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Posts Tagged "Dear Diary"
I didn’t succeed at my 200 day challenge. I just couldn’t complete the number of classes I would need to make up to do it. I took my son to New Mexico for spring break, I couldn’t find a yoga studio, I got asked to work in California, and I realized I was just not going to complete my 200 days of yoga challenge. It was a disappointment to realize I wasn’t going to make 200 yoga classes in 200 days. It was a challenge I liked. In the back of my head, I had hoped I could continue and could actually do 365 classes in 365 days. I wanted to know what a year of yoga would do for my body. How would I be different. I was fascinated by the idea that I would do yoga every day and I could see the impact it would have on my life. But I never scaled back my travel or other activities. I wanted it all. I realized I am more diverse than just yoga. I want a rich and full life and I want to travel. I am not willing to give up travel to do yoga. So here I am, trying to find a standard and doing mostly daily yoga. I have been trying to figure out my “new normal.” If I don’t do yoga every day, then how much yoga do I do? I also love the benefits of going almost every day. I like how daily yoga impacts my life. It is a practice and I like practicing yoga almost every day. I really struggled over this and it felt like a real journey for me to figure it out. In my life, I haven’t been good at regular exercise. I don’t wake up and think “exercise sounds good” because mostly it doesn’t. I would rather read a book on the couch. So I had some fear that if I didn’t do yoga every day, then I might just stop...
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I didn’t ever really get the Christmas spirit this year. I come from a long line of women who love Christmas. Every year, I get excited about the holidays. I am touched by the music, I love doing the decorations, I love the presents, I love entertaining. I usually love it all. This year, I never caught that holiday spirit. I tried. We had a big party, we decorated the house, we had presents, we spent time together as a family. But somehow, it felt like work this year and I kept waiting for the hallelujah chorus. Is something wrong with me? Is it because I am getting older? I have been trying to figure out what happened. I don’t really know what it was, except maybe I am tired–I have been doing my yoga challenge since October 15th. Because of an ice storm, our party was smaller than usual and we had too much leftover food–it really bugged me and I didn’t want to throw it away so we ate too much stuff I usually don’t eat. We lost power for 24 hours after the party because of the ice storm and I got really worried about our family. I don’t want to be a whiner, but I FEEL like a whiner. I am so incredibly blessed and I love my family so much and somehow it all just overwhelmed me this year. I long for simplicity and love and quiet. It is hard to find it in the midst of all these people I love. I think next year I want to change some things. I think after 11 years of having a giant Christmas party, I am ready to change it. I want it to be different. I hope next year Christmas will feel different. I want to feel the wonder of the season. My love of Christmas feels like a treasure I should love and cherish–protect in some way. As I wrote that, the tears came, so I figure I...
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I am a grown-up. Well, most of the time. But Facebook adds an element to my life sometimes that makes me feel like a gangling, unattractive 14 year old who wasn’t invited to the slumber party. It is a weird phenomenon to read about a bunch of my friends who got together and didn’t invite me. Now, I don’t intellectually think I need to be invited to everything. In fact, if I was invited, I might have even declined because we have a lot going on. And often on the weekends I am near socially phobic because I have talked to so many people that week in my professional life and I just want to chill. But when a bunch of “friends” post on Facebook about the great time they had together, and I wasn’t invited, it hurts my feelings sometimes. But this isn’t an article about my feelings. I’ll deal with my feeling on my own time. This is an article about this weird time we live in with social media and technology in general. Our parents didn’t have to deal with this! Their friends didn’t have Bridge parties and then post about it on Facebook. Talking about it would have been impolite. I can’t imagine one of my mom’s friends saying to her, “We had a party last night with about 20 people and we had a great time, but we just couldn’t invite you. But let me show you some pictures of us having fun. You are friends with all of us, so I am sure you would like to see them, wouldn’t you?” NO! Because it would be bad manners. But this is exactly what happens on Facebook all the time. I am not sure what our new etiquette around social media should be. Should we all just toughen up? I have a friend who has lots of friends and she is also troubled by this. When she invites a few people over, and they post on Facebook, her other...
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I met a woman on an airplane this morning. We were sitting next to each other on a very long flight from Buffalo to Phoenix. We said hello and talked about general travel thoughts when we got on board, and then we both napped. Toward the end of the flight we started talking. She was from the Ukraine and had been living in Toronto for 25 years. I asked about how it was for her being an immigrant to Canada. She told me Canada saved her life. She told me how much she loves Canada and about her house she sold, moving to Newmarket, Ontario and retiring. And she said that now she is a little bored. We talked about mothers and mothers-in-law and children. She told me about her first marriage and how she had a mother-in-law that was great but a husband who wasn’t so great and that he had since died. And she told me that she had remarried. She shared stories of life in the Ukraine. She told me about being there when Chernobyl happened. She told me about not being able to get information and having to talk to family in Canada to find out what was happening in her own country. She told me about not being able to get food in the Ukraine before she left. She said there just wasn’t any food on the shelves to buy. She said now there is food on the shelves but no one has money to it. She told me about her step-son who raises chickens and grows his own vegetables because he has time but no money to buy food. It gave me a glimpse of a swing back to an agrarian society and how it might happen. It was a new and interesting thought to me. I felt connection from sharing the intimate details of our lives and our hearts. She was kind and passionate about her family. I felt a little pang of disappointment as we...
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I don’t know about you but I feel an impending doom as we go back to school. I loved having my kids with me this summer. They are just so happy. I feel like we got into a groove when we were traveling and it was good for them. Since we got home, we have let them watch too much TV and be on their ipods way too much, but I want them to feel ready to do something interesting. We have been doing some good snuggling, too. We have been asking them how they are feeling and I am surprised how few words they have to talk about how they are feeling. Boys are so interesting that way. They will be in the same class this year which is different. They haven’t been in the same class since Junior Kindergarten. They have a myriad of after school activities, too. Also, Mel is teaching this fall. It is definitely going to be very busy. I look forward to the routine and I also feel the pressure of my life coming back. I have enjoyed taking a break this summer. I feel like we really did slow down and do life on our own terms. It was slower, it was more recreational. As we layer back the real life intensity, I feel like I am donning a cloak that doesn’t entirely fit. I am wearing it because I believe it is good for my family. They are faster paced than I am and although I can keep up most of the time, I know I get very fatigued from our fast-paced lifestyle. This summer the pace has been slower and one of my own...
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