Running Into Joy

It may come as no small surprise to those of you who know me well that video games were a huge part of my life growing up.  Or, it actually may surprise you, since I've been more or less on a gaming hiatus since I moved out of my parent's house and away from our PS2.  This March, when I moved in with my boyfriend, I also moved in with (drumroll please) an Xbox One. Initially this functioned primarily as the machine on which Andy played Warzone online with his friends, but in the back of my mind hummed the memories of long sessions spent on the red floral couch of my youth, playing my way through countless RPGs of the early aughts.  Videogames were one of the few activities my polar opposite younger brother and I had in common. He played sports and ran around with his friends while I read books and cried a lot about how I didn't have many friends.  But, some of my fondest memories of growing up with a sibling are of playing Baldur's Gate: Dark Alliance together, or o...

Happy Monday, friends! We are, somehow, in the month of August. The days are shortening, and the march to new student orientation has begun in earnest for those of us who work in Student Affairs. When you work in higher ed, as I do, there is a certain flow to your year. August and September are months of flurried, rushed action. It can be difficult to remember self-care. Last week, I worked long days, rushing on through without a lunch break in the panicked frenzy to try and prepare for the ever-shifting potential situation that will be the Fall 2020 semester. My grocery trip consisted of picking up contact solution and a stack of frozen meals to take for lunches. Yes, August is a challenging time for me to remember how to care for myself. I just finished a session of Yoga with Adriene titled fundamentals of ease, and am reminded of the importance of trying to find balance, find ease, even in the challenging moments. To just slow down, when you can, however you can. As she always...

Hello, friends. Are you tired yet of hearing "what a strange time" or "in these uncertain times"? It still feels odd to write anything without this nod to the shared experience we are all moving through. Though we are all affected to varying degrees, we are many of us (dare I say all of us?) affected. I, for one, have drafted and tweaked and then not posted about a hundred blog posts. On the productive days, when I'm not just sort of... blah. I'm lucky in that I've been able to work from home for nearly two months (!!) now. Like many of the posts I'm seeing online, I have leaned into baking as a sense of comfort and, I think, control. I've always loved baking, though admittedly it's a hobby that has fallen off somewhat since I began working full time. Rarely do I have the luxurious amount of time set aside to spend a day periodically kneading bread, or taking far longer than I expect to ice sugar cookies (I'm looking at you, D20...

Hello, my friends. With the Coronavirus concerns and constant media cycle related to the outbreak and efforts to reduce spread, it is a difficult time to be a person in the world. As much as I've wanted to keep up the streak of posting every Monday, it feels like a weird time to have a blog about self-care. So, I took a week off as I adjusted to working from home and then, as restrictions on movement increased, temporarily relocated to my boyfriend's house. Behold the new plant in my impromptu office/yoga/space at Andy's These past weeks, I've had an unprecedented amount of time to think, and have used the word "unprecedented" a, well, unprecedented number of times. I think we're all being forced--called?-- inward, whether or not we like it, as the physical distancing (aka social isolation) measures have taken effect. Much has already been posted, and emailed, and livestreamed relating to the importance of self-care during this time. And yes, tak...

Hi, all! I'd love to have a running update for you, but unfortunately the bad knee is kneeing it up, so I'm currently mixing lower-impact cardio into my routine with lots of yoga and stretches while I rehab it. So, this week I'm bringing you an update on some of the things I'm enjoying lately for self-care. These are in no particular order and with no affiliate links--just some stuff I like that you might enjoy, too! 1) Lush Seanik Shampoo Bar I've been curious about Lush's shampoo bars for a while but given that my hair is limp and unenthusiastic at best, I'm always nervous about switching it up. But when I happened to find myself in Lush and running low on my Herbal Essences Body Envy shampoo at the same time, I decided to give it a go. I am LOVING this shampoo. It smells fantastic and it gives my hair, dare I say it, some shine. And maybe volume, but let's face it, that's a pipe dream with these limp locks (thanks, Dad). 2) This amazin...

Okay, I have a confession to make. For years, I have bemoaned that I don't have the money to "adult" my wardrobe, which is still largely comprised of items from college and grad school. And while I certainly am not making the big bucks, the truth is... clothes just haven't ever really been my priority. I associate shopping for clothes with spirals down into body shame and self-hatred, so I pretty much prefer to avoid it whenever possible. My default wardrobe of choice is "jeans or leggings with a funny or fandom t-shirt." But, it turns out life has dealt me one of those office job things where I'm expected to dress "professionally." Hitting the "less than a month until my birthday" seems to have sparked a sort of clothing crisis situation, wherein I'm overwhelmed to realize I'm nearly 28 years old and have never learned where adult, professional Amanda likes to shop for clothes. Maybe it's a side-effect of working at...

You may have noticed we've done a little rebranding here in this corner of the internet. After a year of disliking the name of this  blog, I brainstormed with some internet friends and finally found a new name that fits. So, without further ado, cue the confetti canons as I re-introduce you to: Running into Joy via GIPHY  (Credit: @bunch_of_fans) This blog will continue to be about self-care, finding happiness, and fitness. The name change, I feel, better reflects the outlook I've grown into in this past year of writing and reflecting. Much brainstorming centered around things like "Chasing Happiness" or some variant, but ultimately I didn't like the implications of that phrasing. To "chase" something implies we're forever trying to reach it, but that it's difficult to catch. That it's a state to be gained and kept, that the chase will at some point end, be finished, concluded. I don't think happiness works that way. In fact, ...

Ahh, December. The perfect time to start reflecting on the year and thinking about what you hope to achieve in the year ahead. If 2019 has taught me anything, it's that no matter what you plan, life will surprise you. This year feels especially reflective as we come to the end of not only the past year, but the past decade. To be 27 at the end of a decade is a strange sensation. 10 years ago, I was a teenager in high school. In so many ways, that feels like a different lifetime. At 17, I was freshly out of a long, terrible, and tumultuous relationship the after effects of which I would feel well into my 20's. I was getting ready to graduate high school, with the grand adventure of college waiting out there on the horizon. At 27, things feel a bit more nebulous. I've written before about how this stage in life feels strange to me, without a clearly defined length of time in which to accomplish any sort of educational goal. On top of this general existential angst, 2019...

I don't know if I've mentioned it yet on this blog, but I am MOVING in a little over a week. Or two weeks, depending on if you count "moving" as the day my current lease ends or the day my new lease begins--there's a teensy bit of a gap. This is beyond a doubt my most complicated in-town move to date. Thankfully, UHAUL is amazing & gives you a month of free storage with the rental of a van, so the majority of my stuff has somewhere to live while I stay with my boyfriend for a few days in between leases. Still, it means moving everything twice and not getting to feel settled for an entire week. It means trying to clean while some of my stuff is still in the way, and having a carpet company come in mere hours after I finish getting everything into my UHAUL. Let's just say I can't be all that surprised that I've developed a headache doing all of this in 90 degree heat. I am trying to be gentle, take it slow, and embrace the uncertainty as part...

I have written before about how hard it is for me to sit still these days. I love taking long walks, doing yoga, just generally moving. And while I've been trying to cultivate more intentional stillness in my life, life had other plans: forced stillness. Oh, how badly I handle having my independence stripped away. This week, I've been dealing with knee pain that has left me crying on the couch because the act of walking is too painful to be justified except in extreme need. And I have been cranky.  It's amazing what we take for granted when our bodies are well and whole. Making our own dinner. Getting the mail. Running to the corner store for a snack. Taking out the trash. All of these things felt suddenly painful and difficult as my knee seemed poised to snap out of position with every step. Yesterday, I went to the doctor and got an official diagnosis on my knee. It turns out, nothing is ripped or torn or broken at all--it's just patellofemeral pain syndrome, ak...

Here we go again--I'm officially training for my next race! July 1st was supposed to be Day 1 of my training cycle for my first 10K of the year, The Great Race 10K. However, my past two weeks looked like this: Go on vacation, hike Mt. Marcy, drive 10 hours home, work three days, spend the next weekend in a cabin with 14 other humans, drive home to immediately meet up with my Dungeons and Dragons group for several hours of gameplay. I can count the hours I've had to myself over the past two weeks on one hand, which in introvert terms means I am running on E, big time. Plus, when you're on vacation or in the woods with friends or hanging out with your DnD buddies, the 9pm bedtime tends to go out the window. Needless to say, when my 5am alarm went off on Monday morning, I had zero left to give. I chose sleep instead of my first training run. And man, did I beat myself up about it for the next two days. Day one, how could I be failing at this already ?! The guilt is, ...

As I mentioned in my last post, I recently spent a long weekend in Salem, Massachusetts. My primary reason for going was to join The Sisters Enchanted in a weekend of self-reflection and exploration of Tarot, astrology, and other "weird stuff," as my boyfriend describes it. The truth is, I've felt something of a lack of community with other women lately. The hard, beautiful truth of making friends in college & grad school is that they become deeply, truly your people and then they go off into the world. Bits and pieces of my heart are scattered all across the country, where I often do a terrible job of checking in with them (hello, you know who you are, I hope you are well). So the idea of spending a long weekend in a house full of women spoke to me on a deep, soul level as a way to experience the connection I craved. Of course, it helped that I'd heard good things about Salem from friends who visited and was craving an adventure, so when I got the chance to ...

Hello, internet people! This week brings us our first edition of Adventures in Self-Care.  As part of my mutual goals to exercise better self-care and put myself in more social situations to make new friends, I signed up to attend my first Geek Girl Brunch event: a wellness workshop at a little shop called Well Oiled.  Geek Girl Brunch is an organization with a number of local chapters. I'll let them speak for themselves, since I've only attended the one event so far. According to the national website, Geek Girl Brunch  " is a meetup group of ladies who geek out together, typically when mimosas are involved." Their mission statement is "t o create a safe environment where identifying geek girls can be themselves to give voice, network, create friendships, inspire each other and hang out!" I've been a member of the Pittsburgh chapter's Facebook group for a while, but this is the first time that my interest in the monthly topic and my schedule li...