endorphins are real?

For Christmas a couple of years ago my mom tried to make a holiday card by cutting and pasting pictures of her, my brothers, and I into one. While her creative intentions/ideas are usually pretty good, her follow through isn't always there. This time was no different. In the final Frankenstein photo, there were cute little floating heads of her, AJ, and Mike, but the picture she chose for me, who knows her logic, was one taken right after a run. Sweaty, sports bra, frizzed out hair. Honestly, I don't exercise that often, that may be the only existent photo of me after "working out" since I played sports in high school. It's almost as if she had to work to find it. "What? I think you look cute!" Ugh.

Where am I going with this?

This was a pretty rough weekend. I'm not one to talk that much about things that upset me. I sort of dissect and internalize them. I realize that's not the healthiest method and am trying my best to open up to and lean on my friends. That being said, I'm not going to loose my cool at work. Still, its hard to prevent emotional stress from affecting day-to-day behavior. The end of last week, beginning of this one, I was sort of short at work. Did what I needed but invested no more energy than that.

Then, finally, Tuesday morning I went for a long walk along the beach. On the phone Jamie reminded me that, while it's easy to use upsetting events as excuses to vegg out, be lazy, sort of shun taking physical care of yourself, exercise can be a catalyst in pulling you out of a slump.

Shooooot, girl was right. Just going for a quick run these last couple of mornings has given me so much more energy and enthusiasm than I expected. Yeah, none of this is mind blowing, but it's sort of nice to remember. Physical health is so obviously tied to mental health, yet it's pretty easy to forget.