Off The Reading Path

Because you should always have a side quest...

Putting my book content aside for a moment, I think it’s important to have balance in life and try new things to find some happiness and enjoy a side quest once in a while. Over the past few years I’ve had my fair share and they honestly have been what has helped me grow and feel more confident in myself than anything else. As I’ve gotten older and I see a lot of my friends settling down with their kids or with work or just life in general, so many of them get stuck in a routine. Don’t get me wrong, I love a good routine and structure, but I really believe everyone needs to find their own side quest to challenge themselves, and learn something new, even about yourself.

2023 was my year of swimming. Yes, I was a grown ass adult who didn’t know how to swim (bonus, I am a Navy veteran who served without knowing how to swim… I know…that’s a whole other story.) I could ‘survive’, and I use that term VERY loosely, but never felt comfortable and confident in the water. I hated that I couldn’t go into the water with everyone else in the pool, or at the beach or on vacation, at least not far and would have a very real fear of open water and drowning since I never properly learned. For years I had said I was going to learn and in 2023, I had a friend who was in a similar boat as me (pun intended) so we decided to learn together. Honestly, it just ended up being exposure therapy of going under water, swallowing and inhaling water and only half drowning while being supervised in water I could technically stand in and just trying to not instantly panic. Ironically, I surprised my instructor one day because I could always float and swim on my back like a pro, and that’s what most people usually struggle with. So consider me a southpaw swimmer. But at the end of the day, point is I took a bunch of lessons and now feel way more comfortable in the water. I even treaded water without a noodle on my last vacation and felt amazing, something I NEVER thought I would do.

After accomplishing that lifetime feat, I wanted to push myself more and see what else I could do. So in 2024 I decided to try something I also never thought I would do, long distance running. While I am athletic and always worked out in some form, I was never a long distance runner. I could sprint, but even a 5k felt like a marathon. My sister in law at the time was doing Iron man’s and other half/full marathons so I asked if I could tag along with some of her running sessions as she was picking up training again. I also decided to sign up for races so I had something to commit and train for. I signed up for three races, one 10 miler and two half marathons. One thing about me is that I’ve always HATED long distance running (and I still do), and really did it out of spite just to prove I could. I also enjoyed the time I got to spend with my sister in law. If it wasn’t for her I would have never accomplished this goal. I was able to run my first race (the 10 miler) faster than I thought I could, and then ran two half marathons in two weeks, (which I do NOT recommend.) I felt that same high knowing that I could accomplish another thing I never thought I could felt amazing. In 2025, I signed up for the 10 miler again but started getting really bad shin splints anytime I would run long distances. I was able to push through that race, but it wasn’t fun, extremely painful and I didn’t enjoy it as much as I did the previous year. I had signed up for just one half marathon but kept struggling so much with the shin splints and training for it so in the end I decided to not run it. I didn’t want to potentially injure myself forcing my body to run a race that it physically couldn't handle in that moment. It’s not like anyone was paying me to run, so the only thing I had to eat was my pride, which I happily did over my health. At this point in my life, that is progress, because me at my 20’s would’ve forced my body and ran it regardless of being hurt, so it was an accomplishment to not only run races I never thought I could and also learning when to stop and listen to my body and feel at peace knowing its okay to just stop whenever you want (thanks therapy!).

While I was training for the marathon, my running routes would take me by a mixed martial arts gym. Due to the dumpster fire chaos of the world that was 2025, one of the goals I was setting for 2026 was to take self defense classes. The idea of being able to defend myself and learn how to have some control in a scary situation, especially as a woman kept becoming more of a priority for me. With the world and current political climate being what it is, I didn’t like feeling defenseless and I wanted to feel like I had some semblance of control, small as it may be. The benefits of learning to defend and fight back goes beyond saving yourself in a situation. It is an act of rebellion to feel confident and safe in a world where people want you afraid. I know a lot of women will carry pepper spray or something on their keys, and that is definitely better than nothing. But at the end of the day, I don’t want to rely on a weapon, I want to BE the weapon. So after my early “retirement” from running, I walked into that MMA gym I ran by all the time and signed up for a six week trial.

I started off taking Krav Maga but they also offered other options, like jujitsu, boxing and muay thai. I watched some of the jujitsu class before krav maga would start and to say jujitsu looked terrifying was an UNDERSTATEMENT. For me mentally, there is a weird sense of safety with boxing and muay thai where you fight with distance between two people and you are standing up, so you could always move away if needed. Jujitsu is literally the opposite. You are mainly on the ground, getting as physically close as you can to someone all in their personal space, hanging on for dear life, and try and get them in some form of a position to have them tap into submission, all while trying to stop them from doing the same to you. Again, because sometimes I find it's more fun and rewarding to do life in hard mode, I decided to try it out. The first handful of classes were indeed SCARY AF and forced me to push past my comfort zone. My 5’4 130lbs newbie white belt self was “rolling” with 6ft 200+ lbs grown ass men, many who have been doing this for a LONG time. While I always felt most confident in myself doing physical things with my body like working out, lifting, playing sports etc, I was beyond intimidated. And as ridiculous as this sounds, even though they were bigger, stronger, and had way more experience, I was really afraid of hurting someone by doing the moves, even though that’s kinda the whole point. Especially being new and afraid of doing it wrong, I didn’t want to get close to hold on, I didn’t want to lift/throw someone, and felt scared whenever we had to practice moves where someone’s weight was on top of me or if I had to “choke” someone or try to bend a limb in a direction it shouldn’t be going in. It wasn’t until my instructor said to me that a big part of the sport is being able to mentally feel “comfortable” being in an uncomfortable position where someone “attacks” you and puts you in these scary situations, even in a safe and controlled environment. If you can learn that, that’s where it will really translate into real life situations, where you don’t panic and can feel more in control if something ever were to happen, you would know what to do. Much like swimming, this was pretty much exposure therapy in the beginning and getting used to just being uncomfortable and scared. But after a few weeks of consistently forcing myself to show up and do it and getting to know and trust the people at the gym, you start to get past that initial discomfort. You actually want to put yourself in scary positions so you can focus on the moves and practice how to get out of it, and feel so accomplished when I would nail a move. My favorite part of class is just open rolling where you partner up with someone and just “roll” and try to get each other to submit. Again, the first time was TERRIFYING and I had no idea what I was doing, could only defend myself and literally felt like I was just trying to survive the whole time. To be fair, it felt like that for a while, but after a few weeks and learning and practicing more moves, you slowly transition from just trying to survive, to trying to recreate a move you learned and how can I get them to submit first? Now, I can easily say that learning jujitsu and rolling is the most fun I’ve had and physically doing something since I was a kid playing sports. I take Krav Maga for self defense in a practical sense, but I do jujitsu for fun, and it brings me so much joy and happiness doing it. It’s like physical chess. It’s physically challenging (obviously) but. mentally challenging. It’s basically physical full body chess. Five minutes of rolling is more exhausting than running 10+ miles.

My point of all this is to say that while I love reading and it’s my comfort and safe space which brings me so much joy and happiness (and will always continue to do), sometimes doing the complete opposite can do the same thing. So I challenge you to try the hard thing once in a while, you might just surprise yourself.

Till next time :)