This Run's For You

Yesterday, I was channeling both Martha Stewart and Guy Kawasaki at the same time. How cool is that?  I was the design maven known for creating something fabulous and useful out of nothing as well as the innovative entrepreneurial visionary and author of “Art of the Start” rolled into one for an invigorating session of dreaming, intentioning and goal setting.


But since my budget is a tad smaller than even the post-incarcerated Martha, I was more like the Giant Tiger version of her.  I took a roll of birthday wrapping paper, turned it around so the blank side was facing out towards me and taped the design side across 6 feet of my living room wall.  Then, with a coffee mug full of colourful markers, I brainstormed what 2012 could look like under the headings of “Life's Work”, “Heart” and “Body & Spirit”.  


There is still much work to be done in reducing the longer term goals into smaller, more manageable 'to do' lists but that will come.  


In the area of Body & Spirit, one goal was to train for a 5K race in May.  This run, known affectionately by my family as Race Weekend, has been an annual event that my original family and an assortment of friends, children, lovers and distant relatives have participated in for 8 years.  It started May 2003, the year that my father died and we have run every May since to raise money to support the hospital that treated him during his illness. 


The first year I took training very seriously.   It was my way of proactively grieving for an inevitable and painful ending that I saw coming.  Morbid?  Maybe.  Perhaps it was the fifth reading through the Tibetan Book of Living and Dying that convinced me to sit with the impending darkness and not look for a way past it.  


By January of 2003, I had signed up for a 5K race near my hometown, downloaded a beginner's 5K training schedule and stuck to it religiously using every commitment device I could find.  My intentions were mostly visual.  I was running towards something, not away from it.


My father was still living during my training and was determined that he was going to be there to watch me finish the race.   Imagining that scenario gave me the energy to run even after a long day at work.  In the bitter cold.  In the dark of evening or morning.  Or through the mind-lies that lashed out at at me to keep me from going on.  "You don't have the body of a runner."  "You're too old."  "This won't make a difference to anyone."


At this point in his illness, the cancer had entered his bones and there was significant deterioration and pain in his one hip.  He eventually admitted that he might have to be at the finish line in a wheelchair.   Even near the end, in his morphine-induced haze, he kept asking if we won the race.  Eventually I told him 'yes'.  We won.


My father died May 3.  Three weeks before the race.  Through the tears, the funeral preparations and the mind-numbing exhaustion of round-the-clock vigil at my father's bed for two weeks, the rest of my siblings, their children, friends and extended family all signed up to run the race with me.  Our first Race Weekend was born.


This memory flooded me, as I went out for a run this morning.  My first run since last May and part of my goal setting practice.  Training is less vigorous as the years pass and I realize now much more there is to Race Weekend than just running.  It's a legacy of facing obstacles with courage of a hero and the frailty of a human being.  Of flawed and fiercely real people putting one foot in front of the other and breathing through the “I can't go on” moments. 


My father was running beside me this morning.  Occasionally flicking at my hands to see if I was clenching them into fists.  Telling me to lower my shoulders.   Reminding me to relax.  To breathe.  He was telling me not to give up, even when I wanted to.  Then, when we realized we were closing in on the 4K point, we both smiled, lowered our arms for increased pumping action and really gave 'er to sprint the last block home.


My father seriously would've needed a few days to get used to the large piece of paper of my living room wall.  He was old-school that way.  But since our family owned a flower shop and a catering business for 20-some years (after his long career as a banker), he would've been totally okay with the Martha and Guy bit.  Then, after a week or two, I would hear him telling someone else why they should be visioning with wrapping paper on their living room wall it as if it was his idea.   


Hey, how can I miss you if you never go away? .... I knew that would make you smile.

Have Yourself a Matrix Little Christmas

I'm not sure when it started.  Or why.   


But, at some point along my Personal Beliefs Timeline, some very serious rants against the practice of mindlessly following long-held traditions began popping up like waving flags at a K'naan concert.  And these weren't just rants going off in the fogginess of my own mind.  Literal proclamations of judgment spewed forth from me, freely and unsolicited, in the presence of others with the precision of a courtroom gavel.


Despite my Degree in Biblical Studies and once being married to a minister (or perhaps because of those things), many of my rants were aimed at questionable religious traditions.  Funeral services that included a message of hell-fire and brimstone for the vulnerable, captive audience of mourners warranted an equally fiery rant for the whole car ride home...no matter how far that car trip home happened to be.


I rationalized that following a tradition without question, was due to an overactive need for consolation.  An adult version of a self-soothing pacifier.  I thought that, as truly high-functioning adults, we should be able to look into the eyes of darkness, feel the discomfort of it and not have to anesthetize ourselves to it with a soother of ritual habit.


Post religious degree and ex-partner, I have now created a very fulfilling life that is a far cry from my oft-evangelical, fundamentalist, tradition-filled roots and education.  I do yoga (gasp!), meditate, question most things, spell truth with a small 't' and believe that god is spelled k-i-n-d-n-e-s-s.  But being a little off-centre is never more evident than in this season that is filled with and built on tradition.  


Last night, I spent a wonderful evening with my sons and we laughed at how 'non-traditional' our family is.   Since the boys were to be on an airplane to visit their father early Christmas morning, we created a new (possibly for this year only) tradition and have our family time on Christmas Eve.   


Some things we did were similar to regular families, I guess, as we opened our gifts to each other, ate  delicious treats and caught up on each others lives.  But we veered significantly off-course when one son put a picture of his friend wearing her hijab on our our pile of gifts and claimed that we had a Muslim Christmas Tree.  Then we watched the Christmas episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer (as opposed to The Grinch or Die Hard) and engaged in a role-playing, drinking card game and this certainly must have put us in some sort of category of white-trash crazy.  


But, as I sat watching my boys playing the role-playing game, I smiled deeply from the inside out.  One was wearing a bow-tie and the other a camouflage Elmer Fudd hat.  They couldn't be more different if I had submitted a genetic wish list.  But there we were.  Three joyous oddnicks enjoying an even odder evening of celebration.  We laughed.  Till our faces and bellies hurt.  We kept putting off bedtime even though we were all aware of the early flight.


The next morning, as the boys packed, primped (well, the one in the bow-tie was the only one primping) and yawned themselves awake, ate warm cinnamon buns out of the oven, they talked about the trip before them.  I listened with interest as they confirmed with each other that one of them had the movie, The Matrix, downloaded on one of their laptops.  I asked why.  They said, “it's our tradition”.  


Apparently, the first post-divorce, Christmas airplane ride 6 years ago involved watching the movie together, side by side in their plane seats, so, out of a need for continuity, sameness, or just making sense out of a new way of life, my boys created a tradition for themselves.   For comfort.  For consolation.  For the time when they needed that.  


Could it be that all traditions aren't evil incarnations of thoughtless people who are stuck in their adolescent phase of belief?  Or can we create flexible traditions that console and nourish at the same time?  


Who knows?  All I know is that my life, my loves, my boys, my viewpoint are all basically non-traditional but also magnanimous enough to include the occasional tradition.   


“Fate, it seems, is not without a sense of irony”.  Matrix makes Christmas merrier.  Who knew?

Travelling Signs

Clear Signs To Me That I'm Totally Off My Path

• frequent dreams of losing my wallet or of being a passenger in a vehicle that's being driven carelessly by someone else
• deep breathing comes only in the form of deep sighs
• every driver in front of me is an uber-asshole
• in fact, everyone around me is suddenly cursed with a severe case of incompetence
• complaints live in a permanent speech bubble over my head
• not looking at myself in the full-length mirror after getting out of the shower
• in the company of others, smiling often

Clear Signs To Me That I'm Slightly Off My Path

• locking keys in the car while on a date I knew wouldn't lead to a positive relationship
• getting a speeding ticket while leaving a second date with the same guy...sigh...
• changing my outfit several times while getting ready for work
• misplacing my keys
• driving too aggressively
• noticing the faults of myself and others frequently
• hiding parts of my body while looking in the mirror after getting out of the shower
• in the company of others, smiling often (hmmm...pattern here?)

Clear Sign That I Am Solidly on My Path

• getting an email from my closest girlfriend that says...
  
  

   “Please join me on the first annual “No More Fuckin' Around Tour 2012”. Less thinking, more jumping into what we were put on this planet to do. Let's read the book Danette got us each for Christmas, bring the journal Julie got us last year and meet together before the clock strikes 2012 to set out our intentions, commit to breaking our patterns and supporting each other along the way. The inaugural quote for this tour is...

  
  

  "Trust me, it's paradise. This is where the hungry come to feed. For mine is a generation that circles the globe and searches for something we haven't tried before. So never refuse an invitation, never resist the unfamiliar, never fail to be polite and never outstay the welcome. Just keep your mind open and suck in the experience. And if it hurts, you know what? It's probably worth it."

Will you join me?"  

How fortunate am I?  Who could refuse an invitation like this?    

Eyes wide open on the path to live, breathe and to deeply suck all the juice from this experience of life, pain, pleasure and all.   At this moment, my path is what is right under my feet and it is time to accept the challenge, accept the support that is being offered and to accept that I am on the precipice of a life lived out loud.  No more excuses, no more fuckin' around.  

Let's get 'er done!

Oh, and when I looked in the mirror this morning after my shower, I loved what I saw!

Whole Hole

Right on the heels of my most recent Kerouac-inspired post where I go on about needing adequate alone time from my "mad" friends, comes this note to clearly demonstrate my contradictory nature.

Solitude has been in full abundance this weekend.  Other than a coffee date with a couple of fellow yogini's and the occasional cyber-type conversation, I have been on my own at home or alone in the company of unknown people in a public setting.

Even as introverted as I am or as tired as I get from too-frequent interaction with others, I did not go gently into this solitude-filled Saturday and Sunday.  It has not been a time of quiet reflection and ease.  Instead, it has felt more like a storm to be weathered.

The storm arrived like a deep hollowness right through my solar plexus.  Remember playing with Plasticine as a kid and you'd flatten a chunk of it and use a circular object to remove a circle from the center?  At times, I felt as if I could hear the crisp winter wind whistling through that hole that went right through me.  And breathing deeply, all the way down to the hole, animated the hollow feeling and brought to life with the tears of every unexpressed moment of abandonment I'd ever experienced.  I was all at once a frightened child that I would be crushed by the silence, the concrete aloneness and seeming lack of connection to anyone or anything.

How can it be that solitude can both comfort and terrify me so?

The trigger for this weekend's expression of sorrow is not a mystery.   On top of realizing that an unexpected, intimate relationship I had hoped would deepen instead needs to come to a noble end, this is the first holiday season that I have not had at least one of my son's living at home with me.   As I went through boxes of holiday decorations, I felt suddenly very exposed.  I wanted to get back into bed, have a drink, eat something, have sex with someone or do anything but feel what I was feeling.  The boxes of Christmas baubles from years gone by  stared up at me as if to say "Do you really want to put all this stuff up if you're the only one who's going to see it?  Really, what's the point?"  I answered those questions with more tears.

But, since tears are not fatal and are meant to be shed, I tried to free as many of them as I could.  Solitude isn't fatal either.   Along with all the salty, used-up tissues I threw out, I also discarded my need to have a single life that is Facebook-worthy.  No warm status updates about trimming trees and baking shortbread cookies.  Sometimes the line between being lonely and being alone gets a little blurred.  That is life that is too naked for mass consumption.

But fear not, it's not all tissue and tears here!  There is a well of gratitude here, too.  I got to flex my creative muscles in adding a few decorative touches to my home.  I get to spend Christmas morning with my boys who will then travel to visit their father.  Then I will enjoy a full day and night of festivities with my five siblings, my mother and grandmother and our families.   Finally, I can balance that activity with time on my own.

I don't think I want the gratitude to cover up the hole in my chest though.  They both have a message for me that is being held deeply in my body.  And if I listen closely and not be afraid to feel the hard feelings, maybe I can unwrap the gift of true presence this season.

Gotta Love the Mad Ones

...the only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones that never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn like fabulous yellow roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars...

This Kerouac quote reminds me of how truly odd I am. Or more specifically, my reaction to it is what seriously raises the needle on my oddness-meter.

When I read it, I instinctively take in a deep breath and feel as if the words ride the waves of my breath and fill my entire body. After savouring each word and how they create unique meaning as they stand shoulder-to-shoulder, I exhale them and then must read the quote again. And then again. And sometimes again. As many times as necessary for me to get a “word” fix from it.

But the weirdness begins when I think about why I am so infatuated with this combination of these particular words. Together they create a manic, magical swirl of energy, passion and personal (as opposed to political) plans for revolution and creative world domination.

I want these words to represent me. But they don't, not really. In fact, I so relish times of solitude, silence, and times when productivity is not a key piece of the equation that I have often wondered about my aptitude for maintaining relationships. How will someone ever understand how important my time alone is to me?

But I desire, even crave connections with people who live these words out loud. My closest and dearest girlfriend. A sister. A son.  A new friend.

These people ignite a passion that already exists within me. Next to them, I can be odd, uncommon and burn brightly, magically even with a touch of manic-ness about the whole thing. With them, I believe in the power of revolution.  I feel as if I am finally hanging out with the cool kids. And that I can dance as if no one is watching.  I somehow give them permission to give me permission to have fun for its own sake. 

Then, I hit a wall of over-stimulation. It's all a bit too much and I need to breathe in the commonness of solitude. Boredom calls to me, invites me to crawl into bed with him and spoon until I yawn, exhale and fall deeply asleep, safely within his embrace.

Once rested and re-charged, I awake, stretch, yawn and read this quote and again feel an overwhelming need to see my friends who never say a commonplace thing!   Mad for the mad ones, go figure.

How Not to Feel

If feelings are meant to be felt, why do I work so hard to avoid just feeling them?  What do I imagine will happen if I feel them fully?  Will they consume me?  Weaken me?  Define me?  Are there 'good' and 'bad' feelings and I only want to feel the 'good'?

Why do I repress my anger or fly into a fiery rage when both are methods of avoiding simply feeling angry?

Why do I fill my alone time with noise or distraction to avoid the feeling of loneliness?

Why do I rush to bring arousal to an ecstatic conclusion instead of allowing the feeling of desire to exist?

Why do I downplay my accomplishment and success to avoid feeling any sense of self-congratulation?

If I trust anything, it is the present moment, so why can't I give each feeling its due?  Without judgement of good or bad, can I notice anger, loneliness, desire and pleasure in a job well-done without having to avoid, rush to culmination, dismiss or rationalize my way out of it?

Now, in this moment, I feel gratitude.  And hoping that I can make the choice to notice other feelings as they come.  No attachment or aversion.  Only acceptance.    How chill would that be?

Sliver Me Splinters

Most mornings, once I've reluctantly pulled back my heavy comforter still warm with sleep and placed the soles of my feet on the woven mat beside my bed, I yawn and stretch my way over to my window to look outside to the world beyond my curtain. Pushing the curtain aside just a sliver, I look out into the dimness for signs of temperature, precipitation and an overall feel for the day even though it is still in its dawn-most form. This information-at-a-glance that I get helps me to choose a weather-appropriate outfit for the day and to see if I need to set aside a few extra moments to deal with undue amounts of precipitation and still get me to work on time.

Occasionally, despite this pre-emptive gathering of data, I am wrong. Yes, you heard it here first, I can possibly be wrong. Stepping outside my front door, I find that my eyes had in fact deceived me and all is not as it appears – thank you Bill Shakespeare – hence I am at once ill-prepared, ill-equipped to face my day as it really is.

This is not at all unlike other aspects of my life; my life's work, my dreams, my distractions or my current or future relationships. I see one splinter of each and I tend to project the rest. Whatever the small piece that I can see clearly from my second-floor vantage point, I quickly and instinctively make that sliver I see into the whole thing. Being as clever as I am, I can expand that minute part to become either a fantasy of over-the-rainbow proportions or weave it into a beastly bete noire. Little chance of ever being right about much with all that weaving going on, n'est pas?

To counter my tendency to misrepresent the slender sliver-splinters the universe shows me, I've considered noticing parts of the whole, just as they are. Whatever part is in front of me is what is. It doesn't need to mean more than it is. Nor does it need to mean less. The one small part is all I need to know in the moment. No happy-ending. No whole world annihilation.

A detail. A look. A word. A decision. A silence. A question or answer. No more, no less. It is what it is. There's a peace in that. No analyzing necessary. Acceptance over aversion. Deep, deep breath.  

When "No" Means "Yes"

I'm currently reading Gabor Mate's book, "When Your Body Says No"  

It explores the fascinating body-mind connection as it relates to illness and dis-ease.   Very provocative stuff.    Besides being sure that every subsequent eye twitch or unexplained  pain that occur when I'm reading is a yet-to-be-discovered tumour deep within me,  I am compelled by Mate's stories gathered tenderly from the many first-hand relationships he formed with terminally ill patients as their palliative care physician.

The basic premise of the book is that when you do not learn to say 'no', your body will do it for you.    Mate provides account after account of self-neglecting, over-achieving caregivers who refuse to say 'no' even when their body is balking and breaking down right in front of their eyes.   A striking example was Lou Gehrig, known as the "Iron Horse" who continued to play baseball, with a forced smile,  even as his ALS was making it agonizing to do so.

Guilty of decades of my own compulsive overwork, chronic over-achieving, self-neglecting care-giving of others and ignorance of my own body's signals, my decision to learn to say 'no' to many unhealthy patterns in my life is being affirmed in reading this book.    And saying 'no' to other distractions has been the only way that this book found its way off the bookshelf and into my hands.

The undeniable dotted line leading to the too-muchness of never saying 'no' seems to be drawn consistently back to an original woundedness; a deep core, heart-rendering wound.  One we all have.

Despite the focus of this book on illness and learning to say 'no', I've discovered something else, something less no-centred.  In learning to say 'no',  I have seen a desire to start saying a bold 'yes' to life.   Yes to meeting my own needs.   My deep belly breath need for regular solitude, self-care, self-expression through writing and plans for my life-work evolution, emotional intimacy, sexual companionship and erotic exploration.

Work always came first as if I didn't deserve any of above things until all the work was done.  But funny thing, the work was never done.   The reward for a job well done was never awarded to me so the compulsion to keep working kept the cycle going, onward and downward.

How was working myself to exhaustion to the neglect of these areas ever a good idea?

It wasn't.

But now, moment by moment, things are changing.    I'm saying yes to taking a break, a deep breath, listening to my body's wants and needs and knowing that I can say 'yes', if I so choose.  For me, not for what others think should be for me.  'No' has opened the door to 'Yes'. And I cannot wait to see what's on the other side of the door.

I drink green tea, I meditate, I burn candles and I still want to smack someone.

Despite what the title of this post might suggest, I'm not even angry today.  Not even a little bit.  In fact, I'm actually finding more to be grateful for all the time.  A couple of aspects of my job that had the points of their 4-inch heels digging into my last nerve have been resolving themselves organically, my newness to non-doing restlessness has been settling into a gentle hum of cool awareness and I've been seriously digging my morning practice routine.  


But when I read this, I couldn't help but identify with it.  It is so me!   I can be all zenned out from a killer practice followed by an oh-so-mellowness from a seven-minute shoulder-lowering savasana but then, the first person who sits for a millisecond too long at a green light in front of me on the way to work and I read them the road rage riot act from behind my steering wheel.   


The slight difference from pre-green-tea-meditation-candle-burning Danette to this one that sits in the light of the computer screen now, is that the stories I tell myself are getting shorter.   Building my capacity for attention has increased my ability to push pause on the rant button and just notice what is happening.  Instead of drafting a story that turns into a full-length movie to justify my anger, I can just notice what is happening.  That's it.  It's not rocket surgery!  Just notice.


In the face of irritation, petty annoyances or even genuine injustices, why the reactivity and  rage?  What's the point?  The benefit to me or anyone else?  No judgement of good or bad or right or wrong is required.  It is what it is.   The temporary surge of energy that comes from a good rant is just that, temporary, fleeting.  And yet it becomes a building block for more stories, more reactions, more judgments and less peace.


So I drink green tea, I  meditate, I burn candles and I still occasionally want to smack someone because I'm human.  But when I choose to simply notice the deep desire to smack and not judge it, then I arrive alive and a little less maniacal.  




  

It’s Been One Week

One week ago today was the first day of my life with only one job (technically only one source of income) so I thought it would be a good time for check in.

In the past seven days, I spent at least 45 hours at my day job, 4 of the past 7 days playing overnight nursemaid to a friend who is in post-surgery discomfort, received training for my CPR/ First Aid Certificate and chose a theme and designed all the decor for a major Open House evening happening in a few weeks at my school.  This involved selecting colour schemes, creating displays and maps, outlining and distributing duties, ordering props and backdrops and shopping for the best deals on decor items.

I didn’t dislike any of the work I was doing.  For the most part, I like my job, care deeply for and was honoured to help my post-op buddy, love learning new things (and getting certified) and always enjoy event planning because it gives me the chance to flex my floral designer muscles, the work I trained for and played at before stumbling into teaching.

But, in the end, the hours I used to spend preparing for and teaching yoga and intentionally removed to experience more non-doing were immediately consumed with other things.   Times just sitting and being were filled with an uncomfortable restlessness and a desire to self-medicate with mindless screen time.

Apparently non-doing in is not in my body’s vocabulary.  Why wouldn’t I find this challenging?

I don’t recall a time in my life that I wasn’t working.  As a child, doing daily chores around the house was as expected as doing your homework or bathing.  Even during summer holidays, there was a feeling of “getting caught” if someone walked into a room to find you just sitting.  Then, as soon as we were old enough, my siblings and I began delivering newspapers and continued until we were ripe enough to get a job as a clerk or waitress.  When my parents opened a retail flower shop, we all either worked there or at one of the eventual subsidiary companies to our small shop; landscaping or catering.  I recall working as a floral designer creating all the floral designs for a wedding until after midnight, showing up early the next day to decorate the church and the hall, then going home to shower just in time to be a cater-waiter at the very same event.  Exhaustion was never close to the level of tiredness that I felt after those marathon shifts.  

I don’t even have a sense of what my body would do in times of non-doing.  So far, it seems to be going into a systems crash.  When I sit, I need to be distracted or I fall asleep.  Hmmm.

But the news is not all bad.  This week, I’ve been going to bed earlier which makes getting up earlier even easier and gives me some wonderful pre-dawn time for my aerobic prostrations (think spiritual, meditation-based burpee), meditation and yoga practice.  This morning’s 6-minute headstand sent my energy level through the roof and increased my desire to kick this aversion to non-doing right in the ass!

The Odds are on the 7's

In the heart of downtown, with the warmth of a weekend sun streaming through the large windows of the spacious loft/ yoga studio, I was recently certified in First Aid/ CPR, along with a dozen or so other yogis and yoginis in our cooperative, bi-city yoga community.

The First-Aid Instructor was a graduate of Ryerson University in the techie side of Graphic Communication.   But having grown up in the world of life-guarding,  this type of work resonated with her when the post-university, corporate world failed to satisfy.

She's created a great business model of travelling to administer the training to groups at their own site.  This keeps her overhead low since she can keep her equipment at home and she builds the travel costs and vehicular maintenance into the registration. And having her company information on her car means she can write part of it off as advertising.

Not only that but her client base will never become extinct. More and more, basic First Aid training is expected for any service industry that deals directly with the a continuous stream of clients as in all larger retail chains, hotels, schools and the list can and does go on. Not only that, but the re-certification is required every two years. So, as long as she makes the learning experience just that, a memorable experience, then she has an imbedded, never-ending client base. And she did this. We laughed, we learned and we left feeling confident in our ability to make a small difference in the world.

Here's the kicker. That difference we could make is really, really small.  The success rate of applying standard CPR techniques even if they're expertly performed on an unresponsive person, is 7%. That's it. That's all. Only 7%. When you add the use of an AED (defibrillator) then the rate skyrockets to 90% but those devices are not readily available in our concrete jungles yet.

In what universe is 7% good enough for anything? School grades? Company growth? Probability for relationship success?  How many of us would take those odds?

Yet this instructor dedicates her life to ensuring that as many people as possible are prepared for an eventuality that may never occur. She teaches techniques that remove the emotion, the guesswork and the accompanying panic so that perhaps one day , each participant she certifies could possibly be a member of the 7% Club.

Somehow, especially because of the odds, it seems like monumentally important work. Counter-cultural success that combines business saavy with tunnel-vision focus on what truly matters.  Unremarkable hard work for such small return, in one sense, but a viable business that empowers others to connect and support in whatever small way they can.  

Of course, I had a zillion other ideas of ways to expand and manage her client base, include train the trainer sessions and go national. But that's another story.  For now, I'm happy to go against the odds today and feel empowered with my little 7%.

Myth Buster

The myths about work that I've been fed since my days of pablum and pureed peas are swirling in my head like a whirling dervish on crack. 

"Pay first, play later."  "Nothing worth having comes without some kind of fight" (thanks Bruce and BNL!).  "No pain, no gain".

I was surrounded by people who worked their "fingers to the bone" and kept their "nose to the grindstone" until they dropped.   Severe illness or death were the only two valid excuses for not working.   It seemed that productivity was next to godliness.

But where's the balance?  And is this the most effective way to be effective at work and living?

Love this little article by Tony Schwartz called "Four Destructive Myths Most Companies Still Live By" that gives me hope for the future of the students I teach.  Schwartz is the president and CEO of The Energy Project and the author of Be Excellent at Anything.

Read on.  Then sit a spell and let it sink in.

 http://blogs.hbr.org/schwartz/2011/11/four-destructive-myths-most-co.html

CA Meeting Begins Now

My name is Danette and I'm a Consumption-aholic.

Phew, feels good to finally say that out loud!  I admit that I constantly crave something to say, to look at, to touch, to taste, to hear, to smell, to think about, to organize, analyze and prioritize and I need this continuous stimulation until I reach release or fall asleep.  

With this addiction, I wonder how many steps is it gonna take for me to let go and let god?  Geez, I need a drink!

My Body Knows..and Apparently the Cops Do, Too

If the very phrase "today is the first day of the rest of your life" didn't want to make me seriously yak, I'd be able to use it for this very occasion.

My two-job life ends today.  I teach my last evening yoga class tonight and likely to a very small number due to the fact that it is Hallowe'en and some of my students will have plans involving costumes and a higher sugar content, I'm guessing.

My body has been sensing that I am intentionally trying to break the pattern of overwork and it is reacting accordingly.   My neck resembles a massive steel rod and if my shoulders were any closer to my ears, they'd look like they were hanging off my ears like a pair of boulder earrings.  My stomach, usually tight with the sensitivity of hypervigilance, is going above and beyond the call of duty to stay clenched 24/7, enough to significantly restrict deep breathing.

With my shoulders up over my ears, my vision  has also been clouded in a couple of other areas.  In the past two days, I have locked my keys in my car and got my first speeding ticket ever.  Except for the sliver of Scottish genes in me that was trying to calculate how much my daring brush with the law was going to cost me, the rest of me felt like a little excited, as if I was in a movie complete with the flashing lights in my rear view and the tall, dark and armed walking toward the car in my side view mirror.

When the cop asked if I knew how fast I was going, I looked him right in the eye and say "no".  I didn't have a clue.  Clearly driving under the influence of non-attention, I was somewhere else while my body was driving.  How's that for a life metaphor?

Wake up, Danette!  Your life is right here, right now.  And you're not going to believe the incredible things coming your way if you just keep your eyes wide open and resist the old pattern of overwhelming yourself to avoid being present.  And whether you like it or not, today IS the first day of the rest of your life.  Yak away!

Turn Left for Freedom

I had a liberating thought about the phrase "may I be free from preferences".

What if the key is not focusing on the word 'preferences' but instead on the the word 'free'?   There may be no harm in preferring right over left but I don't need to be manacled to all things right or come undone if left is my only option.  And what if the left is an invitation to explore the path less travelled?  

Clearly, focusing on my preferences makes life seem more manageable since I know my preferences like the back of my right hand.  But, who am I kidding?   My life is not controlled or controllable by me or anyone else.  Plan, prepare and produce but pretending it's all up to me is like being on a rather famous yellow brick road.  If I only had a brain!

I still have a huge list of planning, preparing and producing that is on my agenda for today but if it didn't all get done, the true identity of my authentic self would still be in tact.  I would live another day when I could choose to handcuff my preferences to me or just be grateful for their delicious presence while holding them lightly.

No Preferences

In my quest to be more aware of my entrenched and unhelpful life patterns, I've been sitting with the phrase "may I be free from preference" from The Four Immeasurables.

On a purely intellectual level, it makes sense to not hold too tightly to expectations or to become overly attached outcomes.   We can't control most outcomes anyway so less immediate reaction equals more acceptance and balance.  More acceptance equals less stress.

But preferences are a whole other ball of wax.  My preferences are what make me who I am, aren't they?  Why would I want to give those up?  Or not have any?

I prefer order over chaos, cats over dogs, high heels over flats, red wine over white, turning right over left, raking leaves over shovelling snow, dark chocolate over white, coffee over tea and knowing over not knowing.  Without those particularities, what makes me any different from anyone else?

I guess this leads to wondering why I need to be different?  What benefit do I get from being different?  Does it make me valuable, more useful, more anything than anyone else?   And if I had no preferences, what would that look like?

Perhaps it would mean seeing each moment, each situation just as it is.  Each moment would have its own essence, its own purpose and challenge even if it didn't fall in the category of one of my preferences.  There would also be no reason to react (or over-react) because everything would be, in a sense, acceptable.  

Hmmm.   Still not sure.  I like my preferences, they seem to have developed organically and they've become part of me, intuitively.  And, I guess, they've also become part of my patterns.   More sitting with this is necessary because I'm not ready yet to be free from them.

I'll consider it more as I head off to warm up my coffee.

It's a Small-ish World

It may not seem like it to you,  but after some 40-odd trips around the sun, my world is getting smaller and smaller all the time.   It's understandable that you hadn't noticed because you don't know anything about me yet.  And I wish I could say it was my debt or my body fat percentage that was getting smaller but no such luck.

And realistically, how much smaller can my little planet get?  

I live alone. (Well, alone with my old cat and a couple of  tenants who live downstairs).  I rent myself out to a small independent high school as a guidance counsellor and teacher.  I don't have cable for my television,  I don't read newspapers or magazines and I've just reduced my work world from two jobs to one.  I have a few close, warm-hearted friends and an extended family that gathers on cue for the socially acceptable family holiday meals. Within walking distance from my little self-made sanctuary, there are many simple pleasures that nourish me; second-hand book stores, coffee shops, my yoga studio, a farmer's market, a city park and community meeting place for outdoor musical festivals.  And I meditate almost daily to build my capacity for attention and stillness.

With the simplicity of my seemingly charmed, charmed life, why is that I still get overwhelmed?   Is it that I'm primarily an introvert and I rely on my daily extroverted outbursts to propel me through my day?   Or do I simply have a lower tolerance for the grinding of the daily grind?  And, if this is so, what else could I possibly take away to simplify my already small world?  What other distractions or stimulants could I remove?

For this past two years, I have been working full-time at the school while training for my yoga instructor's certification and then teaching yoga classes two nights a week. Occasionally at school, there are evening or weekend events I have been required to attend as well as the regular lesson planning, marking and reporting duties.  So when I added training, preparing for and teaching yoga two nights a week, my life became all about the work.

For awhile, it was all so exciting and energizing.  I felt alive, full of purpose and in complete command of my future.  Gradually, my days became more about productivity and less about people.   More about efficiency and less about relating.

The benefit of the ensuing exhaustion for me was clear.  It meant that I didn't have time to do anything but work and sleep.  There was no in-between world.  No time to build and risk intimacy in any relationships.  No time to listen to my body.   No time to admit fears.   No time to notice whether or not what I was doing was out of passion, compulsion or default.  No time to risk failure or success.  No time to grow in knowledge of myself and my unhelpful patterns of living.  No time to breath deeply from my belly.  No time to be present.

This blog is the first step to taking the risk of doing nothing.  Okay so yes, I'm writing and that is doing something but writing is the one thing I've been saying that I have not had time to do because of work.   This is as close to doing nothing as I get, for now.

One small step, one deep breath.

Saying "No" to Life

If the masculine, old nun with the multiple chins and the warbling vibrato from Sound of Music was here, she likely tell me that a closed door leads to an open window somewhere.  Over the crunching of the fallen autumn leaves, it's getting too damn cold out now to have any doors or windows open but what if I was the one who closed the door?  Intentionally.  And with the kick-ass intensity that bordered on slamming it shut.

I've discovered that I have the door-closing ability to say "No".  Ending unhealthy relationships.  Leaving second jobs.  Turning down offers to socialize, collaborate or take on extra responsibilities when it would be less-than-nourishing for me to do so.   Where did this new skill come from?

Oh yes, out of necessity.   Now I recall the utter exhaustion, the resentment and how my shoulders were constantly, rigidly crawling up toward my ears causing me to resemble a stone turtle, stubbornly not recognizing the reality of my overwhelming over-commitment to overworking.  All over that.

So I've said "No".  Now what?