Not 13, but almost 1

This morning, I got a reminder message on my phone: Today would have been my New York anniversary.  On this day thirteen years ago, I moved to NYC and started a new life there. Seems like just yesterday I made that move that forever changed my life. I was actually supposed to be there today running the Brooklyn Half Marathon (and getting my revenge for last year's race), but instead my hamstring and knee still aren't healed so I never booked the flight. Turns out though, I probably wouldn't have been able to race anyway because of my Shingles. I tried putting on a sports bra last night (in hopes of trying to workout this morning in some capacity) and nope, it hurt way too much on my rash. Plus, I still don't have much energy and don't know if 13.1 would have been possible to run today. 

This happened...

We’ve all seen the commercials before… “If you've had chickenpox, the shingles virus is already inside you (dun dun dun)” Ahhhhh. You know what I’m talking about, right? Probably. And you probably think, yeah sure I do, but I won’t get shingles. I mean, c’mon now, that doesn’t happen to people like me. Even though most people may think like that, I actually never did. As someone with a compromised immune system because of the Remicade I take for my Ulcerative Colitis, getting Shingles was always kind of a fear of mine, but I assumed it wouldn’t happen until I was a bit older. Welp, I was wrong. It happened...

Back to It...

About three weeks ago, I started teaching again. Full time. Yup, it happened. And way sooner than I expected it to, but it was an opportunity I could not say no to. Even though this year was supposed to be my “adult gap year” to take a step back from full-time teaching and explore some other options, I was getting a little bit of an itch to get back to it and when this current great job appeared, it wasn’t something that I could pass up.

So really quick, let’s take it back to last June when I quit my full-time teaching (and coaching) job in New York City. It had been something I considered the previous year, but just couldn’t do because, lets be serious, I was too scared. I was scared of the leaving something that I had committed the past eleven years of my life to. I was scared of the financial instability of leaving my job. I was scared I really couldn’t make a career out of anything else because all I knew was teaching. And I was scared that I’d regret it when all was said and done. However, sometimes in life, you have to take a big risk and this was one that I needed to do. Plain and simple, I was just burnt out. I knew I had to quit this job to find my happiness again and I knew I wanted to be closer to my family. I had to do it. So I did.

Another DC Success!

This past (long weekend) I took a trip to one of my favorite US cities: Washington DC. It's a city I could easily see myself living in so always look for an excuse to go and visit. My initial reason for this trip was to run the Cherry Blossom 10-miler. This had been a bucket list race for the past couple of years but I never knew when the lottery was so I never had a chance to enter. This year, I randomly found it days before it opened, entered, and got in. I was so pumped to run this race through the streets of DC and see the famous DC cherry blossoms in full bloom.

Rapid Fire Q's

Oh hey, its me! I talk about myself often on this blog and its usually more so about what's happening in my life and how I'm feeling about it. But today is a little different because I am going to talk about me just for the sake of it. The other day I was listening to a podcast (Ali on the Run) and the host (Ali) ended it by asking her guests some rapid fire questions. She asks each guest the same list of questions each week (at least the two weeks I've listened to so far). As I was listening I couldn't help but wonder how I'd answer some of these questions. A lot of them were running related since it's a running podcast, but most were just some personal fun questions. I decided, hey, I want to answer these fun questions too. And since I have my own blog, I have the perfect arena to do so. A few years ago, I did something kind of (but not really) similar when I did my own version of US Weekly's "25 Things You Don't Know About Me." I didn't want any overlap anything here with that list, but instead I decided to ask myself some other (what I deem) fun questions to answer (most of which were from that podcast) and for you to get to know me a little better. Some of you that know me super well know the answer to most of these, but if not, you may learn something! Heck, we may have more in common than you thought. Or, you may think, whoa, how are we even friends? Regardless, take a read a learn a little something about little ole me...