I’m coming back to the blogging world - you’re so lucky to have me (jk). Over the last 1-2 years some semi-major life changes occurred and are (somewhat) the reason I’ve decided to revive this blog.
First - I’m now an ABD (all but dissertation) Ph.D candidate, I successfully passed my Qualifying exam in July, 2018…promptly followed by a week long vacation in South Dakota. It was seriously like a spa. Not just for the skin care and pedicures, but for reasons I’ll talk about later…also for my relationship.
Second - Daniel (my partner of ~3 years) is starting business school at Dartmouth this fall. While that decision isn’t mine to make, it did create a LARGE amount of strain/tension/resentment in our relationship. This, coupled with quals and general grad school stress and living in a region/state neither of us love, really hurt our relationship. I’m a firm believer that there is no ‘one’ person for you, but if you find someone that you ‘work’ with long term, you can generally make about anything work if you BOTH CHOOSE to make it work. That can take on many different realities and forms, but for us that means we were wavering between staying together and doing long-distance during Daniel’s MBA, or going on a break and deciding in a year if we wanted to be together when I finish my PhD and Daniel has a year left of his MBA. After a week hiatus and reconnecting in SD, we made the more obvious decision to just stay together. I don’t know what that’ll end up looking like, but at least we both chose each other and more importantly we BOTH are CHOOSING to make it work.
Third - I ran the Boston Marathon! After 3 qualifying races (I qualified the first, and then the other two were planned subsequent marathons later in the fall cycle) I ran Boston in 2017. Later in 2017 (December) I ran a marathon PR of 3:19 and now I’m training for the St. George marathon. My first goal is to get a PR, I’m training for a 3:15.
Fourth - I started crossfit! This is largely due to Daniel’s influence on me, but it co-functions as a way for us to have a shared activity. I go about 3-4 times a week with my current running mileage from 35-60mpw. Strength training has changed how I run and is the largest contributor to my distance PRs.
Fifth - I’m running a 100 mile ultra marathon in March 2019. That’s a ways off, but it’s on the horizon.
Sixth - I’m in my late-20s, I admit nothing, but I haven’t NOT been thinking about kids, my next life steps, moving to New Hampshire, opening a bakery and eloping. But who HASN’T thought of some of those things at some point…right?
SO, with those major life points as a preview to what you’ll see here in the near future, I’ll welcome myself back to the blackhole of tumblr.
