07 | August | 2015 | Daily Moves and Grooves

This whole blogging thing is pretty awesome.

Drawing inspiration from other bloggers, gaining courage and motivation from readers, venting my emotions and thoughts, pushing past my comfort zone, making new friends beyond the screen, finding healing, growing in my faith…

Unrelated: Does it look like I’m looking down to my left in this photo? Because I’m NOT! It’s so weird that my hood + hair + the lighting makes it look that way! I’m actually looking straight ahead.

In the past, I tried picking up journaling as a hobby a handful of times, but I could never stick to it, because I can only have a dialogue with myself for so long before I get bored.

That’s where the blogging community has filled the space in my journaling aspirations. The best thing about blogging is that other people can read about my thoughts and experiences and draw me out of myself. This online “diary”is not only about me, but about us as weird and broken human beings who are trying our darn hardest in this world.

Today marks exactly two years that I’ve been writing here on Daily Moves and Grooves. I still use a WordPress preset theme, and I don’t have thousands of followers, but I am more than content with where my blog is right now.

Although I will always be an advocate for moves and grooves, I’ve moved a little bit away from the fitness realm of “healthy living.” I’ve learned how to incorporate a little more LIFE into this blog, with a sprinkle of healthy food and fitness. Just as my priorities in life have shifted, the focus of my blog has shifted towards health and fitness for living, not living for health and fitness.

To each one of you who has commented, emailed, messaged me, or even texted me— you have truly touched my life, and for that I am so grateful. To each of you who has taken the time to read even one post of mine—I appreciate you.

You guys make me laugh, cry, and constantly re-evaluate my perspective on life. I’m a huge fan of you.

Here’s to many more years of movin’ and groovin’! God bless, y’all. (<— nothing says east coast more than that, right?)

Check out my previous post to see what I’m up to in the Midwest!

Greetings from St. Louis! Sorry I’m posting this update so late, but the past 48 hours have been a whirlwind. If you follow me on Snapchat, you might have seen that my travels to the Midwest did not go quite as planned.

At 6AM, overnight oats in tow, Pop kindly drove me to the small local airport for my scheduled 8AM flight to Washington DC (where I had connecting flight to Kansas City).

Long story short, my flight out of New York was delayed four times due to a broken plane, so I had to change my connecting flight a few times before they finally sent me to another [larger] airport in the city for a direct flight to Kansas…7 hours later than I was supposed to leave New York.

I arrived safely though, so that’s all that matters!

You might be wondering: Why the heck was I in Kansas? Well, we used to live near Kansas City over 10 years ago, so my mom wanted to walk down memory lane by visiting our old house, church, school, etc. It was pretty cool to revisit some bits of my childhood again!

our old church

Our gracious friend invited my mom and I to stay at their house (which is like a palace, to be quite honest) for the night, so we ate some delicious home cooked food…

…and snuggled their Yorkie who is better-groomed than I ever am.

Now that I’m older, it’s wild to see how different the Midwest and Northeast cultures are.

Midwest: mostly white people, lots of land, huge houses, competitive suburbia, more Christian radio

Northeast: diversity, small houses for way too much money, people mind their own business, better food (had to say it)

Those are generalizations of course! 🙂

After a quick sushi lunch yesterday afternoon, Mom and I hit the road for St. Louis.

Mom and I passed the time in the car with some great conversation. We checked in at our hotel at around 7PM and then headed to dinner at a fantastic little eatery called The Hot Pot.