Approximately six months ago, I got fired from my government job. Everyday since then has been a learning experience for me. I've had a moment to reflect on the past half-year, and I'd like to express the lessons I've learned since Monday, March 11th, when I stopped working for someone else and started working for myself:
- Being a writer is the hardest job I've ever loved, and sometimes, I find that I sort of hate writing. The reason why is because, over the past six months, I've discovered that I'm the slowest writer I know. Slow writing is the kiss of death for any writer who writes for bulk or provides content for a multitude of websites. Back in October of last year, I joined a writing website that provides content to a variety of websites (otherwise known as a Content Mill), but the pay there has been incredibly, insultingly low...unless you write really quickly and can crank out thousands of words every day. I, however, don't write quickly. See, before I write something, I have to educate myself about the subject at hand, and I have to be able to explain that in my own words without simply re-writing something someone else has already written. In order to write something with authority, I have to understand it. Deeply. Intimately. I didn't realize until I started writing full-time that educating myself thoroughly on a subject takes a huge amount of time, and that ultimately results in my making approximately five dollars per hour writing content for websites. I've tried to set timers and push myself to write faster, but six months in, I'm still as slow as ever. If not slower.
- My slow-ass writing prowess means that I've been forced to seek out clients who aren't looking for deadlines, but, instead, are looking for polished writing with a ton of knowledge behind it. These clients take a long time to find. Most people want things when they want things, and that usually means they wanted what they want yesterday at the latest. So I've had to spend time writing for clients who aren't so concerned about deadlines, but with expertise. Thankfully, I have managed to accumulate some steady clients who love me NOT for my speed, but for my knowledge and thoroughness. Again, this is hard to find as a writer, since our society calls for quick results, not so much knowledgeable and thorough results.
- The clients who like me for the quality of my writing over my speed as a writer pay A LOT more than the clients who are more concerned about speed over quality. This is my painful trade-off: More money, but less consistent work.
- I have to find things that I love to do for work, because I've essentially given up on the concept of A Retirement Fund or Pension through my employer. However, I deeply believe that if you do things you love for money, you truly never WORK a day in your life. And if you never feel like you're working a day in your life, you don't need your job to pay you to quit when you're too old to continue. I truly believe that this is the world we live in now: Find your bliss for money, or die trying. I also understand that this concept is not available to everyone. However, I'm willing to help inspire people to do what they love and stop being afraid to ask for compensation for it, whether that thing is art, music, yoga, writing, or anything else at which you excel. And I believe that artists and musicians and writers and yoga teachers and so on are so often too afraid to ask to be compensated for what they do well. Being an artist doesn't mean that you work for free: You're allowed to ask for money, just the way you would if you're a waiter, secretary, repair man, or any other occupation. It's time to start demanding money. Do it, or drown. The world is different now, and you have something special and unique to offer, stop selling yourself short by giving away your skills for free. Make a decision today that you will stop doing that. You are worth more, and someone will pay you for it. I promise. Send me a bill if you find I'm eventually wrong about this...but please make sure you at least try first.
- Finding the thing you love to do after you've spend decades doing things you hate to do is REALLY HARD. It takes discipline. It takes perseverance. It takes organization. It takes commitment. It takes focus. You don't get to rely on an hourly rate of pay, no matter how you choose spend that time. It also means you can kiss earned Sick Days or Vacation Days a loving Good-Bye. It means you work for your pay every second of every day, and if you get sick for a day, you have to make up for it the next. That means every penny you make relates to how hard you worked that week. I've discovered over the past six months that I don't know how to earn money efficiently. I've had to learn everything the hard way because I've had no choice. But I've also learned that I'm a much better, much more forgiving boss than any other boss I've ever had. Discovering that you're a good boss to yourself is no joke. Learning how to be your own boss is tough. Don't take it for granted even for a second. Because you will soon find that you are the hardest boss you've ever had, but you're also the most understanding.
Freelancing is hard, much harder than I expected. That's what I've learned over the past six months since I got fired from my job as an Executive Assistant with the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation. I've also learned that I have something to give based on my most intrinsic talents, and you do, too, and you and I both deserve to earn money doing what we love. I've learned that I shouldn't sell myself short of what I deserve, and you shouldn't, either. So let's make a pact that we won't belittle our talents, or work for free. If we do this together, I truly, deeply believe that you and I can change the whole world.
So, six months after my firing, life is harder. But also easier. I urge everyone I love to quit their shitty jobs, or get fired, because I believe the future of the economy is based on doing what you do THE BEST. So let's all give up on what you do the worse. I promise, doing what you hate doesn't serve anyone. Let's all do what we do best, and let's be better at it than anyone ever could be. This, THIS is what I think will save us all.
Tuesday, September 10, 2013
Friday, July 26, 2013
Oh, You Know, Not Much
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.
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.
Monday, May 6, 2013
Relevance.
I wrote a mammoth, TL;DR post about how I got fired back in March, but it doesn't seem relevant anymore. All that seems relevant now is that I'm the happiest I've been in many, many years, doing what I love. Doing what I'm good at, seemingly. Money seems less relevant, "stuff" seems less relevant. All that matters is that now, I finally have time. I can take my daughter to school and pick her up every afternoon. I can flirt with my fiancee at 11am on a Tuesday morning. I can work on projects ahead of time, and then spend my extra minutes planting flowers and vegetables in the sun, during the day. I can start working the minute I wake up so that I'm finished by 2pm in the afternoon. I can take a yoga class whenever I want. I can do my homework anytime I want. Days are so much longer now. Nights can last a lifetime now. THIS is how we should live. THIS is how I should've always lived.
My only regret is that it took me until nearly the age of 40 to realize that this is how life should work. But no matter; I'm here now. Won't you join me someday?
My only regret is that it took me until nearly the age of 40 to realize that this is how life should work. But no matter; I'm here now. Won't you join me someday?
Wednesday, January 23, 2013
Austerity and junk and stuff.
Disclaimer: I'm not an expert on yogic texts. And I will probably miss the mark a lot on terminology and what is meant. These are just my passing thoughts about stuff. Because I spend all day thinking. You know. 'Bout stuff.
According to Patajanli's Yoga Sutras, there are 8 Limbs that make up a yogic lifestyle. The second limb is known as Niyamas, or observances. Disciplines. Things to practice in order to stop being a such a jerk all the time.
The Niyama* that's been all up in my grill lately is called Tapas. And no, it's not the one that dictates that you go out and eat a lot of tiny appetizers. Tapas literally means "heat" in Sanskrit, which is connotative of burning off excesses. Which makes me think of the word "austerity". Did your eye just start twitching when you saw the word "austerity"? Mine did. Man, do I ever hate that word. It's on my list right after the phrase "tighten our belts" and "do more with less". I work for the NYS government, so phrases like that really get my g-string** in a jumble. Plus, my kid goes to a public school, and it's been my experience that the term "austerity" used before the word "budget" is never, ever a good thing.
But.
I'm not talking about that do-more-with-less bullshit that seems to be flung around with wild abandon not only in my office, but almost everyone's office these days. It's said to make employees feel like crap for trying to do their jobs, to place the blame on the workers when a bottom line goes into the red. By that logic, doing more less means that eventually, you will be doing everything with nothing. I'm not a fan of that kind of logic.
Sorry, I got a little off-track there with my prole-spiel. Anyway, what I get from Tapas in the Sutras is that you don't need lots of extra baggage. You know that saying about how the stuff you own will eventually own you***? That. THAT'S what I think Tapas means. It's not practical to live without certain things like reliable transportation or a computer if you drive to the office every day, especially if you have a family that looks to you for financial support. There's an implied hierarchy there: Yes, don't have lots of stuff, but if your kids are starving because you gave away your car and you can't get to work, GET A CAR DUMBASS. Feed kids first, then give away your stuff. Or something.
Here's my take-away bullet-point re: Tapas. I've recently given up some things. No need to go into gory details because, as I like to say, Noneya****. And I sweated a lot over giving up those things. I tend to pull my things around me when I'm backed into a corner, feel dread about my future, or if something has gone horribly wrong in my life. I don't even mean physical belongings. Honestly, I could give two shits about belongings. I've bought, thrown away, sold, or given away more possessions than I could ever account for. I'm talking about habits. Ways of thinking. Destructive behaviors and choices. Patterns that cause pain. The constant need to WANT, and the want to need. Letting go of them, embracing this kind of austerity has freed me in ways that I never thought possible. Yeah, I still cling to some really bad stuff, some really BIG bad stuff. It's hard to let go of the big stuff. So maybe just let go of, like, two small things. For example, decide to go one day without beating yourself up over something (I chose that one because that's actually a BIG bad thing for me, but maybe it's easy for you). Embrace austerity of the mind and soul. Lighten your load. Make a burn pile of your useless stuff. You don't need to drag all that crap around with you. It's just making you sleepy-tired. I promise you won't miss it.
I don't know. Maybe the whole thing I'm trying to say is that everyone's scrambling so hard to collect things. Not just possessions, but attitudes, ambitions, habits, whatever. And it's glorified. "Buy more stuff! Think about this! Try this! Take this pill! Replace this drug with another drug! Eat everything all the time! Love yourself! Hate yourself! Hate everyone around you! Now go back to hating yourself!" The world is a constant barrage of voices and images urging us to collect and hoard. What would life be like if giving up things were as glorified as holding onto things?
Ya heard?
*What is the singular form of Niyamas? Is it Niyama? Who's fluent in Sanskrit these days?
** AKA The Devil's Dental Floss
***Or, as Yakov Smirnoff would say, "In Soviet Russia, Stuff own YOU!"
****Noneya bidness.
According to Patajanli's Yoga Sutras, there are 8 Limbs that make up a yogic lifestyle. The second limb is known as Niyamas, or observances. Disciplines. Things to practice in order to stop being a such a jerk all the time.
The Niyama* that's been all up in my grill lately is called Tapas. And no, it's not the one that dictates that you go out and eat a lot of tiny appetizers. Tapas literally means "heat" in Sanskrit, which is connotative of burning off excesses. Which makes me think of the word "austerity". Did your eye just start twitching when you saw the word "austerity"? Mine did. Man, do I ever hate that word. It's on my list right after the phrase "tighten our belts" and "do more with less". I work for the NYS government, so phrases like that really get my g-string** in a jumble. Plus, my kid goes to a public school, and it's been my experience that the term "austerity" used before the word "budget" is never, ever a good thing.
But.
I'm not talking about that do-more-with-less bullshit that seems to be flung around with wild abandon not only in my office, but almost everyone's office these days. It's said to make employees feel like crap for trying to do their jobs, to place the blame on the workers when a bottom line goes into the red. By that logic, doing more less means that eventually, you will be doing everything with nothing. I'm not a fan of that kind of logic.
Sorry, I got a little off-track there with my prole-spiel. Anyway, what I get from Tapas in the Sutras is that you don't need lots of extra baggage. You know that saying about how the stuff you own will eventually own you***? That. THAT'S what I think Tapas means. It's not practical to live without certain things like reliable transportation or a computer if you drive to the office every day, especially if you have a family that looks to you for financial support. There's an implied hierarchy there: Yes, don't have lots of stuff, but if your kids are starving because you gave away your car and you can't get to work, GET A CAR DUMBASS. Feed kids first, then give away your stuff. Or something.
Here's my take-away bullet-point re: Tapas. I've recently given up some things. No need to go into gory details because, as I like to say, Noneya****. And I sweated a lot over giving up those things. I tend to pull my things around me when I'm backed into a corner, feel dread about my future, or if something has gone horribly wrong in my life. I don't even mean physical belongings. Honestly, I could give two shits about belongings. I've bought, thrown away, sold, or given away more possessions than I could ever account for. I'm talking about habits. Ways of thinking. Destructive behaviors and choices. Patterns that cause pain. The constant need to WANT, and the want to need. Letting go of them, embracing this kind of austerity has freed me in ways that I never thought possible. Yeah, I still cling to some really bad stuff, some really BIG bad stuff. It's hard to let go of the big stuff. So maybe just let go of, like, two small things. For example, decide to go one day without beating yourself up over something (I chose that one because that's actually a BIG bad thing for me, but maybe it's easy for you). Embrace austerity of the mind and soul. Lighten your load. Make a burn pile of your useless stuff. You don't need to drag all that crap around with you. It's just making you sleepy-tired. I promise you won't miss it.
I don't know. Maybe the whole thing I'm trying to say is that everyone's scrambling so hard to collect things. Not just possessions, but attitudes, ambitions, habits, whatever. And it's glorified. "Buy more stuff! Think about this! Try this! Take this pill! Replace this drug with another drug! Eat everything all the time! Love yourself! Hate yourself! Hate everyone around you! Now go back to hating yourself!" The world is a constant barrage of voices and images urging us to collect and hoard. What would life be like if giving up things were as glorified as holding onto things?
Ya heard?
*What is the singular form of Niyamas? Is it Niyama? Who's fluent in Sanskrit these days?
** AKA The Devil's Dental Floss
***Or, as Yakov Smirnoff would say, "In Soviet Russia, Stuff own YOU!"
****Noneya bidness.
Monday, January 21, 2013
Voluntary Public Embarrassment
The other night, I had a horrible dream. I dreamed that I had to teach an advanced yoga class, the kind that people come to because they like pain. There I was, up in front of a group of 20 women who looked less like yogis and more they just escaped from a tour of Cirque du Soleil that had recently passed through town. There I stood, all of them in their lithey fitness, and all of me in my..less than lithey fitness, and I was the one who had to lead them.
"Okay," I said as I clapped my hands together nervously. "Everybody know how to downward dog? Yeah? Okay let's do that one." It was awful. Flop sweat poured down my back. The class looked at me, shrugged, and did their downward dogs. While we all downward dogged, I suddenly realized that I had no clue what to do next. The very thought turned me ice cold in spite of the fact that I was projectile sweating. All the classes I'd been to, all the times I've done Sun Salutations, and here I was, bent over, head between my knees, pretty much kissing my own ass goodbye, no idea where to go from downward dog. We all stayed in that position for at least 10 full breaths before I silently tip-toed out of the room, ninja-like, while every one watched me leave.
I woke up covered in sweat. As the relief that I wasn't actually teaching an advanced yoga class to very thin women washed over me, I thanked my lucky stars that I would NEVER, EVER have to do anything like that EVER. Except I will, in 10 months, when I'm a yoga teacher.
------
It doesn't take Freudian prowess to interpret my stressful yoga teaching dream. Not long ago, I attended a fire yoga master class at the studio where I'm studying to be a teacher. It was...well, frankly, it was embarrassing. It was not my best showing. Thirty minutes into the 2 1/2 hour class and I wanted to throw myself out the window just so I could feel some air moving around my skin. The stuffiness of the room, my natural tendency to feel faint when my head goes down and up too many times, and an overwhelming sense of nausea mingled with dread all combined to make me think that taking the class was a terrible, dreadful mistake.
Long story short, I got through it. I crossed the finish line, even though I couldn't put any weight on my arms by the end of the class. I flopped into my car and flopped my head back onto the seat while my fiance drove me home., where I flopped onto more flat surfaces until I finally flopped into bed.
------
I don't know what compelled me to seek out yoga teacher training. Not that it came out of nowhere. Off and on for the past 8 years, I've adored practicing yoga. It's the only physical activity I've ever done that makes me feel like bowl of warm Jell-O bathed in sunshine and pooped on by unicorns afterward. I fell out with it for a few years while Life was Happening, but I returned to it after I quit smoking and got to the point where I could climb stairs without having to stop halfway to the top. It seemed like a good time to treat myself with some enjoyable movement.
At first, I used yoga videos on YouTube, not feeling ready to put myself in front of a group of well-trained yogis. Some of the videos I found were great, like the red-head who taught what she called "Fat Burning Yoga!!!!!!" in a space that was clearly a loft in the city, complete with sirens as the sound track. There was also a 90 minute video that I did a lot. I can't remember what it was called, but I think you can find it on Youtube by punching in "Total Ass Blowout Extreme Yoga TO THE MAX!" I couldn't sit down the day after the first time I used it. I tried every video over 40 minutes. EVERY. SINGLE. VIDEO. Even the weird Kundalini one with the married couple wearing one-piece body suits (I mean, I guess they were married. They both had the same last name, and it seems like it would've been....awkward if they were siblings). Even the "power yoga" one with the guy who looked like a pro-wrestler, wore sneakers, and had no discernible neck. Every day after work, I would slink up to the attic like it was my crack house, unroll my mat, find a new YouTube video, commence to sweating. That's when I remembered that years-old dream I once had of taking yoga teacher training, and how I wanted to help other people feel like warmed up Jell-O bathed in sunshine and unicorn feces.
Two weeks later, I was enrolled.
One year later, after a number of fits and starts, I went to my first training class.
------
My first weekend of yoga teacher training was exactly how I thought it would be, and yet, so completely weird. A month or so before our first training weekend, all of us cadets got an assignment list with a million zillion assignments on it. I started chipping away it over Christmas week, thinking I'd get way ahead of the game by starting so early. Hey, I'd probably even be able to go back and read the assignments twice or maybe even three times! Oh, how fresh and naive I was back then. I ended up breaking off a rather large chunk of the assignment list and then having to hide the books in another room for a week so I could freak out about whether this whole yoga teacher training thing was such a good idea. I mean, really! I'm not young anymore. I have...what? Three jobs now? And a 10 year old? What was I thinking? There's so much homework and reading and Sanskrit words and...and...and. After I talked myself off that ledge (remembering that I'd already paid for the training helped, too), I diligently hit the books all over again, just like I never did in high school.
But back to the training. We sat on the wood floor in the studio for three hours for lecture time, something my back protested loudly over for the duration. I almost cried tears of joy when we stood up to work on poses.
Okay, I have a confession to make before I go any further. I have a hard time wrapping my head around the spiritual practice of yoga. I'm a serious skeptic. I'm that obnoxious friend who always has to put the snopes.com link in the comments section of your that post you shared of that 5-year-old boy who gets a free kidney transplant if you "Like" his picture 97 squazillion times. I recognize and accept that it may end up proving to be rather short-sighted of me in the long run. That's cool. Mad props to the whole "more things in heaven and Earth that are dreamt of in your philosophy Horatio" and stuff, but I'm not there. I've been burned by snake oil salesmen in the past, and I'm kind of a hard-sell when it comes to the metaphysical, so I struggled a bit with the texts that focused on the Sutras and energy types and things like that. The human anatomy textbooks, on the other hand, were a joy to read. Lift up your pantleg and I'll point out your lateral and medial malleoli. But I will stumble over the gunas of Rajas and Tamas in Ayurvedic medicine. But I'm an open-minded skeptic, if there can be such a thing. In other words, I'm open to the prospect of changing my mind, but it's going to take a ton of convincing.
Although I prefer getting down to the physical nitty-gritty of the poses and what muscles are involved, all of that might change next week. Who knows? I am open to anything and everything at this point. It's all on the table.
------
So, I made it through the first weekend of training. My head didn't explode, I didn't spill coffee all over myself (intentionally avoiding bringing coffee with me helped a lot), my yoga pants didn't rip up the butt seam, and I didn't say anything terribly stupid. But it's only been one weekend. Only about 10 more to go. So many more opportunities to embarrass myself in front of a group of people, which is, apparently, what I love to do best.
"Okay," I said as I clapped my hands together nervously. "Everybody know how to downward dog? Yeah? Okay let's do that one." It was awful. Flop sweat poured down my back. The class looked at me, shrugged, and did their downward dogs. While we all downward dogged, I suddenly realized that I had no clue what to do next. The very thought turned me ice cold in spite of the fact that I was projectile sweating. All the classes I'd been to, all the times I've done Sun Salutations, and here I was, bent over, head between my knees, pretty much kissing my own ass goodbye, no idea where to go from downward dog. We all stayed in that position for at least 10 full breaths before I silently tip-toed out of the room, ninja-like, while every one watched me leave.
I woke up covered in sweat. As the relief that I wasn't actually teaching an advanced yoga class to very thin women washed over me, I thanked my lucky stars that I would NEVER, EVER have to do anything like that EVER. Except I will, in 10 months, when I'm a yoga teacher.
------
It doesn't take Freudian prowess to interpret my stressful yoga teaching dream. Not long ago, I attended a fire yoga master class at the studio where I'm studying to be a teacher. It was...well, frankly, it was embarrassing. It was not my best showing. Thirty minutes into the 2 1/2 hour class and I wanted to throw myself out the window just so I could feel some air moving around my skin. The stuffiness of the room, my natural tendency to feel faint when my head goes down and up too many times, and an overwhelming sense of nausea mingled with dread all combined to make me think that taking the class was a terrible, dreadful mistake.
Long story short, I got through it. I crossed the finish line, even though I couldn't put any weight on my arms by the end of the class. I flopped into my car and flopped my head back onto the seat while my fiance drove me home., where I flopped onto more flat surfaces until I finally flopped into bed.
------
I don't know what compelled me to seek out yoga teacher training. Not that it came out of nowhere. Off and on for the past 8 years, I've adored practicing yoga. It's the only physical activity I've ever done that makes me feel like bowl of warm Jell-O bathed in sunshine and pooped on by unicorns afterward. I fell out with it for a few years while Life was Happening, but I returned to it after I quit smoking and got to the point where I could climb stairs without having to stop halfway to the top. It seemed like a good time to treat myself with some enjoyable movement.
At first, I used yoga videos on YouTube, not feeling ready to put myself in front of a group of well-trained yogis. Some of the videos I found were great, like the red-head who taught what she called "Fat Burning Yoga!!!!!!" in a space that was clearly a loft in the city, complete with sirens as the sound track. There was also a 90 minute video that I did a lot. I can't remember what it was called, but I think you can find it on Youtube by punching in "Total Ass Blowout Extreme Yoga TO THE MAX!" I couldn't sit down the day after the first time I used it. I tried every video over 40 minutes. EVERY. SINGLE. VIDEO. Even the weird Kundalini one with the married couple wearing one-piece body suits (I mean, I guess they were married. They both had the same last name, and it seems like it would've been....awkward if they were siblings). Even the "power yoga" one with the guy who looked like a pro-wrestler, wore sneakers, and had no discernible neck. Every day after work, I would slink up to the attic like it was my crack house, unroll my mat, find a new YouTube video, commence to sweating. That's when I remembered that years-old dream I once had of taking yoga teacher training, and how I wanted to help other people feel like warmed up Jell-O bathed in sunshine and unicorn feces.
Two weeks later, I was enrolled.
One year later, after a number of fits and starts, I went to my first training class.
------
My first weekend of yoga teacher training was exactly how I thought it would be, and yet, so completely weird. A month or so before our first training weekend, all of us cadets got an assignment list with a million zillion assignments on it. I started chipping away it over Christmas week, thinking I'd get way ahead of the game by starting so early. Hey, I'd probably even be able to go back and read the assignments twice or maybe even three times! Oh, how fresh and naive I was back then. I ended up breaking off a rather large chunk of the assignment list and then having to hide the books in another room for a week so I could freak out about whether this whole yoga teacher training thing was such a good idea. I mean, really! I'm not young anymore. I have...what? Three jobs now? And a 10 year old? What was I thinking? There's so much homework and reading and Sanskrit words and...and...and. After I talked myself off that ledge (remembering that I'd already paid for the training helped, too), I diligently hit the books all over again, just like I never did in high school.
But back to the training. We sat on the wood floor in the studio for three hours for lecture time, something my back protested loudly over for the duration. I almost cried tears of joy when we stood up to work on poses.
Okay, I have a confession to make before I go any further. I have a hard time wrapping my head around the spiritual practice of yoga. I'm a serious skeptic. I'm that obnoxious friend who always has to put the snopes.com link in the comments section of your that post you shared of that 5-year-old boy who gets a free kidney transplant if you "Like" his picture 97 squazillion times. I recognize and accept that it may end up proving to be rather short-sighted of me in the long run. That's cool. Mad props to the whole "more things in heaven and Earth that are dreamt of in your philosophy Horatio" and stuff, but I'm not there. I've been burned by snake oil salesmen in the past, and I'm kind of a hard-sell when it comes to the metaphysical, so I struggled a bit with the texts that focused on the Sutras and energy types and things like that. The human anatomy textbooks, on the other hand, were a joy to read. Lift up your pantleg and I'll point out your lateral and medial malleoli. But I will stumble over the gunas of Rajas and Tamas in Ayurvedic medicine. But I'm an open-minded skeptic, if there can be such a thing. In other words, I'm open to the prospect of changing my mind, but it's going to take a ton of convincing.
Although I prefer getting down to the physical nitty-gritty of the poses and what muscles are involved, all of that might change next week. Who knows? I am open to anything and everything at this point. It's all on the table.
------
So, I made it through the first weekend of training. My head didn't explode, I didn't spill coffee all over myself (intentionally avoiding bringing coffee with me helped a lot), my yoga pants didn't rip up the butt seam, and I didn't say anything terribly stupid. But it's only been one weekend. Only about 10 more to go. So many more opportunities to embarrass myself in front of a group of people, which is, apparently, what I love to do best.
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