Category Archives: questions

A Whimsical Vacation

I woke up in my own bed this morning after a week at the beach, wondering: What is a vacation, really?

Is it breaking the habitual patterns, and living pattern-less for a while?

(I almost wrote: Living a more “natural” pattern.)

Maybe. Let me just explore it here for a bit.

I consider myself very lucky because I get to determine my life’s pattern to an extraordinary degree.

By that I mean that everything I do is something that I like to do, and choose to do. I don’t have distasteful things thrust on me as a result of the vicarious whim of some other being (like a boss or a superior) who may, (misguidedly) think that I ought to do something other than what I like or choose to do. But even the things I like and choose sometimes feel like they OWN me.

I love to teach yoga, for instance, and I have made a deep commitment to teaching yoga in the form of a lease agreement, a website, and ongoing classes.  It’s what I DO and I love it, but it shapes my day in a very particular way.  (I am thinking of this “shaping” the way a jello-mold shapes jello.)

I have made a yoga-shaped dent in this mold and into this dent I pour my time and energy.  There are other things that “dent my mold,” too, things I have made commitments to such as meditation, a writing practice, dog-ownership, house ownership, and a particular geographical location.

All these things shape my days.  For instance, I have to make sure I get to bed at a particular hour every night because I teach an early morning yoga class.  I have to walk my dog, because I have chosen to share my life with a pet.  I have a deep need to shape the floating contents of my brain once a day (at least) so I have a writing practice.  I need a certain period of quiet and introspection each day to insure balance and happiness.  I live in a particular geographical locale that demands adjustments from season to season: snow shoveling and leaf raking and plant watering–to name a few.  So this is the “mold” I have made.  I made it, but it also makes me.

For instance, today I will go to the studio and mop it, and clean mats, and vacuum, not because I necessarily want to do those things, but because I want to practice in a clean, dust-free space in the morning.

For most weeks and months of my year, I operate within this pattern. It makes me and I make it.  But when I go on vacation, I do not have this mold, this pattern.  I float free and fluid.

On vacation, I don’t have a business, or a dog, or students. I don’t have a lawn to mow or plants to water or even reliable food “staples” in the fridge with which to cobble together a dinner, or even a breakfast.  There is no mold, so I am free in a most peculiar and exciting and wondrous way.  “Wondrous” because I am constantly asking: I wonder what I will do today? The whole day is entirely up to me.  I can be completely whimsical.

I love the word “whimsy.”  It’s often used to condemn irresponsible, thoughtless behavior, and adults who are described as “whimsical” are often thought to be childish or wishy-washy, or un-count-on-able.

But that is precisely how I want to feel on vacation.  If I feel like reading all day?  I read all day. If I feel like taking a nap? I take a nap. If I feel like eating ice cream, drinking beer, going for a walk, riding a bike, taking a photograph, dancing to loud music, pounding a half-dozen crabs with a wooden mallet, taking a yoga class, sipping some Perrier, watching people walk the boardwalk, I do it.  There is no pre-set mold I have to conform to.  I have no commitments. I do what I feel like doing in the moment.  I am totally and unabashedly, whimsical.

I learn a lot about myself whenever I take a vacation. (And my vacations are not all of the purely whimsical variety.)

Last year I spent a vacation climbing mountains in Yosemite.  There was very little “whimsy” in that vacation.  There was a lot of planning, and thinking and strategizing.  There was a beginning, a middle, and an end to each hike, (as well as mile-markers), and these hikes required determination, and persistence and sometimes even “gutting-it-out” moments.  And that too, felt like breaking the mold, freeing myself from some pre-determined formula of living.  Each hike had a very definite shape (geographically as well as psychologically) that demanded a commitment.  But it still felt like a true vacation because it smashed to smithereens the usual jello-mold that shapes the majority of my days, weeks and months.

This morning I woke up in my own bed for the first time in a week.  “Yes.  Here is my life,” I thought.  ”The cat needs her flea meds today, there is a lot of laundry to do, I need to get to the studio and check on things.”

Today I am starting to pour myself back into my mold, but I can still feel that whimsy in my bones.  My skin is browner and warmer than it was a week ago The range of my eyes have still not adjusted back to the near distances, but are still set to the focal distance of a horizon line where the sea and sky meet.

At the beach, I got everywhere I wanted to go on a pink bicycle.  As I pedaled to yoga class, the juice bar, the beach, I found myself thinking, “I really LIKE who I am at the beach. I LIKE living whimsically.  I like this me who gets up before dawn, who sips coffee watching for the reluctant sun to peek its red head out of the sea, who allows herself to drown for days in a long novel, who dances with complete abandon to throbbing, primal beats in a loud crowded bar all night, then staggers home, wet and dizzy with happiness.

I returned home last night from this vacation wondering if there was any possible way I could keep even a little bit of this whimsy in me as my usual life resumes.

I am wondering if there some way I can protect a little part of me from completely jelling into duty and schedule and responsibility.  I am wondering how to keep some of my “jello” liquid and sloppy and drippy, and not have it harden into the mold of the calendar, the season, and the to-do list.

Body Modification

Last Saturday, which was during 4th of July weekend, G and I went up to Ithaca to have our navels pierced.

Yeah. I know.  It seems weird, and unprovoked, but what the hay. . We had been talking about it for awhile, and were feeling all 4th of July-y and badass, so we decided what better way to celebrate America’s birthday than to submit to voluntary pain.

And let me just say, for the record, we are not”body modification” people.  We don’t have, or want tattoos, though we can appreciate them on others.

For me, just the thought of a tongue piercing gives me the heebs, and I often find myself staring at people with eyebrow, lip, and other facial piercings and not even seeing THEM because I am so transfixed by their “body art.” What??  What did you just say??  Sorry, I was lost in thought wondering how much that must have hurt, and why you would even DO that to yourself.

And because I have to go through regular periodontal work involving lots of shots into the roof of my mouth, sadly, needles have totally lost their allure.

I think the reason we wanted our navels pierced though, is that we thought it would make us look hot as we sat under our beach umbrellas, reading our Kindles, on our upcoming beach vacation.

And also maybe because we felt compelled to do our part to keep up, at least symbolically, with the body modification culture.

I dunno.

But it any case, we figured it would be certainly be a lark, and, for me, make for good blog content, if nothing else.

I once accompanied my friend Zee to a place in Ithaca called the Modification Station when she wanted to have her ears re-pierced and I remembered it as  nice and clean and classy as these places go, so that was our destination.

But when we got there it was closed.   We had girded our loins, (or whatever gets girded for a navel piercing) and were all: Yeah! Let’s do this! Let’s get modified! and then…dark, “Sorry we are closed for the holiday weekend.”

Blah.

We hit up the Farmer’s Market and Macro Mamas for lunch and then decided to stop at the mall and cheer ourselves up with a pedicure.

The mall was dead, so we just sat right down, plopped our feet in hot water while a massage chair kneaded our backs, and submitted to “pampering.”

Pedicure feet

Except this doofus pedicure guy had his head turned 180 degrees and stared at a TV for the first 10 minutes as he acetoned off my old polish. At one point he was dabbing my toe and not even my nail and I had to stop him and say, “Excuse me, but that’s my TOE, not my NAIL you’re rubbing.”

And here is where I go into my mental rant about the need for Linchpins in every sector of society.  I want to give this kid Seth Godin’s, Linchpin, so he will know that THE GAME HAS CHANGED! I want to gently school this kid because he clearly doesn’t get it.

Eventually I start to talk to him, in an effort to wean his attention away from whatever nonsense on TV has him transfixed, and ask him questions about his life, engage him, bring his attention back to me, and my toes, and the job at hand, and off the goddamn TV.

I tell him that I am a yoga teacher, that I work in bare feet. I tell him that people look at my feet all day and if he does a good job, I will tell people where I got my toes done and maybe they will come here, too.

He nods.  But he doesn’t hear, or get ,what I am saying.  I am saying, “Kid, be charming.  You’re cute. If you were charming instead of hating and resenting your life because you are doing mani-pedis at the mall, ladies would be flocking to you, tipping you, recommending you.  You could maybe own this place someday, make it into an mini-empire and then sell it to do something else.  But all this not paying attention is going to chain you to this toe job FOREVER.

But I didn’t school him, of course.  He painted my toes, and even did this flower on my big toes and I tipped him and G and I left the mall, a little bit modifed.

Toe Art

But that kid? He went on to the next pair of feet, totally unchanged.

Doofus Pedicure Guy

You’re the One

So. I would like to start today’s post by noting that I feel awake and alert even though I am not fully rested.  Because even though I got to bed at a reasonable hour (9:15) I wound up reading until almost 10.  That meant that this morning’s 4:30 Zen Birds were not a welcome sound, and even the cat ,meowing and pawing me for breakfast did not wake me.  I just rolled over, turned off the birds (but left the light on) and let the sharp stab of, “Ohmygod, Have I overslept?? rocket me out of bed.

I was better after coffee, of course, and my class always jacks me up, and then when I got home I changed immediately into workout clothes because the other day I read in On Fitness magazine that slow endurance cardio just ain’t gonna cut it if you want to burn fat (which I do.) Turns out you MUST do intervals.

And not only intervals, Killer Intervals.

Intervals that leave you gasping.

On Fitness featured this 40-minute Treadmill Interval Workout that intrigued me.  So, before I sat down and let my tiredness overtake me, I decided to change into workout clothes, drink my juice, and head to the gym and give it a whirl.

I got 3 intervals (out of 12) into it when my engine sputtered, cut out, and died.

Really.  Not a chance.

I am still coughing because I was sucking air so deeply into my lungs so as not to blat, I think I found a new level of alveoli, and they’re still all jumpy and stimulated and going “Whoah!  What was that?  Was that oxygen?  Oxygen has never come WAY DOWN HERE before.  *cough, cough*

So even though I abandoned this killer interval workout from hell, I did persist in a more Disney version that I invented myself: going out at warp speed (8.5) to the edge of death, then ramping back to wimp speed (3.9) to rejoin the living (and some chic on Bravo with a shoe closet the size of my living room. You ever see the stuff on Bravo TV in the morning?  Wo.  Who knew? )

Did that for about 20 minutes, then hit up the rowing machine to regain feeling in my shoulders.

Left the gym soaked, and glowing, and feeling positively TRANSCENDENT.

Why don’t I do this everyday?

This is what people often say as they leave yoga class: Why the hell don’t I get myself on my mat more regularly?  What is wrong with me?

Yeah, seriously. What is wrong with us?  Why don’t we do the things we know will make us feel better/great/fantastic:  Eat right. Sleep more.  Exercise. Meditate. Stretch. Take time for lots of mini-vacations?   Why?

(ooh! ooh! I know! I know! Pick me!)

The answer?  We are obsessed with accumulating the zeros.  Yep.  The zeros.

Let me explain.  (I read this last night in Waysun Liao’s Tao: The Way of God and I’m going to paraphrase wildly here, so stay with.)

The author said to imagine you are worth $1,000,000.  Now, take away the 1.

What are you worth now?  Zip, right?  Yeah.

Here’s what happens. In our zeal to add meaning and purpose to our lives, we tend to ignore the needs of the 1, (the “I”) and focus all our time and energy on accumulating the zeros.  We feel (and are told outright by society and our parents and teachers, etc.) that the 1 is a “given.”  So we taken it for granted.  All that matters is how many zeros we can amass behind that 1: money, college degrees, promotions, cars, houses, trophies, successful business ventures, accomplishments of every stripe.

Somehow we have gotten the message that it is more important to keep busy stacking zeros than it is to nurture and protect the 1.  But if the 1 is gone, what do all the zeros add up to?

Exaaactly.

The author was talking about meditation in this context and his point was that people say they don’t have time to meditate, or take time to be idle, or go on little retreats, or to give themselves nurturing practices like yoga or a good workout, or time off for good behavior because they are so obsessed with cranking out the zeros.  And it’s totally ass-backwards.

But when you are on the brink of death (or just feel you are) like when you come down with the flu or something, and are FORCED to self-care, it’s THEN that you clearly “get it” about the unimportance of the zeros. The zeros don’t mean a thing if there’s no 1 to drag them around.

BUT, if you have a robustly centered and enlightened “ONE” in the front of your parade, you can start amassing those juicy zeros with impunity.

From now on this is how I will justify what I sometimes think of as a very self-indulgent lifestyle: meditating, writing, the doing and teaching of yoga and spending quiet time just staring at trees or sipping a smoothie on the deck.

Yeah. It’s not self-indulgent; it’s just taking care of the 1.

Strawberry Mango Smoothie with potted Lantana

 

 

Finding a Hot Track in the NYTimes

Spent the weekend finishing up the kitchen cabinets.  (They turned out beautiful, too.  Pictures tomorrow, promise!) And on Sunday rewarded myself with a luscious “Day of Sloth” with the Sunday NY Times.

I haven’t been getting the Times lately because I was finding it hard to finish one before the next Sunday rolled around and then there were 2 papers half read.  And for $6 a pop, well…

But then last week at the grocery store I picked up the latest issue of O (Oprah’s mag) because the cover caught me.  It said:  “What’s Your True Calling?” and that is a subject near and dear to my heart.  I have spent my whole life, it seems, asking myself that exact question.

Inside there was an article by Martha Beck called The Right Track in which she described a technique for tracking down your life’s work.  She said try to look for “hot tracks” in your life just like you’d do if you were tracking a wild animal.  A “hot track” is a time when you were “utterly, happily absorbed in an activity, no matter how odd.”

So I started to think about it (and man! it took me awhile and I’m still ruminating on it) but the first thing that came to mind was sitting like a pig in mud, up to my neck in all the sections of the Sunday NY Times, with all of the time in the world to read it, and do the crossword puzzle, too!

Now my job is to follow this “hot track” to my calling.

But I already know my calling, so all this is just a game, and a fun exercise. But there was a time, and not too long ago either, that this whole “Finding Your Calling” shtick was the major hemorrhoid of my life.

Now the philosophy I subscribe to is to stop asking yourself what you want to be when you grow up, or “What’s the meaning of life?” and instead just go out and live it!  Find your all your hot tracks and follow them till they turn cold.

With one small proviso: Do it consciously, with awareness and see if you can help somebody else along the way.   I believe if you live your life this way, you’ll be doing what you were put on this earth to do.

Today’s Power Questions

What am I happy about? All my new  yoga classes and my yoga tribe!  I love my yoga peeps!

Excited about? A hiking vacation in Yosemite planned for this June!

Proud of? I completed 21 days of the Clean program.  Woot!

Grateful for? Oh, so many things!  I am grateful to be able to afford good, clean food. I am grateful for my warm home and for its total lack of conflict and its consistent good cheer–always. I am grateful for the turn of the seasons and the noticeable return of the light.  I am grateful for my sweet friends and my lovely family.  Amen.

What am I enjoying most right now? The way my new way of eating is making me look and feel. I am still drinking green juice in the morning, eating a very light dinner and having my main meal at mid-day.  I have brought back a glass of wine on Friday and Saturday, and 1 cup of coffee in the morning. Oh, and a square of exquisite chocolate sometimes. :>

What am I committed to now? I am still committed to Holosync everyday (today is day 427 without a miss).  I am also committed to posting here 5 days a week (this is week 27).  And there will be a book by the end of this year!