Saintly St. Ana

I fell off the wagon people- the consistent blog post wagon. It's dumb that I have yet to find my rhythm/schedule but maybe this is my rhythm? Just sporadically posting? Lol. Anyway, I'm here to talk about my recent jump back into yoga. Back in my early college days I was really into yoga. I practiced almost 7 days a week thanks to the free classes provided to students at the campus activity center. Sadly, as my curriculum got more demanding, my class schedule got much more restrictive I didn't find time to fit yoga into my life. I was occasionally able to visit a pricey private yoga studio after the free classes on campus no longer fit my schedule so I felt I was staying on track for a while. Then my senior year came. I'm sure many people can relate to me when I say that my physical and mental health fell to the bottom of my priority list during this time. Aside from hurrying between classes and moving around in the print room I became pretty inactive. I wa...

Imagine if managing your health were as easy as popping a cute little pill?! If you follow me on Instagram you might have seen that I posted a photo recently of me finally being able to donate blood again. It's kind of a weird thing to share on social media but for me it marked a turning point in my physical health. It's been years since my iron level was high enough to donate. I used to regularly donate a few times a year until I developed symptoms that were eventually diagnosed as hypothyroidism, or an under active thyroid. I was pretty bummed out and confused after being turned away from the blood donation center a few times in a row due to my low iron. I didn't know why my levels were dropping so I kept trying to donate. I was also dealing with some other symptoms such as lethargy, weight gain, depression, and more but I suppose I found all those things easy to ignore. Coincidentally around the same time, my mom was diagnosed with hypothyroidism and an aut...

The past couple of weeks have been kind of cray to say the least. My grandpa was dealing with some serious health issues that essentially turned everything upside down. He's now (thankfully) back home and starting on a long journey of recovery. Now that everything is relatively settled down again I've had a chance to process how and why his health issues escalated so quickly. I've now realized that a lot of what happened to him could have been prevented through proper diet. This was a real wake up call. These health issues aren't only his; they run in my family and have the ability to trickle down and affect me as well. This illustrates my new found love for citrus on the Whole30. Previous to one of the major events of my grandpa's stay in the hospital I had made the commitment to go through another round of Whole30 . Having had success previously with this "nutritional reset program," I knew how many benefits I could get from changing my diet alon...

I tried to make the title cute so this post wouldn't be a total bummer... Did it work? Before I get started I posted the video that inspired this post below. I happened to stumble upon it after watching several of her makeup tutorials (my youtube guilty pleasure). It's nice when these things end up finding you. I was able to relate to a lot of her thoughts on "deleting the bad" and trying to explain anxiety to others. Even if you don't want to watch this specific video, or don't want to read the rest of this blog post, her makeup tutorials are fun and cute and cool!  Okay, let's get into it: A couple of months ago I decided to switch antidepressants for a couple of reasons. Firstly, I felt them interfering with my libido. Like seriously, what a bummer. I was finally feeling okay-ish about life again, but I felt like my relationship with my significant other was different and not in a good way. It took me a while to figure out why I was feel...

One of the craziest things about depression is that it can sneak up on you out of no where.  Last week I was writing a post (obviously unfinished) about how I felt like my mental health was finally on an upswing, but in the blink of an eye I felt like all my progress and confidence were lost. Over the weekend I entered a deep depression and it felt worse than any of my lows in recent memory. It was triggered by a rather insignificant event and instead of being able to pull myself up and out of a negative thought process, I was sucked in to a dark place that lasted over a day. It was probably one of the longest and emotionally draining days I'd had in a while. Luckily, I woke up on Monday morning feeling mostly back to my normal self.  I was alone for most of Sunday which was really, really hard. It's hard to come out of something like that when you're physically and/or emotionally alone. In order to keep myself going that day I looked up some ways to help deal with...

Art is never finished, only abandoned. —Leonard0 da Vinci Yeah yeah Leo, I get it. I remember a professor quoted this to me once and I like barfed in my mouth. Who quotes Leonardo da Vinci in an intro level art class? Like who are you??? Well now I'm quoting it at you. It's probably one of the cheesiest things I've ever heard related to creativity (there's a lot of that ish out there), but now I know it's sooooooo true! I feel like every one has looked back at a piece of work and thought to themselves 'I wish I would have done that differently' or at least wondered what else it could have turned out like. Hindsight is always 20/20, isn't it? I was always under the impression that those tendencies were those of a perfectionist. But I don't think I am a perfectionist, at least when it comes to most things. I stumbled upon this post that led me to the conclusion that, "m aybe creativity is the  act of embracing perennially unfinished ...

Forgive me, Internet, for I have sinned... Okay. Confession time. My first two blog posts were made at work. I KNOW. Who am I!? I'm really not a terrible employee. I get all my work done on time and it's done correctly. It's just that sometimes there's not a lot of work to be done. So lately instead of mindlessly browsing the internet I'm trying to be a little more productive in my time spent online. Hence the start of this blog! (Disclaimer: I realize the risk of putting this information online, but I've made the commitment to be completely honest on here. While I do sometimes feel guilty for using my work time to do non-work related things, I'm not really provided with a lot of opportunities to move up or fill my time otherwise. So here we are.) Over the weekend I started reading Sophia Amoruso's #GIRLBOSS and let me tell you, I'm only 50 pages in and I'm already really fucking motivated. She definitely tells it how it is- no sugar coatin...