Hello. A few cool things have been happening in my world, orrr I’ve just been thinking about some stuff. And I want to write about it! 

I’m running another relay with Nuun. 
Everyone from HTC was so thoughtfully invited to run a Ragnar with Nuun (the official hydration sponsor!)/ We could pick race location preferences, which was really tough. I would have 100 percent picked Zion, but it is the same weekend as Eugene. I almost put down Lake Tahoe as my first choice, but realized my plane ticket budget would kill me (and…deplete). So I went with Ragnar Adirondacks, which I cannot be more excited for. It’s happening in September, so it will be nothing but gorgeous up there in the fall. Plus, some really wonderful people are doing adks too…hellloo Steph, Molly, Corey,  Elizabeth, and Lauren (who else?!). (: I can’t freakin wait. 

I inherited a new job title.
One of the most wonderful things about working for a startup, and Greatist specifically, is the unending room for growth. Unlike other, more traditional work places where you can move up from one “set” position to the next, we’re encouraged to evolve and grow into a position that we can ultimately become the best at. I started off as a part-time staff writer, then moved to staff writer and outreach director. Now, I’m “officially” the Growth Director, meaning I’ll do whatever it takes to increase both traffic and brand awareness. I feel super lucky, confident, and excited for everything that’s to come. I have a lot to learn, too, which makes it that much more thrilling.

New twitter bio, new you — excited for a new job role @greatist to help push this thing to crazy heights 🙂 #imagreatist

— Laura Schwecherl (@lschwech) February 12, 2013

Nicole and I are hiking the AT this summer.
We’re striking again. Thinking about our next adventure, Nicole was inspired by Bill Bryson’s A Walk in the Woods, a hilarious, informative, and interesting story about Bryson’s experience hiking the Appalachian Trail. This will be my first time truly backpacking — as in, carrying our tent and all other belongings — and spending three days out on the trail. The whole hike stretches from Georgia to Maine, but we’ll probably stick to a route right along Jersey and New York. And smell a lot of trees.

I need to sleep more. Way more.
While waking up early is usually not a problem for me, it usually hits me around 2pm that I’ve been up since 6am. My problem is I cannot, for the life of me, fall asleep early. By the time I get home, I want to cram in other hobbies and end up staying up past midnight. Case and point? I recently became obsessed with this Beiruit song (I go through phrases where I listen to a band over..and over..and over..) and stayed up till 1am learning how to play the ukulele part. Other nights I just browse the interwebs for hours on end. No bueno. I’ve been feeling how the lack of sleep is affecting me in other ways, so I’m going to try so, so hard to turn off the computer and phone by 10pm every night, and then hop in bed with a book. I’ll report back.

 I miss yoga.
I haven’t been practicing yoga that much in the last few weeks, and I really feel a difference both physically and mentally. My hips, hamstrings, and head are way not happy with me, so I’m going to try my best to get back at it once a week. I am also secretly-not-so-secretly itching to go back to it multiple days a week once training for Eugene is over. Namaaaaste.