I’ve talked a lot about my love life on this blog.

I’ve written about my broken engagement.

I’ve written about how my relationships played into my struggle with depression.

I’ve joked about how much I hate dating. Seriously, I hate dating.

I’ve announced the start of two relationships… and the end of two relationships.

I’m pretty candid about it all.

I’ve also talked a lot about how strongly I believe in finding a relationship with and love for yourself before you can truly be happy with another person.

This is probably my biggest mantra, and the thing I believe in the most.

While I’m on this subject, let me just say – I think Valentine’s Day is pretty ridiculous. Even when I’ve been in relationships on the holiday, I’ve still never been a huge fan.

Like New Year’s Eve, it just gets built up too much and it’s hard to find a way to meet expectations.

In the past, when I found myself single on V-day, I would fit right into the cliche and feel sorry for myself.

In fact, last year I started online dating on Valentine’s weekend. I felt ready for a relationship and frustrated that I wasn’t finding it.

Online dating wasn’t really for me, but I did run across the recent ex through the dating site. We reconnected and started up a relationship.

Even though I downplayed it on the blog, I thought the relationship was going to be really special.

I thought it was fate.

We’d had feelings for each other long ago, but were both in committed relationships and never spoke of it.

Then, we reconnected six years later only to find out we lived within a mile of each other.

Neither of us wanted kids, and agreed that should we ever change our minds we wanted to adopt.

We were both afraid of committment and had similar emotional baggage.

He was my physical type and also extremely smart and funny.

However, it started off rocky and just got rockier. I dare say, he had even more issues than I do. He accused me of cheating constantly (I never came close, he was paranoid), had a huge guard up and had a mean streak.

His good qualities weren’t enough to make up for the bad. So I broke it off.

I was sad, but the break-up awakened something inside me.

I had truly thought that our meeting again was a sign of some sort, and then all of a sudden it was over.

I felt like I was missing the point. I needed to read between the lines.

After several days of crawling into my brain and overthinking my life (I do this often), I realized that maybe I didn’t meet him again to find my soul mate, but to remember certain things about myself.

One thing that struck me about the ex was that he was so unhappy that he’d never moved out of Oklahoma. He’s always wanted to live in Seattle, ever since he was a little boy but he never took the plunge.

Now he’s 32 with a successful career in law and, in his mind, unable to get out.

I didn’t want that to be me.

I’ve also always wanted to move away. To the East Coast. I’ve always wanted to see if I could do it. To find out what I’m really made of.

Thus, the D.C. idea was born.

And, in the process, the relationship I have with myself has grown even stronger.

I love how resilient I am.

I love how willing I am to do what’s hard to get what I want.

I love that even though  it would be nice to have a boyfriend, I am choosing what I really want over a relationship I know would not work out in the end. (He tried to rekindle the relationship, then gave me the ultimatum – him or D.C. Seriously, it happened.)

I love that God has a plan for me, and that I’m listening to it instead of just doing what is easy.

And Valentine’s Day seemed to be as good of a time as any to remind myself of those things.

The truth is, no matter who your Valentine is, you have one person to cherish and celebrate today – and that’s YOU.

Corny as it may be, it’s the gosh damn truth.

What’s one (or more) thing you freaking love about yourself? Come on, it’s the Hallmark Holiday of love – when else can you brag about yourself with reckless abandon?!

Hello all! I am feeling so refreshed this morning. I had a very laid-back and productive weekend and it helped immensely with all my stressed-out OCD stuff I was dealing with last week. I guess the break is over!

Saturday was quite busy. I woke up at seven to go to Body Pump and then rushed around to make it to work at the part-timer, where I worked almost seven hours.

On the way home, I had to drop a book off at the library. When I got out of my car there was a Justin Bieber look-a-like waiting to pounce on me.

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He started asking if I needed a Valentine, what I was doing for the night, could I give him a ride.

I was not in the mood to deal with 18-year-old (I hope!) advances, so I whipped back into my car… slamming the car door into my mouth…. busting my own lip open.

Yep, that happened. I am a klutz to the maximum.

That was clearly not the highlight of the weekend. It’s okay though, it more or less just looks like a giant zit at this point haha.

Sunday was absolutely gorgeous, which was lovely since Lisa and I needed to get our long run in.

First, I had a big weekend breakfast.

Scrambled eggs, toast with apricot preserves and a container of Very Berry Champions yogurt with half a banana.

I’m pretty much having one of those yogurts with every meal. I just have so many of them!

Then I went and had my taxes done, because I’m not smart enough to do them myself. It cost a pretty penny. Plus, I owe taxes (this always happens, I’ve never gotten a tax return in my life so I’m mostly used to it). I also had to pay my car insurance over the weekend. Yikes.

I was definitely feeling some stress after all of that, so the 7-mile run with Lisa was great! It was her longest run to date, so we took it pretty easy with walk breaks after each mile.

I don’t know what the deal is, but I have felt fabulous on my runs lately. My endurance is getting a lot better and I even feel like I can push myself to go faster. It’s a great feeling! And so fun to be with a friend as she accomplishes a PDR!

See my busted lip? Super hot right? I’m so not one of those people that looks even slightly presentable after a run. I’m cool with it though.

After that, I went to the bank and then went home to shower, grub and watch the Grammy’s. I think I’ll post about that later though, if I have time.

So, that was my weekend. I don’t usually do a full recap on them anymore, but I wanted an excuse to tell you all about how I maimed myself on Saturday.

For a few minutes I felt super lame, because I didn’t really do anything social all weekend – but the fact of the matter is I’m broke and supposed to be saving up money to move so I shouldn’t be going out anyways. There will be time for that in the future.

In the meantime, I’m going to enjoy my weekends of not spending money, sleeping eight hours per night and waking up hangover free. They’re quite enjoyable.

What’s the silliest way in which you’ve ever hurt yourself?

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• bad justin bieber pictures
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