So, I've never been a gym rat. I was an athlete for almost fourteen years, but my least favorite part of that lifestyle was being forced in a weight room four days a week. I hated it. I hated being in a room with people that were doing more and cooler things than me. I hated being in a room and fearing judgement from other gym-goers. I hated not being able to tell a difference in my body or build soon enough.

During my senior year of high school I found a way to finesse my way out of taking weightlifting as a class and said "good riddance" to bench pressing, and squatting, and curls, and lunges, and twenty-minute runs. But soon after my athletic life ended with my final season of softball, I realized how much I needed to be in a gym or playing a sport in order to stay even remotely fit.

The problem, however, was that I had zero motivation and held myself to no athletic standard on a personal level. If a coach or trainer wasn't yelling at me, I probably wasn't doing anything.

Then I went to college. And with college, comes the dreaded freshman fifteen. I was determined, since I was going to be so close to a gym that I was paying for anyway, that I would work out. That lasted about two weeks. I wasn't playing sports; I wasn't working out; and I went through a bout of depression and seclusion that basically meant I only left my dorm to get Taco Bell. Add all of that together and freshman fifteen goes from fifteen to twenty-five really quick.

After my first year of college, I transferred to Georgia State and decided I wasn't going to be secluded and alone anymore, so I joined the rowing team and it was great. We practiced four to five days a week, twice at five in the morning and two to three times in the afternoons, and I had people. The races were three miles long (and I once did two races back-to-back) and the practices were even longer. I loved it, but I needed to find a job and I genuinely hated waking up at four in the morning twice a week, so I dropped out of the team after one semester. And went back to doing nothing.

For the last year, I've done a lot of not a lot. Last semester I worked out a little, but it was never consistent and I wasn't eating even remotely right. Basically, whatever was cheap and quick was what I ate. I watched a lot of Netflix, which I love doing, but I was also pretty unhappy. I went to class, went to work, did homework, and watched Netflix. I was dissatisfied and lonely and instead of working on trying to make myself feel better, I sat around and did nothing.

But about a month ago, I decided to completely flip my life upside down. I got back in a gym; I started eating healthy; I started learning Hebrew like I've wanted to do for nearly five years; and I stopped binge-watching Netflix and started watching movies again. Just for reference: I haven't had pizza in a month and a half. Let that sink in. I love pizza. I mean, really love pizza. And I've pretty much given it up.

The workouts I'm doing are intense. They're long, they're hard, and they're exhausting, but for the first time in my life, I actually want to be in the gym. I'll do my entire workout and not even want to leave; I want to keep going. I do a ten-minute warm up on the elliptical, a hundred feet of bear crawls (forward and backward) and a hundred feet of crab walks, dumbbell exercises, dips, push ups, planks, wall sits (sometimes while holding a medicine ball between my knees, which is hard AF), free squats, and core. I don't do everything in every work out, because that would probably kill me, but I do my warm up, bear crawls, and crab walks every time, and I rotate the other exercises in and out to avoid letting my muscles get used to doing the same thing all the time. It takes about an hour to an hour and fifteen minutes, but it's great.

As for the food, I found this really great recipe for eggplant and egg pita pockets that I don't think I'll ever get tired of. Basically, you chop up tomatoes, Persian cucumbers, jalapeños, and garlic, and you mix it with plain yogurt, cumin, olive oil, and onions. It's a basic Israeli salad. You boil some eggs, you roast some eggplant slices, and you pack that in the pita pocket, spread some hummus on top, and you've got a full meal in five minutes. Here's a link to the original recipe. I do a lot of chicken salad, a ton of couscous and quinoa, a bunch of baked chicken, and a lot, a lot, a lot of fruit.

And for the whole Hebrew thing, since no one quite gets where my "sudden" infatuation with the language came from, I've wanted to learn for almost five years. I always thought it was interesting, since it's the original language of the Bible, and because it's a pretty uncommon language, comparatively. And the joy I get from knowing an entirely different alphabet (or "aleph-bet") is surprisingly immeasurable. I can spell my name in Hebrew (שלבי), which is awesome, and I have a whole playlist of music on Spotify that's in Hebrew so I can learn how to hear the language. Plus, for fun, I added two Hebrew-language tv shows to my list on Netflix. I know the aleph-bet, I can count to ten, and I can speak super basic, conversational Hebrew, and I genuinely enjoy it, which shocks most people since I always hated Spanish class so much.

Basically, I've decided to do things for me -- things that make me happy, and benefit me, and make me feel better about myself and what I'm doing. I'm learning a new language, I'm getting my muscle definition back, and I feel so, so, so much better. Plus I've seen more movies in the last month than I have in a year, and it shocked me a little how much I missed them without even knowing it Basically, I just wanted to feel better and be a badass and be happier, and I decided to do whatever I could to make it happen. So the point is: you do you. Go do whatever it is that makes you happy and makes you feel better, whether that's learning a language that confuses everyone or watching a single movie six times in the theater or traveling or whatever. Just go do you. Make yourself happy. And make yourself better. And go be a badass.