, unpacked all my stuff and went to sleep around 2am. It was a long day. The next day I ran all over town getting things put together and finished up my errands. Plus, I had to pack! Friday I left for a three week trip to Europe with 2 friends.

The trip to Europe was awesome. I loved all the places we went and got to see and do so much. It was a wonderful experience. Tiring though, with all the walking. We flew into Dublin, stayed for a day and a night, then flew to London. We then went to Athens, Rome, Florence, Barcelona and finally Paris. I have to say that Athens was by far my favorite, followed by Barcelona. Athens is just gorgeous, with the Aegean and the temples. Rome was actually a disappointment, the city is quite dirty and the people aren't very nice. At least not to tourists. But we had a great time and I can't wait to go back and explore more.

When I got back to the states, I was exhausted. We got in Friday afternoon, and I made it back to my house around 11pm, which was about 5am Europe time. So I was exhausted!!! That weekend, I had my "Congrats on Graduating, Welcome Back to the States, and Good Luck in Texas" party with my relatives. It was very chill and fun to see them. Then, I began the packing endeavors and getting everything ready to move to Austin.

I also went down to Madison for one more night with my friends and it was great. I have really awesome friends and I am going to miss them a lot. Luckily, I know they are always there for me and only a phone call away.

We left for Austin bright and early Wednesday the 17th. We drove my Grandma's car with a giant trailer attached. The car wasn't used to so much work, so we couldn't have the air on the entire time we drove. It was awful. I was sweating and uncomfortable. Blech. It was a 24 hour drive, but we stopped Wednesday night in Oklahoma to rest. We made it to Austin Thursday afternoon, checked into the hotel and went and looked at apartments. We only saw one and I loved it. It's in a beautiful neighborhood and area of the city. Plus, it is newly renovated and has a pool, a workout gym and an access gate. We moved everything in that day. My parents left the next morning and I was by myself.

To be continued...

Coming Back At Ya!

Eek. So, a lot has happened since my last post back in JANUARY! Yikes.

But, I am trying to turn over a new leaf. Again. I know, I always start out so well, then something happens and I disappear for a while. I can't say this time will be any different, however, but I'm going to try.

First things first, I know this started as a "running" blog, but I am going to be tweaking that a tad. I will still talk about working out, especially as I begin again. But now, I'm not just going to focus on that.

I've graduated college, moved to Austin, Texas, and I'm working at a new place. A lot of things are changing for me and I wanted a place to write about it. I am slowly starting to piece things together.

So, as I go through these new times in my life, I will share them here.

Here's to a new start!!

So...

It's been quite a while. Almost 2 months. Wow. My bad. Finals and the end of the year kicked my ass. I was getting maybe 2-3 hours of sleep for two weeks in December. I was also eating very very very poorly, drinking too much caffeine and not really taking care of myself. It was a pretty ugly time. One I don't intend to repeat, ever.

But now that it is over, I hope to get a better grip on things in my life. However, I am having a hard time getting back in the swing of doing anything. I wake up in the morning, go to work, go home and watch tv until I go to bed. I'm still eating pretty poorly, and I'm not working out. I just can't seem to motivate myself to get to the gym, or to do a workout DVD. I've realized that I am no longer in shape. I don't like what my body looks like, at all, but I seem to lack the motivation to make any changes. It's really quite sad. Hopefully, I will start to make some changes in my life. I am meeting with a Health Educator to talk about my nutrition and exercising. She is helping me learn techniques on how to be healthy while being busy. We are taking slow steps and are working on my breakfast right now. I am learning how to eat for energy rather than just to eat. I told her the main reason I don't want to do anything is because I'm too tired and lack the energy. She told me the easiest way to combat this is to eat better in the morning and then work on eating everything for energy. It's not as easy as I thought it would be. I am trying to get the right foods every morning, but I usually just eat cereal and yogurt. I am supposed to get some form of long term carb as well, but I usually forget. I meet with her next week to talk about how I am doing with it and hopefully we'll start to work on other things.

I made some pretty poor choices this past semester. I can only hope I can correct them before its too late. I think my first goal is going to be to try and get at least 30-60 minutes of exercise in 4-5 times a week. I want my workouts to be a part of my schedule rather than something I do when I have time. I think that the info I am getting from the health educator will help with my eating skills. I know I am not the runner I used to be, but I know I can get back to that point and even go beyond it.

live, laugh, love <3

Fear is a Funny Thing

So I finally got back on the horse today. I went running. It felt good. But I don't know why it took so long to do it. It's been a really long time, like I can't remember long. But I'm a little sore right now, which I expected. I only did 3 miles and I did 3 sets of 10 minutes running, 2 minutes walking. I don't really like the walking breaks because it's hard to get back into the movement of running after breaking the motion. But I guess it's better than going all out and burning out. I am trying to follow this plan to increase my 5K time. I don't have a 5K in mind, but I figured at the end of the plan, I can run one on the treadmill and see if I am any faster. Or maybe I'll find one. I just need a plan to get me motivated I guess.

But like I said, I'm not sure why it took me so long to get running again, it's not like I haven't been to the gym. I think it has something to do with me being afraid of running again. What if I'm not able to do it anymore? What if I can't build up the mileage?

I also think I wanted the perfect running conditions. I don't mean weather wise, I mean I wanted to feel good. I've been so tired lately, overstressed, overworked, I've been getting more and more headaches, and my stomach has been acting up again. So overall I haven't been feeling too great, physically. Emotionally I've been super stressed and kind of down on myself. I've had two incidents where I would just start crying for no reason. I know this isn't a good sign, but I really think that it's stress and lack of sleep causing all of this. And I think the worst part is that I can't do anything about it. I've trimmed out a lot of the extra things I do, which I've found isn't much. I have a hard time saying no and not doing things, whether it's just sitting and talking with my friends for a good hour. Or playing solitare and not quitting until winning (which is very difficult). I really need to learn to better manage my time. But then part of me really wonders if that is the issue. I think when I have so much to do, I just freak out and don't know where to start. It takes me writing a list of what I need to do in order for me to really get going. I did this on Sunday and it seemed to help. I just need to make it to winter break so I can breathe again.

Anyways, I finally got to use my Nike+ tonight. It was pretty cool. I've used it to calibrate before, but not for running. It was nice to plug my iTouch into the computer and have it log my workout onto Nike.com. I need to use it a little more to see if I really like it, but so far so good. Another thing that is pretty awesome right now, the Taylor Swift CD. I LOVE it. All the songs are really good and it really isn't your typical country album. I love her lyrics and really find them empowering and relatable. I think you should check it out. Speaking of music, I'm pretty excited because I am seeing Matt Nathanson in concert tomorrow and then seeing the Dropkick Murphys on Thursday with my dad. I'm pretty excited about both of them. It'll be a good time.

Another thing of note, from my google analytics account, I found it interesting that most people were directed to my other blog (the one about quotes) using the keywords losing hope. Good sign of the times. Hopefully, they just heard a song or read a quote and wanted to find it.

One more thing! Check out Google's Flu Trends. It's a new tool that uses the data about what people type into their search engine to show where people are looking up flu symptoms. So for example, if a lot of people in your state are researching flu symptoms, your state will show a higher likelihood of the flu going around. Pretty sweet huh?

Geez you would think with all these plugs in this post, I would be getting paid something...

Happy running : )

I Am SOOOOO Tired

It's kind of ridiculous how tired I am. I don't think I have gotten a good night's sleep in over a month. I have been living on caffeine for quite some time now and I think my body is finally immune to it. I am struggling to keep my eyes open in school, at work, while doing homework, etc. I cannot wait for tonight because I am going to bed early. Plus I'm not drinking tonight so I will be able to sleep in. It's going to be awesome. You know what's even better? I'm gonna do it tomorrow night too. I'm so pumped.

Anyway, I only got in one workout this week, and I should have done at least one more. I failed to go last night and I regret it, but the only good thing is that I got a lot of reading done for Business Law. But I still should have gone. Wednesday night I went after a meeting and did 50 minutes on the elliptical. I did the hill climb and it was a great workout. It felt good. I was a little sore the next day, but not too bad.

Other than that, school is blah. Two tests next week, back to back. Good times. Not. But after that I am done til finals. I also register for my final semester of college next Tuesday. It's kind of scary, but kind of exciting too. I get to go to the Badgers hockey game tonight and am looking forward to it. Hopefully they don't suck. Badger football plays Indiana tomorrow. Hopefully they don't suck either. I don't even know what I would do if they would lose. Probably hit any football player I see in classes or walking around campus. Just sayin'.

It was a little crazy in Madison the past week. Halloween was rockin'. Counted way too many Sarah Palins and Jokers, but I expected it. My sister looked hilarious as Amy Winehouse(see pic). Then the election on Tuesday was great. If you don't know, Madison is quite the liberal city. And when Obama was elected, it was nuts. Over 3000 students marched down State Street on campus. It was kind of cool to see (and hear).

Happy running : )