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Woke up with a start in the hotel room. Had a (false) memory of picking up the phone for my wake-up call and then putting it down and falling back to sleep. “What time is it?!” I panicked. Look at the clock. Oh, uh, 3:30 AM. An hour before my wake-up call is due. And now I’m too awake. Start thinking about something that’s been irritating me at work, and go around in circles with it for a bit.

Finally get up. Okay, so 4 AM in the Florida hotel room is 1 AM at home. This is a really early start to my day. The weird sleeping has my emotions all whacked out. Nothing dramatic, just the sense of loneliness and mild despair. Seriously, the thought of practice makes me want to curl up on the floor and cry.

Do a little blog reading, including Laksmi’s site, where I think of my Anusara teacher of yore, and suggest she look into Anusara if she wants some good help with pincha mayurasana.

I reminisced a little about learning yoga with Martin, who always (yes, I know) had a theme for each class, and always sat and told little stories before we began and at the end. My Gift worked as a receptionist at the studio he and his wife owned, and still rates it as her favorite job. She was highly amused to report that he and his wife — her employers — always gave her a hug at the end of her shifts.

Okay, all the fluffy Anusara stuff aside, I am grateful for the education I received in form and alignment.

And suddenly I found myself in the hotel room, at 4 AM (meaning 1 AM), downloading a random Anusara podcast on my Shuffle, and using that to practice. It felt totally criminal and I was amazed at how guilty I felt. I don’t think that’s healthy, but I’ll reserve judgment and see how it plays out in my mind.

The podcast practice was lovely. Very sweet. I had the sudden, rather disturbing insight that I am such a methodical person that I can easily approach my practice as a routine chore. And that — insidiously — there has evolved a suck-it-up-and-get-it-done component in my current state of practice. Uh oh.

I will think about this some more. I will even go over to Martin’s place and take a class. I want to know how that makes me feel. Will my guilt subside? Will I learn something — again — about my tendency to dogmatism?

Ah well. We’ll see. In the meantime, I am FINALLY home. Air travel sucks. It’s all screwy and always late. But I’m here. Nice.

Need to wash my clothes and repack and be ready to head out to Singapore on Saturday.