After 40 Days

Crow

"Courage man, the hurt cannot be much..."

I’m not sure exactly why this is the line that sticks in my mind over the past few days.  It’s not really appropriate at all considering that the line is from Romeo and Juliet and the ‘hurt’ is Mercutio’s fatal stab wound.  But courage has been on my mind lately.

Today is my last day of my 40 Days of Yoga.  I’ve loved it for the most part—there was one day where I did not want to be there.  I wasn’t just sort of annoyed—I actively wanted to leave.  I’m not sure if I wasn’t hydrated enough or very well rested.  I don’t know if I was just having an off day.   All I know is, I couldn’t force my legs into the deep squat of chair pose for the 42^nd time that class, and I struggling to hold wheel for the ten breaths that Churck wanted.

        In a lot of ways, my 40 days of yoga (and by the way, today will be my 33^rd class in 40 days) has been about things that didn’t really happen.  I didn’t go to the coaching sessions after the first two times.  I haven’t done the increasing time of meditation each day.  I haven’t lost a ton of weight—actually if my scale is to be believed I’ve gained two pounds in the past 40 days (I’m going to say it’s muscle).  I also haven’t had to think nearly as hard lately about making sure I’m drinking enough water—it’s become a pretty solid habit especially since I was already drinking a decent amount of water to begin with.  I haven’t become a totally solid yogi who can do ridiculous arm balances at the drop of a hat.                 

               I have also lost my perspective of what’s normal for a person’s body to be able to do.  I feel like a slacker because I can’t do a headstand or side crow, which are totally ridiculous expectations for about 99% of people in general in the world.  But I have this perception because more than half the people in a lot of my classes can do these things, that I should be doing them too.  So yoga, for me, might be about letting go of that idea of what “should be” and just being impressed with what is. 

                I’m going to miss belonging to this studio, but I’m also excited to not feel so chained to the classes.  It’s been one of the first things I’ve had to plan around when I’m trying to figure out what I’m doing in the evening, and there isn’t really a way to do it from home (at least not really as effectively) if I can’t or don’t want to head over to Dancing Mind.  I’m also sort of glad I didn’t lose a ton of weight.  If I had totally changed my body into a lean, mean, yoga machine I would probably be trying harder to make myself find this affordable.  So as it is, I’m walking away from Dancing Mind for the next little while.

                If there’s something I am disappointed about, it’s about that fact that I still can’t do crow.  I understand better how to, know what I was doing wrong before, but I still can’t do it.  And as Maggie, the hardest instructor I’ve had for any athletic class anywhere, ever, told me, it’s fear that holds me back.  And she’s right.  The moments I’ve been just about there are when I can feel that I might actually do a total face plant into the ground and that has made me come out of the pose early. It’s totally fear.

                The interesting thing about being in pretty warm yoga is that, even now, there’s a small element of fear—will I get too hot, will I be able to make it through this class, will I fall flat on my face—much more so than any other exercise program.  And not to sound too much like a cliché quote with a pretty background that you find on Pinterest—I sometimes wonder how much I would be able to do if I wasn’t afraid.

                Fear doesn’t rule my life—it doesn’t have nearly as much control as it did at other parts in my life—what if I don’t do well in this class, what if this person doesn’t like me, what if I let this person down—but there are still things I shy away from because I’m afraid.  Yoga has taught me something about what I can do—and also what I’m not doing, but maybe could.  If I tried crow, really tried, I would probably fall the first time or first few times.  But it wouldn’t hurt that much.  Certainly not as much as Mercutio’s wound.   

NaNoWriMo

"You better [start writing] now because you know how to write, and you have fingers, and you have this one life, and during this one life, you should put your words down, and make your voice heard, and then let others hear your voice. And the only way any of that’s going to happen is if you actually do it. People can’t read the thoughts in your head. They can only read the thoughts you put down, carefully and with great love, on the page.  –Dave Eggers

So I have another project that’s come up in the past two days.  I mean, I haven’t decided it in the last two days, I’ve started it in the last two days.  November is National Novel Writing Month, or NaNoWriMo for short.  I didn’t actually come up with that particularly strange nickname, but I have decided to participate in it. 

            What is NaNoWriMo you ask? It’s a decision and commitment--not financial, just personal—to write everyday for the month of November and to have that writing come to at least 50,000 words. It’s the writing of your novel (usually you first one I believe).  The one that needs to be written that you can’t seem to do and this is the thing that pushes you into actually doing it.  You don’t finish with a final draft, ready to send out to publishers book, you have a first draft that you can then do some things with it—revise it and then move on to getting your novel really finished enough to send off to publication. 

            So I’m doing it. 

            It isn’t the best timing considering my forty days of yoga doesn’t end until November 15^th, so having two things I’m committing to do pretty much everyday is going to be a stretch.  A pretty big stretch and maybe a sleepy one on some days.  (So I already apologize for the times I’m cranky, especially the beginning of this month.) But it’s also something I need to and that I’m excited about.  (On a side note, yoga is continuing to go really well.  I made it six days a week the first two weeks and have gotten there five days a week the past two.  So with two more to go, I’m aiming for six times a week once again. My arms are getting much stronger and maybe it’s only me that thinks my triceps are less flabby, but I’m feeling more tone overall.  The only strange part is that I’m starting to think that being in a hot yoga room for about ninety minutes almost everyday has lessened my tolerance for other, cooler temperatures.  Not that I can’t deal with the cold, just that I never used to get cold before and now I always feel cold.  Sort of weird.)

            So I’m pumped to write my novel.  Other than the part that I’m not writing a novel.  Not really.  I’m writing a memoir of sorts—the book that has been inside of me that needs to be written is not fictional.  I’m not writing about something that’s imitating life, I’m writing about a key part of my life.   I’m writing the story about the student who has been the most meaningful of my career, the student who taught me more about life and what it means to struggle and to have a wonderful life even with struggles.  It’s the story I’ve been meaning to write for a long time, the one that one my best writing mentors, Patrick, told me he hoped grad school would help me write.  Grad school has gotten me ready to write this story even though I didn’t write it for one of my classes.  So even though it should be a novel, I’m going to write a book-length, novelesque memoir. 

            So I started the book over that I’ve tried to start half a dozen times and this time I might actually be able to finish it.  I will actually finish it.  This month.   

            I’m not slightly terrified by those two sentences.  Not at all.