My Tent on The Beach

What a weird time to live in.  I’ve been thinking a lot lately about tough choices…making those decisions that change the course of life forever.  Maybe because I’ve been watching people make the choices that will change their lives forever. And though sure to be good in the end, we all do a lot of work everyday…work that maybe has never been done before.

Things are hard, yes, and for many reasons…but the work I’m talking about I think is unique to today.  Once expansion was the name of the game…go west, young man…manifest destiny…Antarctica.  Today we suffer the perils of the distance created by expansion.  Nearly everyone I talk to is afraid in some way of distance–letting go, being alone, going somewhere new.  It’s idyllic in a sense…but not in the real one.  Our worldview is huge…and as much as we talk about the greatness of modern expansion, we suffer the effects of it.  We yearn in a much different way today…because we can never really let go…or forget…or be forgotten.  We’re all just floating around in the ether of memories.

I guess I’ve always been aware of my own worries about this and I’ve done everything in my power to do the work I need to to be okay where I am.  But today I watched a friend fear the very fear I have…and it’s heart-breaking to see that worry in someone else.  And I can feel the panic…and it’s very real. I think it’s real to a lot of people.

To whom much has been given, much is expected.  That’s always true and I guess a deal you make with the devil of privilege, whatever kind plagues you.  But the expectation is what may haunt you.  The higher the expectation, the higher the risk of failure.  It sounds so…privileged…and yet is quite the opposite.

I’ve always been a very private person. I know, it’s weird because it seems I’m so extraverted.  And I absolutely am.  I am as outgoing as you’d think.  But I also have sides no one sees…in the past couple months I’ve worked hard to make it sides that only a few people see.  Turns out transparency is important no matter where you are.

I’m particularly uncomfortable with the idea of “being known.”  I don’t love it when people think they know me…in fact, I thrive on the energy of knowing that I know for sure I am a mystery to people.  But I find myself at an interesting crossroads.  A couple months ago (just a couple months ago) I realized that, unless I really am committed to being alone forever, I’d better let some people in.  So, I’ve worked really hard not to stop that process…and now people know me.  Not everything.  But a lot.  A friend said just the other day, “I know you, Katie.  I know how you are.”  It still scared me.  But over the past couple days I’ve worked to be comfortable with it.  More than I’d like to admit.

And it’s kinda cool.

Oh this day.  I totally woke up on the wrong side of the bed.  I’m not sure why…I was in it for about 12 hours, sleeping peacefully and with the exception of one very vivid, not undisturbing dream, I wanted to stay right there.  Maybe that’s why.  That and I’ve been feeling the grind lately.

Far be it from me to complain about my schedule.  After 2 years of bellyaching that no schedule was enough to stifle even the stalwart-est of spirits, I got my wish: structure.  Like I never could have imagined.  And now I run from sun up to sundown 6 days a week.  So I’m tired.  And every Monday looks the same…followed by every Tuesday…then every Wednesday.  The same long day filled with almost no wiggle room.  Will this go on forever? No.  But the end isn’t close enough in sight.  Yet.

Anyway, the past couple weekends I’ve been blessed with lots of singing gigs.  Every Sunday from sun up to sun down it seems like music is in front of me and I’m singin’: at rehearsals, at weddings, at mass, at weird Tridentine masses on the south side.  And it has been a joy.  But it’s interesting taking that step up from good amateur to paid singer…no one celebrates what’s going on.  You do the job and go home.  For awhile I used to be thrilled at blowing the socks off people…one person in particular…Paul…whose standards are incredibly high and who I live to impress.  But I’ve plateaued…in a good place…but in that place where no one comments anymore on your progress.  That kills me. Because there are times when I just cannot believe I’m doing what I’m doing…singing like I am…I literally have no idea how this sound is there or how I am reading this music.  Do.not.know.

So the long and short of it is this: today I got some feedback on this quartet thing we did on Monday.  I was the only untrained one of the bunch…and the feedback was good.  Very good.  And it was a moment long awaited…it was the minute I knew I earned my stripes.  I’m officially where I never thought I’d be.  And it’s better than I expected.

And the hill just got steeper.  And I love it.

I always have a feeling that I wish I wrote more here.  Oh well, there are times to be busy and then there are times to reflect…I guess I’m just having more of the former at the moment.  But since I do have this minute and I haven’t written a list in ages, I thought I might take the chance to write down the stuff I’m actually aware of that really scares me…that I am actually afraid to think about.  I’m not going to examine why I am in such avoidance or what that says about me as a person (although I’m sure all 3 of you armchair psychologists…and Nori…hi Nori…will have fun having a go).  Here they are in no particular order (or to you armchair psychologists, in a subconcious primary order):

1. Learning French. I think it’s because I cannot imagine ever making the sound required to do that correctly.

2. Skydiving or anything that involves defying gravity.  No and no.

3. Telling people that they really bug the hell out of me.  Not collectively…just certain individuals.

4. Losing out or being left out of things. Just things.

5. Being forgotten.

6. Going blind.

7. Losing my voice…both literally and metaphorically.

8. Having kids…like giving birth to a child of my own.

9. Being humiliated.  I only know this one after the fact and I’ll tell ya…the moment I realize I feel humiliated my palms actually sweat. I feel like I’ll never recover from it.  And then I do and everything’s fine.

10. People who are intimidatingly free. Like they live only on whims.  I need a plan…always.

11. Other drivers.

12. The feeling that I’m missing opportunities right in front of me because I’m thinking too big.

13. That I’ll never be able to really relax.

That’s all I can think of right now and I’m falling asleep so that’ll have to do.  But 13 is enough, isn’t it?  Much more and I’d raise a lot of red flags…although this really does feel like the tip of the iceberg.

I feel conflicted.  Usually I love getting together with friends.  It’s a respite for me…a chance to put down the weight of everything I carry on a regular day and just float for awhile.  But I’ve been particularly social over the past couple days and I’m feeling exhausted by it–abnormally so.  The usually light, airy times actually became halting, stuttering, difficult even.  It felt like whatever usually greases the wheels was gone and instead two mechanical wheels were scraping along together, creating sparks and a droning sound.  It’s been really bizarre.

I have to wonder how much (if not most) of this is completely me.  Despite my packed calendar…and I’m not joking…literally from sun up to sun down I’m just running, I feel distanced.  I actually want distance.  At my most haggard, I feel like I just want people to leave me alone.  But I know, in my heart of hearts, I don’t.  I just want not to work so hard at making things feel smooth and easy.  I think I need a vacation.

Yesterday was kind of the pinnacle of these feelings.  A friend I like very much and trust implicitly proceeded to have a very challenging conversation–not one that I felt was mutually challenging.  I maybe even felt attacked though I know that wasn’t the intention.  As with most conversations that I walk away from feeling a little tender, I know there was some profound truth in there…the tenderness comes from the fact that I know that he knows more about me than I’m comfortable with…and he knows it intuitively.  This is not information I’ve given; he, being the astute observer he is, sees it.  And now I have heartburn.  I really hate not being able to manage the information I radiate about myself.

But the other part of the tenderness stems directly from this suggestion, however implied or faint, that I’m ambiguous. It’s interesting being me, I’ll admit that right now.  Because at the same time one friend tacks me to the wall for apparently making no life choices and no decisions, from the other side I have people critiquing me for making statements that are too large, to aggressive, too loud.  To them, I’m intimidatingly strong–either willed or stated.  I think these are opposites.  Wishy-washy and intimidating–how does one actually achieve both?

The problem is I’m down with neither.  Neither one of these ideas fits me.  I think if you know me, you know I’m not ambiguous.  Is it hard to know me…yes…and I think that’s a problem for people.  I don’t wear my heart on my sleeve (my sleeves, honestly, aren’t big enough…I’m very sensitive…every square inch of sleeve would be occupied) and I trust very few.  I think, also, if you know me you know I’m not intimidating.  I am loud.  I’m tall.  Okay, I’m a big presence.  But it’s not my fault people automatically assume that’s some kind of power I wield because at the end of the day I’m more likely to listen to you and what you have to say and consider that at the same time that I consider who you are and why this might be important to you.  How can this possibly EVER be considered intimidating?  Because I have a utile mind, I’m intimidating…or because I don’t exude warm, fuzzy, cuddliness every time someone does something they want recognized?

I guess most bothersome about the whole discussion was the implied notion that I’m running away from something…myself, what I want, whatever, I don’t know.  I am not running.  I’m standing here examining my life more rigorously than most people I know.  I am flying in the face of my fears…it feels like I’m walking through fire here to make the changes I need to make in order to get what I want.  And I’m still compassionate when it comes to you.  So I don’t want to hear that I’m running or not working hard enough or not making the tough life decisions.

If I appear ambiguous to you it’s because you’re not working hard enough to know me.

I’ve known a lot of interesting people over the years–for some reason, maybe random, I was vaulted back to thinking about a particularly exceptional guy I knew back in the early days of the journey.  His name is Steve…I assume he’s still doing his thing.  There’s a lot of good reasons to remember him; he was full of resonance.  He radiated: wisdom, love, grace.  I’ve never really met anyone else that can do that.  And still be a normal kinda “guy” too.  He was (and I’m guessing still is) a phenomenon. And this morning I woke up with his resonant baritone in my head–it’s literally the first time I’ve thought about him in probably five years–but there his voice was giving me the first thought of the day…and it’s a good one.

Usually I wake up with some trace of pop culture looping through my conscious.  It’s not rare for Lady Gaga to be all up in there; yesterday I woke up to the Black Eyed Peas suggesting, “I have a feeling (ooh-ooh), that tonight’s gonna be a good night, that tonight’s gonna be a good, good ni-igh-ight.”  Even if I tried I couldn’t tell you how the dial in that random jukebox up there works.  But last night I went to bed upset–always a major no-no.  I can’t even say that I was upset “at” something or that the feeling was even clear.  I wasn’t anxious, I wasn’t nervous or sad…I was just…”not feeling great” about things.  Lot’s of things.  I’ve taken to being bolder about taking risks lately and hanging myself out there to be critiqued or called on the carpet.  I, like many, want to take the least riskiest risks; I do things that might be out of my comfort zone but that seem to have the probability for a predictable outcome.  Go ahead judge me…I like to plan my risks.  Anyway, of course nothing has turned out the way I thought it would.  I expected people to respond in certain ways and when they didn’t it threw me off.  And it kinda stung.  It’s still stinging, actually, and last night as I was drifting off to sleep I was feeling particularly lost as to what I should do. How could I fix all of these things so I could feel better about them?

“Always do what love requires,” Steve whispered in my ear this morning as I woke up feeling guilty about choosing sleep over yoga.  And his voice intoning that refrain over and over played like a loop in my head for the first hour I was awake.  And it was (and is) the answer to all of the questions I had last night as I was drifting off.  It explains how to deal with the ways people have disappointed me over the past couple days, it prescribes for me how to graciously handle all of the good wishes yesterday when that is really hard for me and makes me incredibly uncomfortable.  It gives me a guide to consider in how I talk to myself in those moments when relentless critique seems the only correct action.  In so many ways it just is the answer.

Structurally, it’s about as close to a perfect answer we could ever hope for.  When? Always. What? Do. Do what? Whatever love requires…requires. It’s 100% responsive in nature; it acknowledges my love for different people and things is 100% unique in each case…and therefore, what that means depends on each case, each circumstance, each interaction.  And it roots my intention; not in selfishness, not in an agenda…but in love.  It is the prescription for compassion.  It asks me, out of love, to respond to what someone else needs (or what I need).  That is the challenge of love, I think.  It requires we know we’ll do something we would not choose otherwise for the sake of the person(s) we love.

Obviously, I think I need not dwell on how hard this is in reality.  It implies accepting others as they come to us, with their own needs and constraints.  It means consistently standing on that line, knowing you may not get this in return.  It means challenging your own fears for the sake of someone else.  It could mean having to let someone go.  Ugh.  Just thinking about the challenge of this makes me nauseous; this is a lesson in advanced compassion.  Even now, and every minute, I wonder if I’m up for it.

And then I think…I just have to be.  It’s such a good answer, the answer I was asking for that I cannot ignore it.  I guess it just means I’ll try.  That’s all I can promise.  Because I just cannot receive a gift like that, in such a timely manner and in response to such a direct request for help, and disregard it.

“Always do what love requires,” he said to me as though he was just standing there right next to me, waiting for me to wake up to share the notion.  Thanks Steve.  It’s good to hear your voice.

I was sitting in my dining room yesterday, contemplating the possibilities for new paint colors.  Yes, I was sitting and staring at the wall.  But it was not without intention.  I got lost in thinking about the day that Kristine, Tim, and Mike came over to put the first color on the walls–I can remember what they were wearing, what we talked about, and the fact that Mustafa got sick and tired of the noise at about 10pm and we had to call it a night. And then I remembered thinking to myself on that painting day, “It’ll be a weird moment when you stop and think about this very moment sometime in the future.  I wonder what you’ll be thinking about?”  And I found myself in “that moment”–and realized that things are moving in very real, visceral ways.

I’ve always played that little game with myself.  It’s a more abstract way of throwing down breadcrumbs–purposely–to remember and reflect on the differences between the way I think things will happen and the way they actually unfold.  Whenever I hit a “that moment,” I’m consistently amazed (and sometimes awed) by the incredible ways things work out.  It didn’t used to be my mantra but one of my new favorite phrases to insert anywhere doubt lives is “It’ll all work out.”  It’s my game that allows me to know that’s the case.  And even more incredibly, I’m never dissatisfied with the ways in which things work out.  It turns out life is a much better storyteller than I…it always throws in a plot twist I never could have dreamed up in a million years.

What’s interesting about the way the game has changed for me over the years is “that moment” used to be determined at the start of something big: when I started grad school, I wondered what it would feel like the first time I said, “This is the start of my 6th year” (sadly, I never imagined saying things like “this is the start of my 8th year” or “I’ve been doing this almost a decade” but I’d better start getting prepared).  In my first year in Chicago, I wondered where I’d be living 5 years down the road.  (The answer turns out to be “here.”)  And when it comes to people…well, those are stories I never could have even dreamed.  It seems, almost, that Chicago has upended almost everything I expected when I first got here.  My best friends are people that, upon meeting them I thought, “I want to be their friend but I don’t know how.”  Somehow, I figured it out–we figured it out.  Others I thought I’d know forever have fallen into the “friend ‘everything’ drawer.”  You know that one, completely jam-packed drawer of not even organized chaos that you just shove random things in and think, “I’ll definitely have to organize this drawer one of these days.”  That “friend drawer” is full of partial acquaintances or those “lost” forever in that morass of “I knew you really well once.”  I wonder what that moment will be like…the one immediately after I realize I’ve mostly cleaned out that drawer?  Aw, let’s face it: that drawer and my living room will never be really free of clutter…there will always be fragments of friends hanging out in there.

And here’s the most curious part of the “that moment” game: there are whole categories of things I’ve dared myself not to even imagine.  Things I want so desperately, so completely, that the thought of not having them actually gives me pain. The thought of missing them makes me irretrievably sad.  I specifically remember a series of moments like this when it comes to singing.  I remember walking out of contemporary choir and thinking, “It’s never going to be more than this and that’s okay,” but secretly wishing in my heart it would be, but I didn’t know how.  And “that moment” is here now…and some days I wonder where that path will continue to lead…and I can’t know; I just have to not ask questions.  When I use perfect, gut-wrenching honesty, my game has proven to me that a majority of things I’ve asked for, wished for, hoped for…I’ve gotten.  And when I examine the means, I know it’s a story I never could have created myself.  Had I undertaken it my way, I never would have reached the end I wanted.

Basically, my dining room reflection allowed me to conclude that I’m a crappy writer of fiction.  But I always knew that.  More importantly, though, if I allow the better writer of fiction to work…the ends…well, they’re always a story worth waiting for.

Yowza…let me talk to you a little about how my schedule has changed in the last 3 weeks.  For the past 2 years (2 YEARS) I was gifted, granted, held hostage by these fellowships I had which explicitly stated I could not work anywhere else.  Realistically, that translated into 2 years of wasted time…completely unstructured, completely free, completely solitary time to mess around with.  Some would consider that heaven and, in theory, it sounds good.  But doesn’t all theory sound good?  This blog has chronicled the actual nightmare…and it was a nightmare.

Enter Situation Today: yesterday I worked in my office at school for 14 hours.  In a given week, I have about 5 hours to play around with…the rest of it is spent either in a structured activity or getting to a structured activity.  I’m running. And it’s actually heavenly.  That’s right…heavenly.  Will it stay heavenly for long, who knows.  All I know…right now…it’s very good.

But there is one thing that I’ve reacquired that I’m not so thrilled about: the feeling like time is slipping away.  I have to schedule bathroom breaks; I know to the minute how long each light is on Lake Shore Drive; I have figured out how to whittle my morning routine down to exactly 30 minutes.  On some days that means choosing between mascara and toast.  As much as I like the structure, I’ve lost a little purchase on the whimsy, creativity…on the felicity of the open road of time.  I’ve gone from all options open (which is overwhelming) to one option open (which is fascism)…and once again I find myself pausing (for no longer than 14 minutes) to reflect on where the balance might be.

I was thinking this yesterday as I was walking home in the veritable fall evening and I thought of two possibilities.  One, I find the felicity in the moment (why does the answer ALWAYS seem to be in the moment…it’s getting annoying….damn Buddhists, they know everything apparently).  I’ve noticed I already do that.  Even though I’m scheduled as I used to be, I’m utterly not stressed about it.  I think that’s the effects of yoga and Tom (don’t know Tom…yeah, get over it…you won’t know Tom).  Two, I’ve found a lot more surprises than I expected to people-wise.  My schedule forces me to get out of my own way when it comes to allowing people the chance and the time to initiate contact and express a desire to hang out.  I’ve been jumping the gun for years now…now that I’m forced to give people a chance to do what they will, they’re doing it…and it’s fantastic.  Who knew.

As it turns out, time is not on my side.  I’m working against the clock all day long, starting at 5:30am and ending about 9:15pm (and even at 9:15 I’m fighting…Just one more chapter in this book and I’d be ready…).  What is on my side is the hard work I’ve done to CHILL OUT, the effects both physical and mental, stemming from yoga and the fact that I’ve been reintroduced to the fact that I have to be plugged in to the greater world out there…I’ve got some work to do that has nothing to do with nuns, IRB, or the word “problematic.”

Lesson Learned: Keep the fellowships, folks.  I don’t want ‘em.  No, I can’t want ‘em anymore. (That’s a quote from a musical…of course I won’t tell you which one).

That is not my title.  It’s actually a book I’m reading right now that is really changing my life.  I love that books have the power to do that…if we heed them…well, some of them.  I think this particular one is brilliant because it falls into that “magical realism” genre in which everything and nothing makes sense all at the same time. It’s a story for the ultimately story-teller…it seems it’s completely unreal…until you start trying out some of the ideas and then watch as what seems impossible merges with possible.

It’s goofy and profound at the same time. A rare combination, I find.

So anyway, one of the ideas I stumbled across that’s really amazing is this push/pull situation he introduces.  I’ve always struggled with the idea of “letting go.”  That sounds terrifying to me.  Letting go generally means that for 2 seconds you feel weightless and then are introduced to a world of fantastic pain…that last longer than 2 seconds. In my book, letting go has always meant giving up.  Instead, in this story, I ran across this idea which has revolutionized my way of thinking: when something is pressing you in a particular direction, instead of pushing against it, why not pull?

Wait.  What?

That sounds absurd.  Won’t I just be falling then? (And I always envision this as happening with a door such that I’m pulling, they’re pushing, and I’m falling backwards.  The answer is actually no…you’re not falling necessarily.  You’re just not spending so much energy resisting the flow of things.

Wait. Whaaaaat?

I’ve never, EVER considered this idea before.  Whenever I’ve approached letting go, it’s always ultimately been temporary…probably because that’s the way I envisioned it.  Just thinking about it required an overwhelming amount of change on my part, so it seemed.  I like to hold things.  So just to let everything go is completely ridiculous…and not doable.  But the push/pull scenario…well, that’s event-related…I can do that…and it’s fairly small scaled…and it makes sense…and it seems easier.

And it is.  I’ve just tried this in small ways throughout my days over the past week or so…it has literally changed the fabric of my life.  Shockingly, nothing concrete has changed…I still walk in the same direction, my goals are still my goals and the troubles still my troubles. But there’s none of the weariness in dealing with all of it, a symptom brought on by the degree to which I was standing vigilantly and waiting to resist things.  If I’m pulling, not only do I not initiate the action but I also don’t work hard to stop it.  (This is ultimately “going with the flow”…but that always sounded condescendingly “new agey” to me.  I’m not a river…what does that even mean?!?)  But, like Liz Lemon, “I’m a pusher.  I push people.”  Turns out, being a puller is way better.  If pushing is trying, then pulling is being…I think.

I’d rather just be.

I’ve been doing this for a couple days and the degree to which I can breathe more freely and feel and see things more clearly astounds me.  Of course, like any good crash diet, the devil is in the maintenance of it.  Can I sustain it?  I’d venture to say only, “I don’t know.”  But my experience with crash diets has been the loss of the will because the demands are just too great to bear.  I’m not sure I’d lose motivation with something that makes me feel so whole. This may be a crash diet I can get behind.

It’s the Path of the Peaceful Warrior…the book, I mean.  That’s the title of the book.

A friend of mine who shall remain nameless cracks me up with his yoga malapropisms.  Let’s just say he’s not a yoga practitioner…and because of that, I love when he humors me and asks about how yoga is going.  The other day he opened with, “So…how’s downward-seeking dog coming?”  This is a hybrid of mockery and sheer not-knowery, but the actual pose is called downward facing dog…which makes the new title a darker, perhaps more morbid version (although more closely connected to my actual experience of working in downward facing dog which is just generally sheer torture).  Although, I digress…I don’t want to talk about downward facing dogs or even yoga.

I want to talk about the insights I’ve stumbled on this week…and they’re really about going inward.

Oh this single, solitary life.  Oh this PhD, dissertation-devising life.  I think I can imagine no situations more isolating…put them together and…well, you’re the equivalent of a hermit…no, you’re the troll that lived under the bridge.  At least a hermit sounds, in some faraway place, honorable.  But the troll…just warty.  And that’s what this summer was for me…warty and horrible…and friggin hot.  So it’s not coincidence that within hours of it cooling off, I’ve come back around to some of my senses.  But not without effort and a commitment to cleaning out the dark little corners of my life that I’d rather forget are there….the places I retreat to when I feel warty…and thus breed more wartiness.  If I wanna get out from under the bridge, I gotta start clearing that stuff out.

When I started to work at clearing out the underbrush, I realized a really interesting (and potentially devastating), nasty little habit I have.  When warty, I spread myself really thin.  Not with work or not enough sleep…I call and contact everyone I know in a (often futile) attempt to “be acknowledged.”  “Hey guys, I’m Heeeerrrrrre.  No, over HEEEEEERRRRRE.”  I’ve always thought that keeping social contact would soothe the wounded soul.  As it turns out, not really.  In fact, in this experience, it’s not unlike the Horcruxes in Harry Potter. Though not intended to make me immortal, each little speck of social interaction I would try to create would spread me out literally too thin.  No one was home.  People weren’t answering the phone.  I was getting the “text message response” (you know the one…when you’ve called and they return the message not with voice mail or a call but with a text…regardless of what it says on that phone, just the action says, “riiiiiight….I’m not going to talk to you today.”)  “No one cares. I’m insignificant. I’m an afterthought,” says my warty, trollish internal chatter.  Thus ensues more panic, frustration…ultimately isolation.

So, on this last round of wretchedness, out of nothing other than just not wanting to talk to anyone, I sat with the silence.  I sat with the aloneness.  I actually moved away from people.  And it ended up being a strengthening experience.  In a myriad of ways.  When I stopped flailing around in a panic, thinking I was moving toward making a better situation, and just was there in my world, in my moment…things actually transformed.  People responded in new ways.  They met my change with changes of their own, changes I had hoped to have but could never see how I’d get them.  It was incredible, actually.

I think my struggle in yoga with downward facing dog is not a coincidence to this story.  The whole spiritual point of that pose is strengthening in places that we don’t often use for protection.  When we protect ourselves we cover our vulnerabilities with our stronger parts.  We turn our shoulder into oncoming force or use our shoulders to fully absorb the weight of force, whether it’s our bodies falling or hitting into something.  We tense the neck and turn the head.  We firm our hamstrings, preparing to spring into action.  We cover and run.  Downward facing dog requires you to kind of reverse all of that…you’re deeply stretching your shoulders and hamstrings, thus rendering them not the strong points but the stretched points.  You open your chest to the floor, use the muscles of your torso and upper and lower arms to push you away from the ground…you relax the neck and jaw.  You open…you uncover…you dis-cover…or if you’re me you start sweating profusely as the muscle fibers in your shoulders and hamstrings audibly rip.

Interestingly, though, it mirrors what has to happen in order to be an inward seeking dog.  As I have to open my chest and torso in downward facing dog, I have to open myself to being alone, by myself, quiet, not panicking.  As I strengthen those tiny little muscles (that kill to the 12th power when you pull them) around your back and ribs, I also strengthen my resolve to emotionally support myself and not need to outsource my troubles.  As I learn to breathe through the hellfires burning in the backs of my legs and shoulders, I learn to withstand the heat of that panic that tells me, “no one cares what happens to you.”  It’s a journey that has to be settled into…and one that requires an acceptance of the challenges and an acknowledgment of the good sure to come, even if in the present it hurts like sideways facing sonofoabitch.

I am an inward seeking dog…and I think I’m in the process of learning to be okay with that.  But I already know this much.  Inward seeking dogs aren’t really warty…not warty at all.  Let’s put a “w” in the win column on that insight.