My Tent on The Beach

I just found myself engaging in “Facebook Debate” with strangers over whether or not a middle school principal should have suggested to parents that they remove their kids from Facebook and Myspace and had to forcible stop myself.  I was getting worked up…over the opinions of strangers…many of them apparently mentally impaired.

And this is when I remembered that I do have a choice whether or not to get into these things…thus I pulled the plug and ran to my blog to reflect on the things I can routinely cut out of my life and not suffer from their loss.

This has been an excellent week.  One of the more excellent ones I can remember.  But not extraordinary…it’s been a typical week.  Untypical, however, has been my approach to it.  As I more consciously think about and attempt to seek that which makes me happy, I’ve realized that I’ve also thoughtfully chosen to leave a few things out and it’s made all the difference.  Allow me to explain.

1. Facebook. Much like the principal, I’ve cut back on the ol’ F’book and my life is qualitatively better.  Facebook, I’ve decided, disrupts the space/time continuum.  Because it immediately brings an abnormal number of people into my present, I get superficially involved in too much…too much gossip, too many partial stories, too much irrelevant news, too many irrelevant people.  Why do I care or get upset that Tiffany Vogt (who I absolutely do not know) is annoyed about something?  Yet Facebook allows me to enter into that.  It’s overload.  Is it ironic that I’ll post a link to this blog on Facebook? Yeah, probably.  But I’m not dwelling on the link…that’s the key.

2. Reality TV. I know, I feel like a traitor.  But I was watching Real Housewives of Whatever yesterday and it was so catty and wrong.  We somehow find it interesting when people are 1) really selfish and 2) display it on tv.  Enough.  Bethenny Frankl, I’m done with you.

3. Late Nights. I’ve been falling asleep in front of the tv for the past 2 weeks.  It’s become a joy as I’m watching West Wing (possibly the greatest scripted television show ever) and I’m drifting off at, like, 9:30.  I used to LOVE the 1am hour…and I still do…but it wrecks havoc on everything.  I’m learning to love the 11pm hour (it’s got an extra 1.  How could that be bad?)

4. Gym Time. About 6 weeks ago, I was lamenting my inability to get to the gym.  Since I’ve seen the class side of yoga I’ve been able to admit and embrace an eternal personal truth.  I. HATE. THE. GYM.  I’ve always hated the gym.  It’s always been an obligation. A drudge. Usually a horror.  No more “working out.”  If I can’t find something physical that’s also fun, I’m not looking hard enough.  See ya treadmill.  We’re done.

5. Grudges. Beginning last Thursday (if you need more specifics, I can provide a time and location) I let go of actively despising someone.  Since then, I’ve slept easier.  Grudges just take too much time and energy because they’re passive confrontation.  “I’m mad at you, but I’m not gonna tell you.”  Either confront or let it go.  I let it go. Much better.

6. Pessimism. Hope springs eternal.  I’m not sure exactly what that means but it seems to work here.  Somehow, over time, I’ve come to feel like hope and faith are actually trite and for the naive.  Sadly, though, that also killed any chance for wonder and awe in my life.  I love wonder and awe–it’s the root of why we find fireworks fascinating.  So, maybe the glass is half full.  Maybe it’s not.  But I’ll err on the side of “it is.”

7. Vino. I know, I know.  I love a glass of “somethin’ strong” just as much as the next guy…but it makes me feel like crap.  This really functions as a result of other things (like sleeping better and exercising…I know…who would’ve guessed…blah blah blah) but I’m not missing it and I’m not seeking it out.  If it trips across my path, though, “Well, hello Sauvignon…it’s been a while…sit down…let’s chat.”  The greek ideal of moderation seems to earn its apparent staying power.

8. Acquaintances. People have the power to really bog me down.  I’ve been spring cleaning the ol’ friend book recently.  Either you’re in it to win it or not.  I’m tired of people who don’t return on my investment.  So, only people ready to hang for the long run need apply.  This is primarily a process of letting go of my own expectations for friendships that have just simply run their course.  If you’re wondering whether this is you, it’s probably not.

9. Caffeine. I’ve been drinking almost strictly decaf for months.  Suits me perfectly fine.

10. Inertia. Bodies in motion stay in motion.  Physics…I hate it but it doesn’t mean it’s not true.  Pressing forward is a good thing.  It renews everything.  Keeps you thinking.  I don’t advocate motion for motion’s sake.  But getting stuck in an insurmountable rut is just paralyzing.  Gotta make progress, even if it’s getting to that next disk of the West Wing. There’s a certain brilliance even to that.

These have been the key to this week for me.  And I can do anything for about a week.  But the beauty has been that I haven’t really missed any of these.  Which means next week could look just as good.

Here’s hoping.

I did yoga again this morning. [This is crazy...even I feel like it's crazy...but it's a good crazy...crazy like a fox...so I'm goin' with it.] But I wasn’t glowing and filled with anticipation.  No, I was groggy and filled with muscle soreness.  And I have a new zit on my chin. [I hate that.] As it turns out, when you’ve fully evolved into a middle-functioning couch potato, the ol’ muscles and bones need time to get roused out of their own stupor.  I’ve done the equivalent of electric-shocking them back into life and…they’re buzzing just a bit.  At least the class was at 7 and not 6:30 because, I would argue, there is an enormous qualitative chasm between the 6 o’clock hour and the 7 o’clock hour.  7 just seems so much more doable.

This morning’s was a venture into Forrest yoga.  [Much like everything, there are different schools of yoga.  From the little scrap of info I found, Forrest is an American-developed school of yoga (gasp) that integrates breath, strength, integrity, and something else I don't remember.  That realistically translates into "Hey hold that pose a long time...now breathe real loud...now keep holding...now keep holding...now keep holding...I jest here but it was actually great.] Another new person met, another type of yoga experienced, and I walked out feeling like pronouncing to the world, “I am becoming a new person.” (ala Tom Hanks in Castaway when he’s made fire for the first time and turns to the ocean and proclaims “Looook. at what I havvvve. Cre-ate-tedddddddd.”

Except here’s the thing. No I’m not.  As I made my way over to Metropolis for a little delicious coffee, I just kept thinking to myself, “You are not becoming something new…you’re not manufacturing something that won’t last.  You’re settling into.  You’re settling into who you want to be. No You’re settling back into who you are.”  Even though I thought it, I still think it’s true.

One of my fears in calling anything a “new beginning” (or even scarier…a new person) is that it  implies leaving something behind.  A “new beginning” is a marker we put on an event or a calendar date to signify that we’re consciously moving from here to there.  But those “divots” in time between here and there…I’ve never found them to be real.  I’ve always moved in a continuum [by the way, did you know there are three words in the English language that have a double-u in them...this is one...]; while settings may have clearer boundaries (you get a new job, you start or end a relationship, you go to college), personally, me–myself–Katie–has been a constant, enduring development.   We all have.  Why be so ready to trade away all of that work just for a clean and shiny “restart”?

This is an easy but erosive habit I’ve fallen into.  When things get hard or dim or hazy, hook up the jumper cables and force a restart.  Try to fabricate some energy.  Go ahead, get obsessive about it.  I’ve been shopping to “make-over” everything I’ve got at the personal equivalent of Walmart…where you can get everything you could possible need, brand new and squeaky clean, for cheap.  Instead where I should have been spending more time is in the vintage shops, leafing through books yellowed and dog-eared and sitting in dusty antique chairs.  I should have been celebrating that which endures the test of time.

This isn’t a regret.  And it’s not a restart.  I think it’s a return…or the spirit of return.  It’s a shift from seeking comfort in the new and “unspoiled” to seeking comfort in that which has come to be in the process of getting to here…with all of its dents and scratches.  And it’s an acknowledgement that this return is part of a cycle of return.  This isn’t the last time I’ll have this conversation with myself (or here on this blog…it’ll probably require a tag all of its own)…but it’s a new return.

And here’s to many more.

I woke up this morning at 5:45 to do yoga.  I know, “Who is this girl and where’s Katie?” right?  But last night as I was listening to the inner child (or perhaps scheming on ways to not stab my eyes out with pencils at the thought of writing and revising all day long), I wondered if changing things up a bit might not give me new eyes to see this day of wretched PhD work as a journey. This seemed my only hope.  Also, it helps that the yoga studio I’ve found (and quickly am coming to LOVE as though it’s a child) has an online reservation site that makes me feel like a kid clicking away in the online website candystore.  Hitting that button that says so enthusiastically, “Sign Up NOW!” was euphoric…hitting the button next to 6:30am seemed extra dangerous.  And with a $50 unlimited monthly pass, I stopped clicking at just 2, but it was a close call…I could’ve gone nutso on that online registration site.

But 6:30 rolls around fast when it’s already 11pm…so off to bed I went, setting the alarm for 5:45 (what!?!) and hoping for the best.

This morning arrives, I was surprisingly nonplussed about getting out of bed, got myself together, and slipped out of my apartment thinking, “This’ll be good…I’ll just fold myself in among the other people and wake up gently and without much notice from anyone else there.”  The class I was headed to was a “donation” class for community members of all levels of non-flexibility…you give what you can and are given the freedom not to feel guilty about your level of poverty.  I could outline the details that unfolded in the next ten minutes but I’ll skip to the heart of the story:

I was the only one there. With the instructor. It was like a private lesson.

Commence yoga panic now.

One of the reasons I’ve never done classes before (I’ve been practicing yoga at home with dvds and books for, like, almost 15 years) has been my utter fear at being watched doing yoga.  This is a very un-yoga-like fear as this discipline is all about feeling and sensing.  There should never be a sense of competition or pushing or judging yourself against others.  I really don’t have a problem doing this.  I’m not compelled to watch others and engage in a contest to see who can put the crown of their head to the ground while both heels are still touching the ground or who can lick their shins in a forward bend.  However. I’ve never really trusted that others were truly willing or capable of not doing that also.  My fear is one of being judged.

I think I have fairly good reason.  I’m as limber as a tree trunk.  Imagine a sturdy tree in your yard.  Think about the trunk.  Now think about the trunk trying to bend itself in half while staying rooted to the ground.  Imagine the the sounds that might be associated with this kind of effort: bark would be splintering off, there might be cracking and splintering noises, shards of things might be flung akimbo.  Welcome to my yoga practice.  Now put the tiniest wisp of a woman imaginable in front of me, watching me, and welcome to my yoga panic.

Inside I was mortified…outside I was trying to be serene.  And I just had to let it go.  Could I walk through the entire hour and describe the massive sweating (which I think is due to the degree of toxicity just in my own body…I’m about 95% tension right now), the trembling limbs, the insanely modified practice (I used literally every prop in the joint and sometimes more than one).  Yes, I could.  And it would be funny. Very funny.

But I think the lesson was actually that none of it mattered.  None of my limitations were actually limitations…we still did the practice, she adjusted here and there, but at 7:30 it was complete.  And it was good. And the world continues on.

It’s so interesting how much time I’ve spent actively sustaining my fear.  In the end, I was literally the only person that actually cared.  Oh the years I could have saved worrying if I had already known this…

…but I wouldn’t be horrified if, tomorrow, a couple more people showed up.

I read Eat, Pray, Love about two years ago…before it was on Oprah’s bookclub, thank you very much.  And I instantly loved it.  I don’t know why except to say there was something resonant in it.  It spoke to me. (That sounds overly earthy and granola-like but it’s true…especially the India section…to be clear she was praying at that point). Maybe it’s because I was in a place similar to hers although with vastly different details.  Possibly I admired her ability to continue moving forward despite her emotional brokenness.  Whatever it was, it stuck with me.  I read that book on a constant cycle; the night I finish the last page I’ll move my bookmark inside the front cover and position it to begin again tomorrow.  It’s like a security blanket only with pages you turn full of words.

Since she wrote it (and gained probably unnecessary and unwarranted mass attention), the author (Elizabeth something) has also garnered critiques…and rightly so.  Even I, despite my dogged, visceral love for the story and her insight (and I really like her writing style which is very similar to my own) have a problem with the platform raising that occurred as millions of middle-American housewives discovered the power of yoga, dreamed of Bali (and Felipe…who we know now is actually Juan), and checked India-bound Expedia prices to book “spiritual vacations” to ashrams.  This story, her story, could only happen to her and as it did.  Visit an ashram and, yes, you’ll probably have a spiritual experience…walk around Rome and, yes, you’ll find your fair share of gelato.  Go to Bali (wherever that is) and, yes, you’ll discover an Argentinian man old enough to be your father who will passionately love you…wait.  Maybe the last part isn’t as easy to generalize.

Anyway, my belabored point is that this book is a diary of a specific journey she took…but it reads (or wants to be read) as the way an “ordinary gal” found enlightenment.  Sorry Elizabeth whatsyourface…there’s nothing ordinary here.  It was, in fact, an extraordinary journey…and you should be commended…but not followed.

My very first and still most primary reaction is that she found enlightenment of sorts…but she found it on the run.  What happens when we can’t run?  When we have ties to our places and our people who root us to a certain life, sometimes a little too securely?  How do you find an inner peace when ambulance sirens wail past your window every 20 minutes?  Can you cleanse and be cleansed when, following yoga, you can’t help but eat a danish instead of pea shoots and tree bark?

I think, resoundingly, the answer is yes.  But I haven’t gotten many satisfying answers as to how.  So I think that’s what I’m going to try.  I’m searching for some urban enlightenment…and not the kind you strive for in the yoga classes at Bally’s with 75 other people.  How do you become centered in the place that you’re in so that, when your rigorous “journey” winds down, you don’t reinsert yourself into your “former life” but you integrate it into where you are right now?

I don’t live in Italy (and more importantly, I’m not Italian…tourists in Italy are different than Italians).  I don’t aspire to study in an Ashram in India. I’m intimidated even thinking about Bali.  I live in Chicago…and I’m gonna be here for awhile…so what can I find without moving beyond.  I’m not even gonna say I’ll do it for a year or two years…this journey isn’t some kind of experiment (thanks again, Elizabeth whoeveryouare).  I think the only point worth noting is the starting point.

Begin.

I have such an interesting relationship with the word “intuitive.”

I think it’s kinda mysterious and here’s why: I was thinking about the Meyers-Briggs personality inventory the other day.  Intuitive is one of the categories a person can end up with in describing how they “know” the world.  Opposite of sensate (which I think is similar to “clues gathering” or highly observational but in a sensate way), intuitive is more a “feeling” that something is happening or things are the way they are.  It is true that I don’t have to observe something to know that a change is coming or that someone’s feeling particular way.  I sense it.  I’m fairly blown away that everybody does not know the world in this way.  I like that I can’t explain how I know things…I just do.

But there’s a downside to this way of knowing the world.  It can be torturous sometimes.  Because very often I can know things are going on despite people trying to play it cool.  Often weeks in advance of an announcement I just have a sense that something’s up…the last great example I have is that one of my committee members called me to her office to tell me she’s leaving the university.  I knew she was leaving the university and, more interestingly, I knew the minute she called that this meeting–which she told me was about something else–was, in fact, to address this issue.  There was no process in moving from not knowing to knowing.  One day I just knew.

What I hate about it is that this intuitivity (my word I just made up) which I lovingly call “my gut” (as do most people) is very rarely wrong. Thus, when my gut speaks, I really am forced to listen…and accept.  Which is particularly hard when my gut is sending me a message I’m not wanting to hear.  This creates so much anxiety; in the end, it is just a gut reaction and my gut has been known to be wrong at times (afterall, I’m not a psychic).  But it’s rare…and it gets rarer with age.

And I’ll tell ya…my gut and I are just not seeing eye to eye at the moment.  I wish my gut would just get it together.

“Everything you’re seeing now is happening…now.”
“what happened to then?”
“We passed it.”
“When?”
“just now.“
“When is then now?”
“Soon.”

Spaceballs: The Movie…what an endless treasure trove of insight.  (C’mon…”comb the desert.”) I could quote it in most life situations. But this one I think is apt for the moment.  Yes, this moment.

There are days when I wonder how much of a sucker I really am.  Today I feel like a big sucker…because I’m stuck in the future and I don’t know how to get out.  And I’ve been thoroughly taught to think that way.  And I’ve learned it. Well.

I’ve been staying up nights with a crazy kind of anxiety…I’ll lie awake for hours, my brain spinning (needlessly) about things about to happen.  That’s right, it’s my imagination spinning away…about a time to come…sometime.  From this point today, that time always looks scary–grey, gloomy, cloudy, lonely.  I never really smell the future but I imagine if I could it would smell like sulfur. (Ironically, this also describes Cleveland on most days, so maybe it’s the comfort of home I see before me).  It’s also never going to come at least in the way I envision it.  Someone said to me today, “The future is an illusion.”  He was right.  And I’ve become enamored with an illusion…that doesn’t even really look all that great.

We are at now now.  I can’t will time to move any faster, nor should I.  There’s a lot of moments between then and “soon” that should probably be paid some attention.  I don’t really know why…then again, I think I’m the wrong person to ask…I live in then.  But I’d like to live in now.  It seems more colorful, more present, more immediate, more real.  I like all of those things.

So why is living now now so hard?

I guess I’ll find out…probably “soon.”

[hmpf.]

Every so often I realize that my life is built in cycles.  As time moves forward I can see the rise and fall of patterns: similar, comfortable, repetitive, cyclical.  Like the seasons, I can predict with a sharpness that whatever seems good now will wither in particular ways.  I call them cycles.

They’re actually habits.

One that’s commanded my recent attention is that of “settling.”  This is the time of year that I get all uppity to move somewhere.  Until right now I thought that was a function of living in places that were less than good; the search was always on to find better.  Last year when I moved to an apartment deemed by myself and others as “the awesomest apartment I’ll ever find for that price” I thought my itch to move would dissipate.  Nope.  I’m ready to move come June 1.  And yet, I know I’m not.

I have a problem with settling.  I’ve just never done it. Why settle for a B when an A is always possible? Why settle for mediocre when excellent stands enticingly around the corner? Why stay in a place that makes me somewhat happy when a place that makes me joyously happy could be beckoning to me from afar?  Why ever settle when not settling is an option?

I think I’m starting to understand why settling might be a good option.  In part, I’ve been approaching this whole thing with a complete hard-headedness.  I’ve always viewed settling as an implicit quitting–giving up the fight for “better.” This is a crazy competitive tendency perhaps born of my love of sports or anything that can declare a “winner” at the end.  [Sigh.] Even to me this sounds misguided.

More pressingly, though, settling down scares me.  I immediately think “stagnant, boring, prescribed, without options, boxed in.”  I suppose I’ve observed those enough to equate one with the other.  But, the more I really think about it, I do think I’m interested maybe not in settling down but settling into. Just changing that one word makes me think “becoming familiar, making a choice, trying it on and adjusting along the way, working it into something workable.”

Settling down for me will always seem like a destination.  Settling into, on the other hand, might just be the process I need to think about not constantly hitting the road whenever something feels uncomfortable.  If I can work with it for awhile, get to know it, consider it as the means and not the end…I might just be able to stay in this apartment for another year.

Maybe.

I wrote this a year ago and I still love it.

Usually on this blog I’m ranting about something.  Or complaining. Or whining.  I woeing.  Looking back at some of the archives, I come across as being really amazingly…well, frumpy.  But today I have a new kind of problem.  It’s actually interesting that I even remotely find it a problem.  It’s just that…well, I have this friend who just makes my life a little more worth living and I’m not sure what to do with it.

My friend, as so many do, just came out of nowhere.  Through the most random series of events, I found this person.  Actually, maybe this person found me.  I can never be sure exactly how to mark the beginning of a friendship.  Do you go back to the moment you met?  Was it that time you had that first conversation that, upon leaving, made you think, “Oh…I’ve got to get to know this person better.”  Is it that first time that you weather a fight with each other together, that moment of return when you can feel that even though everything will not be the same ever again that what is to come will be just as good.  No, probably better?  I guess it doesn’t really matter; I can trace the linear path of this friendship but I think that’s a stupid game.  Life is not linear and neither are relationships.

So anyway, over time this friend has made quite an impression, as so many friends do.  But not just the normal kind of impression.  It’s an indentation, really.  There now exists a space that was not there before, that I usually do not recognize and have no idea how to tend.  Sometimes it’s the most wonderful, beautiful indentation a girl could have.  Other times, it hurts, aches even, and I loathe it.  This space that once was solely mine now has an indentation that I’ve come to learn will exist as it will.  I only have so much control. And it will always be there now.  If something heads south, it will become a scar all shiny and leathery looking.  But it’s there for good now.  And I love that.  And it scares me.

And maybe that’s where “my problem” comes in.  I worry about this indentation.  I worry that it might take up too much room, that I’ve become too accustomed to it, that time will only warp it.  I’m not going to lie; it’s a nicely appointed indentation.  I want to protect it, keep in tidy, maybe drape some nice plastic on it to avoid spillage and staining.  If I had a curio cabinet, it might be nice there.  That’s how I feel.  But I know that won’t ever work.  I have to let this space be what it will and know that there’s only so much I can do to control it.  The rest is up to my friend who form-fitted it. Who I allowed to form fit it. And who really gave me no choice in the matter. And I love that.  And that scares me too.

So there’s my problem.  At this moment, I feel too loved, too lucky, too unworthy.  I can feel the other shoe just hanging precariously somewhere,  It’ll drop. And I fear that moment.  The one in which this will all end and I’m left with a shiny, leather scar of an indentation that will be empty and tinny sounding in there.  But I have to let this space be what it will.  And maybe, just maybe, it’ll always ring clearly and sweetly. And that’s what I hope for.  And I love that.

So who’s the friend?
Probably you.

I’ve been majorly avoiding this blog, probably because I know how it looks.  Every month or so I put up a post about how crazy things have been and how I’m starting over.  I try to make it quippy and funny.  Then 4 weeks later I’m still doing the same thing, only after another chasm has somehow changed everything forever.

This life is a challenge.

I remember when I was teaching at Walsh and worried that if I stayed there the next 25 years would look exactly the same and I wasn’t happy with that. So instead I chose a life that requires every February – May to be a scramble to figure out how I’m going to support myself, keep inspired, stay healthy, not go totally nuts with worry. And now I find myself looking back at the Walsh days with a fond nostalgia toward its consistency.  Everything there is pretty much the same.

So, this, maybe is the lesson I’m supposed to learn in graduate school, the one I didn’t know I was paying for: that life goes on, opportunities come and go, people come and go, and my life and that which ultimately stays important is where I am.

These last months have been hard, presenting me with challenges I’ve never even thought about facing…mostly involving taking action on plans of which I cannot envision an exact, finite end point.  It’s truly been about making moves with the resources I have now and hoping that it works out in the end and at the same time learning how to adjust expectations and re-frame the way things work out when they’re beyond my control.  I’m learning one step at a time to “go with the flow.” It’s been backbreaking some days.

But I should learn to be careful what to wish for.  For the last several years I’ve bemoaned a lack of constancy in my life.  I’ve hoped for some kind of foundation to ground me.  I think I’ve found my constant and it’s name is change.

It’s not the constant I expected.  But it sure is always there.