Joy

And a case for disco ball decor.

I spy…a whole bunch of VHS tapes. Think: dance recitals and competitions, school plays and concerts, and an incomprehensible amount of footage of my BFF and I just…talking to the camera. For hours at a time. Fashion shows, “talk shows,” dance shows, and just…talking. There’s one entire tape where we’re just reading YM, Teen People, and Seventeen out loud.

A few months ago, I saw one of my favorite people to follow, Caroline Moss (@geethanksjustboughtitpod), going on about disco balls.

She was adamant that we should all have disco balls in our homes.

I was sold. It took absolutely no convincing.

In the pursuit of making this home a happy, calming, cozy, peaceful place, and a place where I love everything in and about it, a disco ball — in addition to the hearts and flowers everywhere, the giant framed photos of Annie and Ellie, and the calming neutrals juxtaposed with Annie’s rainbow-hued artwork that is literally everywhere — made perfect sense.

It started with one small disco ball hanging from the ceiling fan in our “Dance Party Room.” (The dream vision for this mostly-empty room is to someday be a giant, very fun closet. I can picture it! Right now there are shoes lining the walls, all of our “fancy clothes” — anything sparkly — in the closet, and Annie’s dress-ups in the corner.)

Soon, there were disco balls lining the stairs, a disco heart hanging on the front door, and a disco planter in the kitchen. (Plus, during Christmas, disco Christmas trees and disco ball ornaments; in the summer, inflatable disco balls for the pool.)

(“Disco” is doing that thing to me right now where it doesn’t look or sound like a word anymore. “Disco.” Nope. It’s lost all meaning and comprehension. That happens to you, too, right?)

Every day now, there’s a magic hour in nearly every room in my house.

When the light hits just right, and the house sparkles.

“I can still make the whole place shimmer…”

I found myself finding a lot of joy this week. Without forcing it. Without looking for it. Just noticing it, pausing for it, appreciating it, noting it.

And that felt really good.

It was everywhere.

Seeing both my and Annie’s friends at school drop-off and pick-up. Hugging all of them. Adults hugging adults, kids hugging kids, adults hugging kids, kids hugging adults. Every possible combination. Every possible hug.

Watching a friend experience Schitt’s Creek for the first time.

The coldest, windiest night of ski racing — so windy there was a chairlift rescue at the mountain earlier in the day! — and just laughing about it. (Not the rescue! But the wind when we were there.) Can’t control the weather. Can only control how you act in it. It was positively frigid, and we had a blast.

Valentine’s Day flowers, cards, and candy.

Breakfast in bed with Annie.

Fresh-from-the-oven brownies with ice cream.

Making my first fire in my wood stove. Doing a decent job.

Being totally and completely snowed in for an entire weekend.

Matching jammies.

So, see the joy. It’s out there. And it feels good to notice it.

And buy the disco ball. You deserve it.

All of this being said: I’ve had to largely unplug lately, and really curate what and where I’m following things. This year has already been so intense and heavy and chaotic and scary and weird, and there’s so much I feel like I just cannot make sense of. So please don’t take my “I’m choosing to see the joy where I can” sentiment as anything other than that: finding happiness in my own life by any means necessary, while still being very much aware of the horror that exists in our world right now. The news, particularly in the past 48 hours, particularly pertaining to the Bibas family, particularly what’s happening in our national parks, particularly when it comes to LGBTQ+ rights, particularly every headline every hour of every day, it seems. So, I’m trying to stay as educated as I can while also protecting some of my own peace. It’s a lot. *Sending love if you need some love, and joy if you could use some of that, too.*

---

This week on the Ali on the Run Show:

• Girl Talk 2.0 with Molly Seidel & Anoush Arakelian: The antidote to Love on the Run Week! Three years later, the girls are back together! We’re catching up, we’re giggling, and we’re sharing some of your best (and worst) dating stories. So many runner rom-coms in the making!

• Sinclaire Johnson, Professional Middle-Distance Runner: A long-overdue catch-up with the Nike-sponsored athlete who has made some big changes in the past year. We talked about the transition from Bowerman Track Club to Union Athletics Club to being coached by her now-fiancé Craig Nowak, and talked about Sinclaire’s fourth-place finish in the women’s 1500m at last year’s Olympic Track & Field Trials. Sinclaire talks about the heartache of just missing the Olympic team, and about how she’s gotten through some tough times recently.

READING:

• Happy Place, by Emily Henry — finally! (OK full confession: I started it, tore through the first 20-something pages, and haven’t gone back to it. In my defense, it’s been a busy week!)

WATCHING (TOO MUCH, APPARENTLY…):

• Kinda Pregnant: The new Amy Schumer movie on Netflix. It was fine. Not even close to being comparable to Trainwreck, which I love. But it was light and silly and despite the plot being totally implausible IMO, it was an easy watch and I laughed just enough. (Also: love Brianne Howey!)

• Scamanda, the docu-series on ABC and Hulu. What. the. hell. is. THIS? I’d heard “Scamanda” referenced before, but I never dove in. (I am pretty sure I thought Scamanda was a pyramid-schemer or Anna Delvey-esque grifter. I was wrong.) I could write an entire separate newsletter with my thoughts on Amanda Riley and this wild web, but since I haven’t seen the final episode (which will be out by the time you’re reading this, but I won’t have watched it yet) I’m holding off. I have so many questions, and a good amount of anger. This is an infuriating watch — unless there’s a massive twist at the end and Amanda was not, in fact, lying about literally everything all along.

• Love is Blind Season 8. Are you kidding me with six pod episodes? That’s too many pod episodes. There should be three pod episodes max, and then get us to the awkward and slutty honeymoon phase. Give us the good stuff. I can’t tell any of the men apart. I’m bored by all of them. But I’ll power through.

• Summer House Season 9. What a time for programming right now! So many options! One episode per week is torture for someone who came to SH very late and then binged eight seasons in a row at a relatively embarrassing[ly fast] pace. I can’t say I’m a Lexi fan, I was delighted by Lindsay’s 45-minute toast to herself because it was so completely on brand for her, Paige is queen, and 40-something-year-old Kyle setting up his DJ equipment in the living room on night one was both cringey and wonderful. I can’t believe I watch this show. I love it.

• White Lotus Season 3, on Max. It’s back and I love it! (But, our beloved theme song?!) All of those hatable characters, and a murder, and scandal, and rich people doing crazy things. Sign me up!

• Apple Cider Vinegar. I couldn’t do this one. Fresh off my Scamanda dive, I thought ACV (on Netflix) would be the perfect follow-up. Instead, when they showed the woman being wheeled in for her double mastectomy, I promptly lost my mind. I am not sure if I’ve ever actually been ~triggered~ by something cancer-related. Sure, there are little things that might make me feel a certain way, but for the most part, I can separate sensationalized stuff from my own lived experience, and I’m at a point where the whole cancer thing is, in fact, starting to feel like a blip in my past and not an all-consuming, ever-present cloud. But something about this scene, which essentially showed everything that I didn’t see in the operating room once that anesthesia hit... Seeing her on the table, getting marked up for surgery… I don’t know what it was, but I actually felt like I was going to have a panic attack or an emotional meltdown — something uneasy, on the brink — during this scene. So I turned it off and won’t be revisiting. You might like it though!

• SNL 50: I didn’t love it. I loved seeing who was there! So star-studded! Didn’t love most of the sketches. Enjoyed it, entertained by it, didn’t love it. Didn’t finish it.

LISTENING TO:

• Scamanda, the podcast series. Because today I decided I was too impatient to wait for the final episode, so I started the podcast series to fill in some gaps.

LOVING:

• This week was freezing. We got so much snow in the past week and it was so cold and so windy, and now it’s less cold and less windy. Feels like a win!

• This coming week is school vacation week! I’ll be attempting to be mostly OOO so I can enjoy the extra time with Annie, especially because after this week, the travel starts. Spring marathon season is coming!

• A handful of people messaged me saying they tried to get tickets to the Richmond live show with Keira D’Amato, coming up on March 8 (International Women’s Day!), and I’m happy to inform you that we have more tickets available now! Get them while they’re there!

---

---

SPONSOR SHOUT OUTS

I am so eternally grateful for the wonderful brands and partners I get to work with on the Ali on the Run Show. You can always find the offers and discount codes in the show notes for each podcast episode (rate, review, and share while you’re there!). And now they’re here as well:

• UCAN: Click here to get a FREE UCAN Edge sample pack (you’ll just pay the cost of shipping), including the new Mocha + Caffeine gel and the Chocolate gel. (My dream!) Then, use code ALI for 20% off your next UCAN order.

• New Balance: Click here to shop New Balance's latest releases for the season.

• goodr: Click here and use code ALI for $5 off your next order.

• Lagoon: Click here to take Lagoon’s 2-minute sleep quiz to see which pillow is right for you. Use code ALI at checkout for $25 off your next Lagoon order.

• Vuori: Click here for 20% off your first Vuori purchase.

• The Eugene Marathon: Register for the Eugene Marathon (April 27, 2025) and save $10 with code ONTHERUN.

• St. Jude Rock ‘n’ Roll Nashville: Sign up today for the races happening April 26–27, 2025, and use code ONTHERUN for $10 off.

And so…

Take good care of yourselves. Take good care of each other. Be kind. And whatever you’re going through, keep going.

(You’ve got this. You’re doing great.)

Love,

Ali