My counselor says, “no….this is not fortune…it’s you finding your path.”  Normally I’d agree.  I love looking for my path and then talking about it in that very Tao-informed way.  But I’m not sure I can take any credit in looking or finding anything.  My life has changed because, and I completely mean this, the universe asserted itself and demanded that I respond.  And I responded…yes in a thoughtful way.  Yes in a responsible way.  But not because I wanted to…because I had to.  And lo and behold…I don’t know if the choice was “right”…but almost literally everything has changed.

Maybe this is a perspective thing: everything changed because some fundamentals shifted in this choice.  I now feel as though I can support myself and my near future is more stable.  Helpful, definitely helpful.  I now feel I have more power to govern some of the more toxic relationships in my life…I have new found weight to shift that I didn’t have before.  Also, very helpful.  I don’t hate what I’m doing…this is very good.  Never good to use “hate” as a regular descriptor in your day. But the effects of all of this seem exponential…If I’m a tree, even the tiniest little twigs are gathering in a new-found sense of life. It’s like I’m breathing again…after six years of not.

And here’s the crux, I suppose…I didn’t really have to do anything but make a choice…a choice which confronted me and not the other way around.  I just had to respond.  It is fortune, I think.  That mysterious hand that reaches in and intervenes when you, yourself, are unable.  It’s the answer to a prayer or the acknowledgement of a desperate cry for help.

Whatever it is…whew…it’s a life saver.

What I’ve especially missed is the log of my own thoughts that writing like this creates.  We don’t think in a vacuum…we don’t have disconnected ideas…they all stem from exactly where we are at a particular time and place.  And as I’m having a go-around yesterday with Kristine about cycles and patterns of relationships and friendships and discussions, I realized I missed my own proof of those very things.  Over time, I can be my own advisor…because something I thought about 17 days ago might have been a problem then but might just be the perfect answer now.

So…I’m back to it…for my own sake.  Of course, things are a little different.  In the storm of the last couple months I got a job…like a real one…with a desk and a chair and a coffee station…and I can only wear jeans on Fridays.  And I may have sorta changed my dissertation topic…kinda…okay…really.  And I cut my hair…I might be moving to Illinois for reals (like my license plates and everything)…and I’m an aunt…and a godmother…to two different kids.  Cool.  And I’m not thinking about moving to a different apartment…in fact, I’m painting the dining room and thinking about getting a dining room table.  And opera is my new hobby. And I have business cards now.  And I almost started asking that people call me Kathleen…but then I got freaked out by the formalness of it so I guess I’m Katie for life. And…

With all this newness, I did think about changing the name of the blog.  It comes from a comment friends years ago made about not ever seeing the place I lived…it could be a tent on the beach somewhere and no one would be the wiser. With this new level of stability, maybe a tent isn’t the right place to think about being for good.

And then I remembered I paid for this domain name…so a tent it shall be.  Long live the tent.

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’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).

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.

This is what the world can look like if you let it.

I’ve been really scattered lately.  Sometimes I notice that when my blog entries fall of it’s for usually one of two reasons: either I’m overwhelmed by ideas and can’t decide which one to pick that day OR I’m underwhelmed by my entire life and I’d rather stab my eyes out with hot chopsticks than keep thinking about it.  Thankfully, the recent problem has been the former. My brain has actually been “whizzing” around…stuff’s getting started and I’m thinking in 27 directions.  In the past I would just consider that busy; but I’ve actually been having inspiration in 27 different directions…thus the Thousand Points of Light. That’s a literal reference.

I think I’d be robbing you of the experience if I didn’t include a couple gems just to illustrate my point:

*I’ve been thinking all day about the dream I had in which I met Bernadette Peters at my local McDonalds for lunch.  Then we met Elaine Stritch across the street at Dunkin’ Donuts for coffee.  I’ve spent hours just on this one dream.  I’m both fascinated and a little proud that these women are in there.  Nice.

*I had a “breathing” realization the other day; all the time I think I’ve been breathing deeply…I actually had about 1/4 more room than I thought because I was holding my neck muscles so tight.  So now I’m really breathing deeply and I wonder what all that extra oxygen is doing to me.  Maybe the thousand points of light I’m seeing are actually warning me that I’m ready to pass out from over oxygenation.

*I was talking with Anna, my jewel of a yoga teacher (Anna Schabold, YogaNow North…check her out), today after class and she said the most amazing thing: that we experience the world physically and mentally and emotionally at the same time. [Pause for mind blowing.] I realized I’ve worked pretty hard to separate the two out.  So, every time I’ve experienced pain caused by my physicality (whether it be spraining my ankle or being rejected because of my physical being), I’ve only just “shut off” or isolated the pain.  You rehab the ankle or strengthen the tendon, but what do you do for the emotions that come with that?  I’ve done zero.  Thus, today I’m a mess.  Similarly, when I have emotional or mental stress (this &#*$ing graduate degree), I isolate it there and forget about the physical toll.  It was actually the latter that led me to yoga (b/c my hips and shoulders were killing me) but I think the bigger work that lies ahead for me is reconciling all of the pain my physical body has caused…and releasing it.  I shake like a leaf when I’m doing yoga…huge trembling waves…(it actually looks totally nuts…like a giant muscle spasm)…and Anna’s always like, “don’t come out of the pose…the trembling will stop…it’s energy being broken up and being released”…and by god if it doesn’t stop eventually.  Then of course, my muscles are burning like a raging fire, but no more trembling…and that’s when the work can really start. Anna and her crazy forrest yoga are changing my life. That’s like a supernova point of light.

*I want to Feng Shui my apartment.  Turns out that’s easier said than done as I can’t control the layout of the windows and doorways which apparently is central to the whole thing.  However, I’ve spent time Feng Shui-ing my bedroom and, as crazy as it sounds, I feel better.  I do.  I’m trying to comprehend this change while still trying to figure out how to reconcile all the dairy I eat which, supposedly, blocks energy.

*I saw the move Inception Friday night and I can’t stop thinking about it. It’s the rare movie that caught my imagination and will not let go.  Now I walk around wondering if people are trying to plant thoughts in my dreams.  Maybe Bernadette and Elaine aren’t so random after all.  Maybe they’re using inception to suggest I need to go to New York and see them together in that show.  Or maybe, they’re telling me that McDonald’s and Dunkin’ Donuts ain’t so bad after all.  Either way, I’ll tell ya, if Thomas Hardy is the one behind the inception, he can root around in my dreams all he wants.  That, in itself, is a dream.

See.  That’s just 4…I have hundreds of these ideas running through my head all at once.  But they’re positive, so I’m not going to work especially hard to quiet them down. It’s sometimes nice to see light, even if it is whizzing past my eyes in the style that the “Big Wheel” on the Price is Right whizzes around (thankfully, my thoughts don’t make that beeping noise or I’d go permanently insane).  I’ve been futz-ing around in the dark so long that I can say for sure that futz-ing in the light…infinitely better.

I wonder why yesterday the toaster burned the toast and today, without touching the toaster or doing anything differently, the toast is perfect? Where did I leave my flip-flops? I wonder if an all-girls high school education actually made me more masculine than many men I know? I should take a shower. Almost done with IRB. That breeze is cool. I wonder how other people experience pain?

Literally…that was in two minutes.  I walked home from yoga this morning; it took about 25 minutes and I had a lifetime’s worth of conversation with myself.  Going in 25 directions.  Whenever this happens I feel the distinct need to write everything down as quickly as possible.  There could be good nuggets of something in there which only time will reveal.  But despite this mental chattering, there was one thought I kept coming back to, I think because it didn’t originate in my brain.

In the 2 or 3 moments in between crazy shooting thoughts, I actually felt compassion.  I’ve been reading this book by Pema Chodron called The Places that Scare You and I assumed it would be a lot about fear.  It’s actually more about the opposite of fear, which as it turns out, is compassion.  Who knew?  Maybe this is where I’ve gone wrong all these years. Here’s a picture just in case you want to read (and you really should…what else are you really doing?)

Anyway I usually don’t feel ideas; I think about them, dissect them, think more about them, start to worry about them, get anxious about them, then am exhausted and can’t sleep.  That’s usual.  But, I’ve really been working on “heart opening”–I interpret it more as willing myself to feel things rather than approach them intellectually.  It’s given more dimension to my ideas; we all think a lot about love or anger or hurt.  We ultimately want to manage them, so we approach them as events and then get a plan to deal with them.  But I’m learning that if we feel them, they actually have textures…things we can grip onto a little bit and push our edges.  In other words, I think I’m learning that if we feel things, we can grow in ways that thinking about them cannot approach.

But, back to compassion.  So, I think “heart opening” is working a bit.  I was practicing feeling compassion which isn’t empathy or sympathy.  In those, we place ourselves in the shoes of others (sympathy) or recalling when we’ve actually shared the experience of another (empathy) and felt with them.  Compassion, I think, is the following step.  In compassion we stay in our own shoes, recognize the place of another (be it filled with suffering or joy), and then love them as only we can.  It’s not sharing the experience; it’s just opening our arms and loving, regardless of what happens to us or what we’ll get out of it.  I think compassion is the act of giving away love unconditionally.  We always approach that idea from the receiver’s end…I haven’t really even imagined what it feels like to give it.  I think it’s a good thing.

So this is what I’m feeling about today.  Even writing this down has slowed the chatter.  And it makes me think that in order to give this…dude, you gotta tap into a kind of strength that you just have to trust you have…because I think it’s tough.  You may hurt in the process.  But its completely worth it, I think. I mean, I feel.

Ha-HAH. Caught myself there.

I attribute the change to a couple things but most centrally…yoga.  It wasn’t so long ago (2 months, actually) that I regularly started taking yoga classes (not half-heartedly doing DVDs in my dining room…which I refer to as my ‘yoga studio’).  Somehow, the interaction with a teacher and other students began to work away at some of the anxieties that had built to the point of all of my ‘lesses.’  And in a way that doing yoga “at the gym” as a “workout” could never touch.  A return to the breath–the present moment–was and is the most holistically therapeutic thing I’ve ever done.  So much so, that I feel it has spurred “returns” in other places that, frankly, I thought were long gone.

“What the hell are you talking about Katie?” you must be thinking.  I understand that…the notion that enduring the burning, searing pain in my hamstrings created by a forward bend or working through the panic that arises right in my throat when I maneuver my way into a handstand or headstand could actually manifest itself in very real ways outside of the yoga studio (in this case, not my dining room) seems bizarre and crunchy-granola new agey (this is my own system of classification, just for the record).  But here’s how I’m seeing this work out:  old friends I haven’t spoken to in years have popped back up in moments that I really needed them.  (What freaks me out is that if I think real hard about it, it almost seems like I’ve “summoned” them to me…I know, I know…I’m in a panic about it myself.)  School which was an absolute albatross in February has returned as a true interest.  My financial situation–always tenuous at best–that was positively dire three months ago has positively worked itself out…and not just as a “hey I got a job at Best Buy” type of scenario but as a “hey I’m a fucking sociologist…now pay me to teach it” kind of way.  (Again, if I look hard, the Universe has clearly…CLEARLY…steered me back into the classroom in a very definitive way…and has arrange a payment system that is better than I’ve ever encountered before.)  I’ve been granted closure in the situations that were tearing me apart emotionally.  I’ve been granted insight into the most difficult challenges.  I’ve actually found in a new way what compassion means…especially in approaching myself and others with compassion.  And it’s because of those fiery forward bends and the heinous twists that make me feel like a real failure on the yoga mat.

It so interesting to really begin to understand what yoga teaches.  Everyone thinks about the “flexy-bendies”–you know, those people (usually women) who can lick their shins and turn themselves practically inside out and afterwards talk about how being a human pretzel gets them to a new level of enlightenment.  I have a new respect for them…yoga’s made them that.  But focusing on the physical stretching is just too one-dimensional; yoga has to also stretch your mind and your heart too.  Otherwise, we should call it calisthenics and be done with it.  No, yoga builds spiritual muscle-memory; it teaches you to endure, to dare, and to deal with emotions as they come and in a way that allows you to learn control and mastery of them.  Yogis talk about it in terms of detachment.  I just call it sanity.

But I’m glad I’m plugged into it.  It seems whenever I really focus on it, the Universe responds to me and returns me to exactly where I need to be.  And gives me things like this as a sign that I’m doing okay.

Anyway, as I’ve been talking about, this “forward-looking” perspective coupled with the biggest, roiling shitstorm-of-change conditions over here have led me to what may be either my 4th or 5th mid-life crisis in the past couple weeks.  I’ve been working on re-focusing so I can free myself to do what needs to be done: get my PhD, not go insane, function in my life, find some joy.  You know…the basics.

One thing I realized is that over the past 3 years, I’ve not actively made the effort to keep things “different” or “various” or “changing.”  Of course, I realized this from a tiny little kernel of truth spoken during a yoga class last week; the instructor said to us, “okay, cross your hands like you normally would.  Now, switch it.  It’s gonna feel weird…but even that little intentional change helps us to be more comfortable with the change we find happening every day.”  She was so right…and was proven right in a bigger way by the events of last Friday.

Many of my friends in graduate school have “moved on.”  Not surprisingly, I haven’t…and because of that, I’ve been adrift in this swirl of “lost friends.”  I still see their shadows lurking around in the neighborhoods we all used to live in.  I remember the conversations we had in the bars that I walk past every day.  In that way, I’ve been living in the past.  So one of my intentions recently has been to find new opportunities to find new people to find new parts of my old self.  It sounds arduous…and sometimes it feels that way.

BUT…last Friday I got another chance to uncross and cross again.   I got a chance to turn an acquaintance into a friend…and it worked…magically.  And part of the magic was, I didn’t initiate it.  It’s been a long time since I’ve actively felt “befriended”…it was a nice change.  And the friend I think I’ve found is just comfortable and fun in the best of ways: compelling, interesting, funny, and similar. Maybe I’m technically celebrating the sameness…but this is the friend I’ve been looking for in this time and place.  And in two days, he’s breathed a kind of new life into me…and the friends I already have.

It’s been pretty interesting.  And I very much attribute it to “recrossing:”  Seeing the world in a new light and acknowledging that it might feel weird at first but that it eventually becomes another kind of reality, just ever so slightly different than the other (or last) one.

Here’s to Jerusalem*. Thank You.

*For whatever reason, when I type his name into my phone (to text or whatever) it automatically auto-corrects it to “Jerusalem.”  I have absolutely ZERO idea why…but it’s endearing…so I’ll go with it.