I have this blog, and yet, the irony is, I'm almost always way too busy writing to actually spend time updating it. And there's so much going on, I'm not even sure I'd know where to begin even if I did have the time. So, as the minutes tick down on a deadline for yet another real estate project that awaits my attention, this seems like the perfect time to write a blog that's all about me me me.
The past few months have been a real struggle. There was a honeymoon period after I got fired from my job where I dove into writing work with the abandon of a child leaping into the creek on a hot summer's day. The work flooded in, seemingly because I was suddenly available for it. Nature loathes a vacuum, and I guess that counts for the nature of unemployment in some cases. I felt flush with new opportunities, reveling in my new "work whenever the spirit moves" schedule from my cozy desk at home, with Glub Glub, my gigantic goldfish, acting as my constant companion since his 30 gallon tank occupies the corner of my ad hoc office next to my daughter's bedroom. It was like a dream come true for about 3 months...and then the work stopped coming.
I was warned about this when I first embarked on my journey as full time freelancer. "Sometimes you're drowning because you have so much work," a friend explained, "and sometimes, you're eating catfood because you had a slow month. Or two. Or three." I took my friend's words with a grain of salt, not because I didn't believe them, but because I had no choice but to make freelancing work for me, so why dwell on the potential disasters? And then the disasters started rolling in, first with one of my best paying clients. I was doing two blog posts a week for them, which constituted a healthy percentage of my monthly income. They paid better than anyone else, and they loved my work. But in June, they suffered deep budget cuts, forcing my editor to fire her entire freelance staff, including me. "No worries," I naively thought. "I can make it up in other ways." I've always been able to do that. I'm no jerk who feels entitled to only the finest of employment; I'll go flip burgers and work the Fryolator if I have to in order to keep us all fed and housed. So I focused my efforts into another gig I have, which is writing web copy through a content mill. I could take as little or as much work as I wanted there, and if I desired, I could apply for bigger jobs that pay more and snag some clients who would send me lucrative orders "on the reg", as the kids like to say. I focused on updating my profile on that site and went crazy applying for job after job, and all I received for my efforts was the sound of crickets chirping incessantly in the background.
See, summers are slow for freelancers. A lot of companies take their vacations, leaving us poor schlubs crying into our keyboards, wondering if this was finally going to be the month where we came home from the grocery store to find an eviction notice nailed to the door. Work was scarce down at the old content mill, so my fiance picked up more studio work and a catering gig here and there to help get us through. I, too, took some random manual labor type stuff, odd jobs here and there, whatever I could find. It just wasn't enough, though, and while I continued to apply for jobs and short-term gigs day after day after day, eventually, I started to sink into a deep depression. Old bad habits began to rear their hideous heads as I came to the realization that, with the life insurance that I'd taken out when I worked for the state, I was worth more dead than alive. If I dropped right that very second, both my fiance and my daughter would gain to collect from the healthy policy that names them as beneficiaries of my (untimely) demise. It's the smartest, most grown-up thing I've ever done, taking out that life insurance policy, but it's a tough place to come to, the place where you discover that your family might, in fact, be much better off if you just went ahead and shuffled off this mortal coil.
I know, it's some dark shit.
Before long, our bank account was nearly empty with weeks remaining until I would see a single dime from the other lower-paying writing work that I'd managed to hold onto. Finally, when all hope seemed lost, my dear friend and neighbor got me a gig in the costume shop at Bard College, working wardrobe for one of the SummerScape operas for more money than I had ever made at any of my writing jobs. Needless to say, we were relieved, albeit trepidatiously, since it was very short-term and ultimately, I had no backup plan once the opera was over. Plus, I wouldn't be getting paid for quite a while, which meant more weeks of scraping by.
And when I say "scraping by", I mean that we lived (actually, continue to live, for I don't get paid from Bard until next week) on beans and eggs, occasionally managing to score a loaf of bread and pull from the garden to make sandwiches. Luckily, Michael and I are exceptional kitchen improvisers, a skill one develops when one is either 1) poor; or 2) vegetarian...or 3) both. But one can only improvise with stray condiments and nub ends of veggies for so long until one requires something, ANYTHING other than the three things we've been eating for the past month. During the midst of all this, my car exploded (not literally, except for the timing belt), leaving us with our other whip, a very precarious automobile with 230,000 miles on it, leaks power steering fluid like that's its sole purpose in life, and a front driver's side tire slowly bleeding out air, as our only means of transportation. Not a good situation, since I was about to start working at Bard located 30 minutes away from my apartment. Nothing to do but cross our fingers and hold on for the bumpy, uncertain ride.
And then, something wonderful happened: The jobs started coming back. ALL AT ONCE. Like a deluge from on high, I began getting emails and job offers from old clients and others had I completely forgotten about, clients at written off and chalked up to "one-offs". Of course, all this took place during my first week at Bard where I was putting in long, busy hours and completely unable to do anything else but just Work At Bard. I actually had to turn down work because I knew I'd be too far into the weeds if I took everything on, but I did put clients off, begging them to contact me after the Bard job was over, if they still had work available. Most agreed to this arrangement.
(By the way, while all of this was going on, I was trying to study and prepare for my yoga teacher training midterm and write a research paper at the same time.)
Anyway, things really got better when Michael, my fiance, was offered a full time teaching job at a local rock academy for kids. The end was finally in sight. The light was shining, and we going to effing walk into it, with or without Carole Ann. I made it through my midterm, I got my research paper finished on time, I'm still working at Bard and like it very much (such a nice temporary change from writing), and very soon, I'll be able to hit the grocery store and purchase mounds of fresh produce and high-quality organic stuff that costs more than we've been able to spend. Instead of washing our laundry once a week in the bathtub, stirring it with a giant rolling pin and then rinsing and squeezing everything out by hand before hanging it outside to dry, we're going to the laundromat and doing it ALL AT ONCE. We're going get the one cell phone we have turned back on, fix my car, maybe even get our trash removal service restored. Who knows? Sky's the limit.
Luxuries.
While I dealt with this issues, my yoga practice took a back seat. Hey, something had to. Work had to be my main focus in order to get caught up, and it just so happens that the work I have requires a big physical effort from me. It's the way it is right now. I may not be in the studio as much as I'd like, but yoga's never left me. I use it every single day, in everything I do. When life has overwhelmed me with its many twists and turns and unexpected disappointments, I go to that place in my head in which I do nothing but focus on the task at hand so intently, that eventually, I become the task at hand, and there is nothing else. It's Pratyhara, Dharana, Dhyana, and a semblance of Samadhi applied to real life bullshit. It's easy to use the studio as your place to practice everything you know about yoga, because it's safe there. It's an entirely different thing to take that out of the studio into an endlessly unsafe place known as The Rest of the World. But that's ultimately the goal of yoga: You take it with you no matter where you go.
It's true: I haven't been doing as many Warrior poses and down dogs as I'd prefer right now, but this has given me the opportunity to work on the other aspects of yoga that have nothing to do with the physical body. Controlling the mind, eradicating its endless fluctuations. Learning to focus, to stay clear headed. To look at the big picture and detach from expectations, to realize that this, too, shall pass. One might say that this is every bit as important as the physical practice of yoga known as Asana, but I attest that it's so much more important. Yeah. I said it. I went there.
That doesn't mean I'm aloofly sitting in my living room cross-legged on the floor (although I am currently sitting in my living room, cross-legged on the floor and typing this on my laptop, which is on the coffee table), doing nothing but breathing and chanting to myself. Oh hell no. I've freaked out and done some crazy, stupid shit over the past month or so. But there were times when I didn't. There were times when I just went to the quiet spot in my head, hunkered down, and tunnel-visioned myself into something else. Not every time, but sometimes. And the "sometimes" are the times that count the most.
