129A

One thing about me, for the first time EVER I absolutely love my job through and through. In my very early twenties I had once told the eldest of us children that it was my dream to own a hash bakery and sell people hash baked goods for a living to help people feel better; this was 2012 and I was 22. Now in 2025 at 35 years young I still find myself awestruck that I get to work in the cannabis industry for a living, educating the communities I visit on the benefits of cannabis as medicine as well as brief educations on terpenes (where the effects of cannabis come from, just in case anyone was unsure). If you would have told me back then that I would be educating people of all age groups on cannabis I would have definitely given you a double take and questioned the validity of such statement, but I wouldn’t have doubted it because, like all good dreams, you have to have faith.

I think one of my favorite aspects of my role as a brand ambassador is researching the products. Yes, smoking top tier rosin and getting an immaculate high after several rips so deep you feel it in your sternum is dope as fuck… but like the actual researching of the terpene effects on an individual level in addition to the entourage effect and how it impacts the mental and physiological states is absolutely fascinating! The company I work for has several new strains hitting the market and I have enjoyed taking notes on each strain I have tried.

My barely used iPad has now found new life in being my digital notebook on each strain, individualized notes from each experience the batch produced, terpene percentages per batch, and key word notes for the terpenes in each strain. So within this digital notebook/journal there is a section dedicated to each strain we have, plus additional sections broken down by consumption methods to track the strain I smoked and the batch it was produced from. When I allocate a specific time to research and note I am usually smoking a light to moderate amount, depending on the consumption method. For example, if I am taking a dab of hash rosin then it is usually a slightly bigger than rice grain amount. I do this because it requires one or two draws for me to get the taste profile and the amount consumed is what the industry would consider a medicinal amount (meaning it won’t get you ripped as fuck). I typically can feel the onset of the effects within 15 minutes then start documenting my experience from there. I spend roughly three hours documenting changes in my experience as well as switching up my activities to gauge how stimulated my mind and body are throughout the entirety of the high.

The strain I have been fixated on lately is Catalina Mixer; the complexity in the flavors in addition to the adaptability of the high keep me intrigued. Especially right now, as I engage with hour two of my note taking on it. What is pictured above occurred within the 30 minutes to a hour of studying the Catalina experience tonight; as you can see for as major as some of those anti-inflammatory/relaxant terpenes are in this sweet girl, the d-limonene provided the energy I needed to create my son a nutritious and delightful meal. I figured hour two could be activities, which is how we got here to this blog post. Documenting the experience and my thought process from multiple avenues felt like fun!

Nights like these always make for good stories too; my budtenders will ask my opinion and thoughts on our strains before trying for themselves (relatable), so it is always a joy to have a silly story to share in what I ended up doing after smoking. They are never surprised with the activities I come up with to entertain my high, so I’m sure they will at least be proud of the fact that I was productive with it this time.

Since I believe time isn’t linear and actually sits on top of itself, like a book, I like to think that 20something year old Amanda held that dream so close to her soul because she knows where we end up at over a decade later. I truly never thought I would leave the restaurant industry after I hit my tenth year and it was slowly killing my soul; to be fortunate enough to say that I truly love my job to the point that it does not feel like a job in the slightest is HUGE for me! I disliked every job I had and even hated a few, so this feels other worldly to the point that all I can be is grateful. I am finally learning things I actually want to learn and getting to teach people how to heal their bodies and minds in a more natural way. It’s all just so amazing and quite humbling.