make up your mind August 14, 2009

I went to yoga yesterday after a couple weeks of no yoga. (Enter in all my various excuses here.) I took class from Georgia, who I’ve mentioned before on this blog. She is somewhere around 60 years old but you’d never guess it from looking at her. (Bikram yoga really does work!) She’s been practicing for 37 years. She actually took classes from Bikram himself (the guy who created this form of yoga) in Hawaii way back when. Her classes are both extremely challenging and fun. She has a way of making you laugh at yourself, and she’ll catch you when you’re trying to sneak by and cruise through a pose. But she will also reward you for putting your all into one. She’ll say, “I see ya, Blue.” It’s always exciting to me when she recognizing that I am really kicking my own butt giving my all.

Right before we were about to go into a pose yesterday, she goes, “Make up your mind!!!”

Make up your mind! Are you gonna just go through the motions or are you going to put everything you have into this? That phrase is sticking with me. I have some very indecisive tendencies, never wanting to make the wrong choice, I end up making not much of any choice at all. Actually it’s a note I got from our coach at improv rehearsal Monday. Indecisiveness is death to scenes in improv. Jess told me I just needed to decide and take an opinion in the scene. Just pick one and move forward with it!

That’s something they say a lot about improv: there is no wrong choice. Every choice is right. You just have to be committed to it.

It’s exciting to me to have made a choice in my life: This way doesn’t work any more. There has to be something else out there! There has to be something else I can do with my time and energy. There HAS to be fulfilling work out there. After five years of job after job after job, I giving myself the gift of the whole month of September to devote to my yoga, my enjoyment of life, and the pursuit of things that actually matter to me. (Yep–I decided I’m gonna go for the bikram 30-day challenge!) A month to not worry about a survival job. Then, I can begin October completely refreshed, ready to make up my mind about what’s next.

so. umm… now what? August 11, 2009

Thank you friends, for all the wonderful spoken and unspoken support. I haven’t gotten any blank stares or doubtful responses when I’ve told people that I quit my job, even though I don’t have much of a plan in line. In fact, I’ve gotten the opposite: very positive responses. That’s pretty awesome. We’ve got ourselves a lot of believers out there, folks! Lucky for me, part of why I could just hop right out of my job is because I work (for just 10 more days!) at a restaurant. And, if in a couple months I find myself in need of another full-time job, there are a few thousand restaurants in this borough alone that I could serve burgers/steak/vegan whatevers at. So, I’ll deal with that if/when I need to.

That’s pretty much the worst-case scenario. Which is too say, the worst case scenario isn’t bad at all. I like meeting new people and finding myself in new environments, so if that’s what needs to happen, I am sure many wonderful things will come from it, as did from this job.

So, what is the best case scenario?

That’s what I’m giving myself the time to sort out, I spose!

Before I get to all that job stuff, I’d like to take some time to do something else. I have been toying with the idea of taking a bikram yoga 30-day challenge for a while now. (Doing bikram yoga for 30 days straight!) But, I don’t want to focus solely on practicing bikram yoga during this time. I started thinking about the other things it would be fun to do for 30 days in a row.

I came across this Steve Pavlina article: 30 days to Success. Innnnteresting. He explains how the 30-day model is a great way to try out a daily habit, and see if it can become something you want to do daily for life! So this could be a great time for me to create habits I want to carry with me when I enter back into real world territory.

Some ideas:

-Exercising daily, whether it’s yoga, running, bike riding, swimming, or playing in the park. (I am still sore from some serious wiffleball playing on Saturday.)

-Writing daily. Journaling and creative writing.

-Pursuing fun daily. Serious childlike fun. I realized I have a real need for fun on a regular basis. So simple, right? But if I am working too much, even if that is performing, I become depressed and down. I am rejuvenated by pure FUN. (If I go for this 30 day FUN project, I will need some volunteers to go do some activities with me. )

-Taking a risk a day. Mostly this involves me doing things alone that might be a bit odd, or striking up conversations with strangers. (A very convenient excuse to talk to the cute boy strangers.) But this seems like a wonderful way to really shake fear and social taboos out of the system.

-Pursuing a passion daily. Maybe this means going to an audition, or reading a book on any subject that excites me, or icing a cupcake. This could be beneficial on so many levels.

So those are the main ideas I am toying with.

Here are some of Pavlina’s suggestions that I also like:

-Write a new blog entry every day.
-Read for an hour a day on a subject that interests you.
-Meditate every day.
-Go for a long walk every day.
-Become an early riser.
-Write in your journal every day.
-Call a different family member, friend, or business contact every day.
-Make 25 sales calls every day to solicit new business. Professional speaker Mike Ferry did this five days a week for two years, even on days when he was giving seminars. He credits this habit with helping build his business to over $10 million in annual sales. If you make 1300 sales calls a year, you’re going to get some decent business no matter how bad your sales skills are. You can generalize this habit to any kind of marketing work, like building new links to your web site.
-Ask someone new out on a date every day. Unless your success rate is below 3%, you’ll get at least one new date, maybe even meet your future spouse.
-Go out every evening. Go somewhere different each time, and do something fun — this will be a memorable month.
-Meet someone new every day. Start up a conversation with a stranger.

So, what do you guys think? What would you do with 30 free days?

the Life Series… Poems influenced by the Champagne & St. Germain cocktail I enjoyed this evening. April 3, 2009

 This first one is called “Life: Orange Style”

 Oh life
  You are an orange.
           juicy
         messy
        sweet
       ripe
life i want to drink life
and put the peel on my teeth.

Yeah, this next one: “Life: Bubble Bath Remix”

Oh life
You are a bubble bath.
          warm
          soak
          heavenly
life I want to lay in you
life make my toes raisins.

The third and final Life poem: “Hot Apple Pie Life”

life you are hot apple pie with crumb toppings
                    hot
                    filling
                    pleasing
i am full and life you put me over the edge
i will unbutton the top button.

Ed. note: Third poem also influenced by the hot apple pie with crumb topping i had after the champagne cocktail.