Thursday, June 28, 2012

Imagine

Trying to figure things out, as usual.

Pretending that I have a career teaching yoga, acting like the professional and well-employed teacher I was in another place.  The effect of a piece of technological marketing is impressive as three attempts to make contact receive three responses.  Batting 1000 after 18 months of batting .02.

A brief, emotionally fulfilling visit from old friends.  Several of my pieces are heading with those same friends to Berlin, perhaps to start a new market for my wares.  This after resigning myself to giving up felting for the time being.

Nothing has changed in my day-to-day work life.  Very few classes to teach, albeit with a handful of wonderful students putting me to the test.  The rest of the time making coffee and sandwiches and doing dishes and taking money.  At home, there is laundry, summer chauffeuring, groceries, cooking.  Same bat channel...  (All right, I have gotten the children to do some of the cooking now that I work until dinnertime several nights a week.)

And yet, it all feels new.  Promising, even.  As though with this move to a new state, that I know inherently is right even as it has been a real struggle at times, reality is starting to catch up with wishing.  

Is it all a state of my mind?  Am I finding contentment?
And is it due to external factors?

Or is it simply pretending things are different and, by pretending, finding them so.

Friday, June 1, 2012

Mr. Gorbachev, ...

 Life in my 40s in Minnesota is not as expected.  Big surprise. Are any of us doing what we envisioned in our youth for our grown-up selves?
I face strange choices about family vs. work vs. pursuing my true talents.  I have the luxury of complaining about first-world problems and not whether the water is drinkable or whether my children will starve.  The death of a good friend's 11-year-old son has knocked some sense into me about the real problems I don't have.
Does this mean I've found contentment? Not exactly.
I had a hard time mourning and grieving after Special K died in May.  I was not near those in Michigan who could reel from this loss with me.  So I picked up The Last Lecture to allow some of my emotions to come up to the surface.  And in it, I did find comfort and release.
I also found inspiration. 
Since moving to MN, I have complained about not finding my way into the yoga community here. I have sent emails and resumes. I have knocked on studio doors.  I have been met with silence at best; offers to take that studio's teacher training program at worst.  I have come up with reasons why there might be resistance to a teacher of my experience.  I have shelved my enthusiasm for introducing Eischens Yoga to a new community.  And Randy Pausch's Last Lecture kicked me in the butt and reminded me that the brick walls you encounter are there to help you discover how much you really want to do something.  How hard you'll try to scale, dig under, or break through that wall.
Eischens Yoga is going to make inroads into the Twin Cities. 
Look out, brick wall.