Hello, new and old friends! The beginnings of a blog.

It’s a funny thing about breakups. Somehow, once you start to get over the intense sadness and desperation and intense loneliness that breakups initially gift you with, you somehow become like the energizer bunny – suddenly free to accomplish anything you could possibly dream of in the world. And man, do you start to dream. Sometimes, your dreams are small, like starting a blog that you have been saying you’re going to start for the past year. Sometimes, they’re much bigger, like deciding you can hike the Appalachian Trail without him. Or at the very least, consider hiking it without him. Either way, the ideas start to flow and you decide it is high time you start living the life you were meant to live and becoming more like the ideal version of yourself that you have in your head and know you’re capable of being. Complacency is not your friend, and you must breakup with it as well as saying goodbye to your relationship. You must now start to become the best version of yourself that you can be at this stage of your life.

That is essentially what this blog is about. My own personal quest to become the best possible Audrey that I can be. As time goes on, I of course hope this quest becomes less about trying to get over the heartache and more about staying true to myself and the life I want to live. But for now, I will use the energy of heartbreak to become the person I want to be. As any newly single early 30-something would do, I looked for inspiration from none other than the Queen Bee of being single in her early thirties herself, the quirky and fabulous Ms. Bridget Jones (as in Bridget Jones’s Diary). When skeezeball Daniel comes back to her after breaking her heart because “if he can’t make it with her, he can’t make it with anyone,” she realizes that isn’t enough for her. She tells him it just won’t work, because she’s looking for “something more extraordinary than that.” Well guess what world! I am looking for something more extraordinary. Not just necessarily in a relationship or in someone else, but in myself and my own life, so that is where I am at.

So what does that mean, exactly? Well, we shall find out! Tomorrow is a blank page! Today, that means starting a blog and going for a run for the first time in two years after a devastating back injury. By the way, that run was NOT easy. Do you remember the start of sports season in high school (soccer for me) when you have neglected to do your off-season training and suddenly you’re forced to run and perform drills for hours a day and you get cramps in your sides and your lungs hurt and your teeth hurt and it feels awful? Well, I ran about a mile today. In two parts. And those feelings definitely came flooding back. But hey, as I recall, a couple weeks in and it starts to feel normal again, so we shall see!

I’ve also started taking a class in sustainable urban agriculture through the University of the District of Columbia. I have always been very into the outdoors and the environment (which you will notice in future posts), and before moving to DC, I was an environmental educator. However, I have been feeling disconnected from my environmental roots for quite some time, despite the fact that I try to hike whenever possible. I decided that as part of moving forward and being the best me, I need to stay true to those roots. I found this class, and have completed about 3/5 of it at this point. Next class, we will learn to build a composter, which means you have that information to look forward to!

I hope you’ll come along on my journey with me. Perhaps we can learn from and inspire each other along the way! I’m always open to new ideas on things to try, and of course topics to write about.

P.S. I know the name of my blog is a bit deceiving. Sunstruck, if you look it up in the dictionary, means having sunstroke, which is not a pleasant thing! However, I think of it as being more like moonstruck, which can mean dreamily romantic or bemused. I am wholeheartedly a sunshine, daytime, bright colors, bright light kind of girl. So think of sunstruck as being dreamily romantic in a more energetic way, rather than having sunstroke. 🙂