Monthly Archives: August 2009

Thought Experiment

I know a lot of people who don’t like their jobs.  I know some that can’t stand their jobs.  I know a few who can’t even bear to get out of bed in the morning they hate their job so much.

You know what I wish?

I wish that every single person who is just putting in time, phoning it in, doing it for the paycheck, could take a month off.  During that month, they would not be allowed to stay home and veg., but would be transported to a deserted island where they would have shelter and food, but no TV or internet or electronics or human interaction.  They would have access to a good library.

During this month off their only goal would be to discover what they were put on this earth to do. They would have to decide what they wanted to do with their “one wild and precious life.”  Then, once back in the real world, they would be mandated to do it.

During that month away they would learn to be courageous and insistent. They would learn to speak their truth, to value their life.

Really, now.  Wouldn’t that change everything?  Everyone off on retreat for a month? Everyone who hates their job getting “re-set,” as it were?  Put back on the proper trajectory?

Unhappy businessmen could then be farmers or painters or auto detailers.  Unhappy teachers could be river guides or B&B owners or dog trainers.  Unhappy waiters could be camp counselors or actors or dentists.

The highest priority in the culture would not be how much money you made, but how aligned you were with your dharma, your inner calling, your soul.

Everything would change.

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Leverage This

I came back from vacation with this idea: I need to get fit. More fit.

This will involve keeping up my workouts with Tim, running the steps, doing what I call the “Killer Hiller”—a steep uphill climb behind Hemlock on the MU campus.

But I also realized that, in addition, I could leverage my ordinary, banal, chore-filled life to support my fitness.  This means not piling things on the steps to be taken up in one big trip, but taking things up the steps one by one, as they need to go up.

This means walking or biking to the studio.

This means looking for heavy things to lift around the house: laundry baskets, weeding buckets, garbage cans.

In short, using my non-working out life, to support my fitness goals.

That was the game plan.  I was psyched.

But the day after I got home, I came down with something.  A little fever, sinus congestion, and today, (yay), a cough.

It’s like the universe is saying: Leverage this, Kath!

So instead of looking for things to ramp up my activity level, I am looking to ramp down. I am seeking out the couch, the bed, the book, the blanket, the warm comfort of  a computer on my lap.

I know the universe is testing my commitment, throwing a roadblock in my way, trying to scare me off with this threshold guardian of sickness..

But I see it, and I’m calling it out.  I haven’t figured out how to leverage this sickness into physical fitness, but I am definitely leveraging it into some serious self-nurturing.

Reading

When I was in grad school I had to read The Life of Johnson in one week.  The unabridged version. (It’s about 6 inches thick.)

I set my alarm every day for 5 A.M and read until my eyes bled.

And that was just for one class. I had equally extensive readings in two others.

My whole life was reading.  Reading and writing papers.  Every moment of my existence I read.  And read.  And read.

Now, I don’t read as much.  I do “social media” instead.  I have this blog.  I’m on Facebook.  I Twitter.  Something had to give, and I let it be reading.

And that is tragic. It makes me weep.  And I feel ashamed.

But one of the resolutions I came back with this vacation is that I am going to start reading again, in a big way.  I am starting by telling you right here, you hear?  And I am going to ask you to hold me accountable, if that’s okay.

I will tell you what I’ve been reading and you can check out my Good Reads page (I’ll update it tomorrow, it’s getting late), and you can join it yourself if you feel so inclined.  That would be cool.

On this vacation I kinda re-lived my grad school days, except I read under a beach umbrella in a bikini rather than in a wool sweater in a cold rental house in CT.

This is how I structured my days at the beach:

I watched the sun rise,

Ate breakfast,

Set up my umbrella

and read until lunch.

After lunch I read until dinner.

After dinner I drank beer, (and sometimes margaritas, and sometimes champagne.)

The next day, I did the same thing.  And the next day, and the next day, until it was time to go home.

I read Seth Godin’s Small Is The New Big.

I read Roland Merullo’s Golfing With God

I read Victor Frankl’s Man’s Search for Meaning.

Today I started Richard Brodie’s Virus of the Mind.

I feel back on track.

reading

Oh, and for me, there can’t be reading without writing:

writing on the beach400

Mermaids

On Day 3, there were some very exhibitionist “babes” cavorting very loudly on the beach, making quite the spectacle of themselves, laughing, running, squealing, etc.

Whatever. (insert eye roll here).

But when the heat of the day was subsiding, and the lifeguards had packed up, and most people were dragging their sunburnt bodies back to their hotels for showers and dinner, a Muslim family arrived.

The Muslim mothers wore long coats and burkas, the girl children wore bathing suits with leggings under them, and burkas, too.  The burkas seemed to be huge pain in the ass for the teens, always unraveling in the sea breeze and preventing the free, unencumbered, enjoyment of the crashing surf, the waves, and all the excitement that is the definition of an ocean vacation.

The Muslim mothers chose to hang out on a wooden pier that extended into the ocean, finding this a good, safe place to watch the children and to enjoy the beach themselves.

At this point the bikini clad mermaids decided that they too wanted a part of the pier and spent a raucous half hour screeching and laughing, dancing around the Muslim family in their string bikinis.

Then, at one point, one of the mermaids decided that pictures were in order.  They began posing for each other pretty provocatively.  I was embarrassed for the Muslim family, frankly.  But, hey, it’s a free country.

But then the raucous babes asked the burka-wearing, long-coat sporting Muslim beach mother, to take their picture.  And it was here that I think a line was crossed.

The Muslim woman was very gracious and took more than a few pictures of these “mermaids.”  She didn’t seem to mind at all.

But me?  I wanted to spank those little bitches.

muslim woman takes pic of mermaids

What I Ate On Vacation

Please Bless me Father for I have sinned.  Here is

What I Ate On Vacation:

  • 5 shots of espresso every single day: 1 triple venti soy latte, followed by a 1 grande soy latte.
  • Eggs or cereal or some  bread-y, croissant-y something from Lingo’s Market.
  • Mango gelatti
  • Something called “Pirate’s Potion.” (purchased on the Boardwalk: a lot of sugary liquid over crushed ice.  It was orange in color, but not in flavor.)
  • Thatcher’s French fries (which I had to guard with my life from marauding seagulls—part of the fun.)
  • Coldstone ice cream (my first, and probably last taste of that.  Not a fan.)
  • Sushi (at a restaurant called “Stingray.”)  5 stars!
  • Lobster roll
  • And beer
  • And champagne
  • And margaritas
  • And martinis
  • And did I mention beer?

Mea Culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa.

Fall Down 7, Get Up 8

Last night I watched a little kid trying to skim board.  He must have wiped out a million times, no lie.  But every time he wiped out he just went out and wiped out again.

Some of these wipeouts were pretty spectacular, too, I must say.  A few times I thought he would come out limping and crying.

But he didn’t.  He just kept draggin’ his little body back to the shore, and prep for another run at it.

He was hanging with the big dogs, too—older boys who seemed to accept him into their pack of skim boarders.  They didn’t laugh at him or condescend in any way.  They seemed to take it as the norm that if you wanted to learn to skim board, you had to be willing to bite it.  A lot.

It reminded me of playing badminton with Jack Renner.  Last Fourth of July, Jack Renner, a second grader, and I “played” a game of badminton.  He couldn’t serve the birdie over the net to save his life.  He must have whiffed that thing a thousand times.  It was painful to watch.  But he did not give up.  He was okay with failing, but he was not okay with giving up.

I love that.  I bow down to that.

I am trying to get comfortable with failing.  It’s one of the things I hate to do.  I tend to be a “giver-upper,” and the older I get, the more slack I give myself, saying stuff about “old dogs and new tricks.”  But that’s BS, and everybody knows it.

There’s a Zen saying that goes, “Fall down seven times, get up eight.”

Yeah.  I’m working on it.

Here’s the Skim Board “pack” with their “pup” (fourth from the left):

skim board pack400

Here’s one attempt of, oh, about 500:

attempt400

Here’s a rather “tame” wipeout:

wipeout400

I loved this kid.  Could not stop watching him.  He’s a Guru.

Watching Bodies at the Beach

Today it’s 100 degrees at the beach and there are thousands of bodies parading around in front of me wearing next to nothing.  It’s a good day to watch bodies.

I read a stat recently that said that 60% of Americans are overweight.  From my beach chair vantage, I’d say that’s about right.

The people who stand out, the ones who are “remarkable” (see Seth Godin on this), are the ones who are NOT overweight.  And among this subset of the population, I’ve been making a further distinction between “thin” and “fit.”  (That’s because I’ve been working out with Tim, so I’m newly attuned to the concept of “fit.”)

Fit bodies are ones that are clearly being “used.”  They do work. They lift things and work their musculoskeletal systems and this makes their muscles clearly visible, clearly defined.

Here is a “thin” body:

skinny notfit

Here are some “fit” ones:

skinny fit3

See what I mean?

So from my vantage point on the beach I am now just looking for the fit ones because there are very few of those!  When they do walk by I have this irresistible urge to follow them and watch what they do, and how they live, and learn their habits, and what they eat, and how they manage to fit exercise into their day, because clearly they do fit it in.

There are very few fit bodies here today (including mine).

So, if you want to be remarkable, become fit.

What’s a Vacation?

I’m on vacation.  Here’s what my vacation looked like this morning:

sunrise sillouette

Here’s what it looked like a few hours later:

where's waldo

I’m on a crowded beach in Rehoboth, DE.  It’s 100 degrees. It’s “Where’s Waldo?” out here.  Family dysfunction is on full display

It’s probably the last place you’d expect to find me (your yoga teacher) on vacation.  (Okay, maybe Vegas would be the last place, but this is close, no?)

I should be at an ashram or retreat center somewhere, right?

But here’s the thing: I don’t want to do on vacation what I do all the time.  And the fact is, I live a pretty stress-free, serene, low-stim life, which is why this “Where’s Waldo?” vacation works for me.  If I lived in a crowded, rat-racy, traffic-jammy place and had a job where I was underappreciated and underpaid, then I’d get my ass to the ashram for a week.

But this time next week I will be lighting candles and chanting Namaste and leading Sun Salutations.  Which is why it’s kinda cool to have a sunburnt kid kick sand in my face, and the woman next to me talk non-stop on her cell phone while I read Small is the New Big by Seth Godin on my Kindle.