I’m sorry I’ve been gone so long, I really am! It’s just that, my life has suddenly gone from extremely lame and boring and uneventful and depressing, to still really lame and boring but busy-busy-busy! Here are some things that have happened since we last met:

• I got a job! (definitely already posted about this, but we’ll pretend I haven’t) It kinda sucks and I just sit in front of a computer all day long and sort through faxes, but it’s money in the bank, right? Not much money, but some money is better than no money!
• Speaking of jobs, I got a second job. Ironic, considering I applied for said job in OCTOBER(!) and hadn’t heard anything from them, and then as soon as I was content with the one (part-time) job and decided to stop looking/stressing about finding another, they called me. I actually start today with orientation, so we’ll see how it goes.
• I have been tutoring French, which has been a very different and fun experience for me.
• I took the AFAA Primary Group Exercise Certification exam, but have not yet received my results because I haven’t sent them my CPR certification (because I don’t have it yet… oops… add that to the list of things to do)
• I got a (free!) gym membership (thank you, living with my boyfriend and being considered his dependent for benefit purposes even though we are not married so I get a free spouse gym membership at the university where he teaches!)
• I recently got back from a 8-day vacation in Jamaica with my boyfriend and his parents. It was so beautiful, so perfect, so needed. For fear of sounding spoiled, let me just say that I have never done something like that. I have never been to a resort, I have never been on vacation for a whole week (I did go on a cruise with my grandparents when I was about 14, though), and I have never gone on a “spring break” trip! Throughout all of high school and college, I never spent my spring break anywhere warm, and so after a fall/winter that literally made me want to die at times, I was so happy and thankful to get away.
• I’ve been running again! Oh my gosh, you guys, it’s been so long. I bought some new shoes (New Balance Minimus, oh how I love thee!) and started running very short distances (like 10 minutes at a time) and forcing myself to foam-roll every night. Over the past couple months, I’ve slowly built my distance up to three miles and have not been having any knee pain! I still foam roll almost every night on the days that I run. I am so-so-so happy to be running again. It’s hard to not let myself go longer distances, but I don’t want to do too much too soon and end up injured again. I’ve been taking advantage of the short distances by working on my pace. My starting pace has gone from 5 or 5.5 mph to 6 or 6.5. Granted, I can’t run that fast for very long, but it’s getting easier and easier every time.
• I was accepted to the French graduate program at Michigan State University, with a teaching assistantship! So come this fall, I’ll be working on my master’s degree and teaching French classes full time. I’m so, so, so excited! Finally, all of this sitting-around-and-waiting stuff feels validated!

I think that about sums it up. For the past month, I’ve literally been too busy to even think about blogging. At first there was this little guilt in the back of my mind that came out and poked me every now and then, but eventually all of the busy-stuff just kinda covered it up. This morning I came to tumblr and found I had a message from a new follower asking for some workout advice.

She reminded me of why I started this blog in the first place. Not to gain followers. Not to make myself feel cool because people might read what I write. Not to be liked and reblogged and featured on tumblr’s tag pages. Just because there was a time that I was confused about working out. A time where I had questions and concerns and needed to look at someone else who had done it and find out how they got there. A time where I couldn’t run a mile and had no idea what to do with a pair of dumbbells. A time where the thought of actually paying for a gym membership boggled my mind. A time where I had no idea how to cook and properly feed my body. I started this blog because I fell in love with working out, being healthy, cooking, and taking care of myself. And I wanted to share that love story with other girls who might need a little bit of inspiration or guidance. I started this blog because there might be just one teenage girl out there who wants my advice, and if she can come to my blog and read my story and hear my advice instead of one of the millions of “thinspo” blogs who would tell her to starve and overwork herself, then that’s all that matters to me.