Like Cher’s Many Final Tours

Posted in ashtanga yoga on 01/21/2008 05:43 am by karen

Wow, over the past day I’ve had some really interesting conversations with folks about the privatization question. Discussion of pros and cons.

Interestingly, The Cop, who usually is not the most web-friend friendly person in the world, argued against privatization at dinner. I explained that I generally surf blogs in the morning when I have coffee and that it can mess with me when people are being mean or petty. I KNOW I should be able to rise above it, but I just hate when the first thing that goes into my fresh morning consciousness is aggressive or mean. It tends to kind of gnaw at me, and yes, I know I should just be able to dismiss it, but it doesn’t always work that way. I guess I expect us all to have a sense of loyalty to each other, even if we disagree. It’s absurd, I know, to expect such a thing from cyberspace, but I am a ridiculous optimist. Team Ashtanga, after all! All helping each other on the road to enlightenment!

Aw, it just bothers me if my first impulse in the morning is to tell someone off or feel defensive or whatever. Why have or spread that kind of energy? Yes, I hear how silly my assumptions are.

Growing a thicker skin is something I’ve tried to avoid in all aspects of life, so I don’t want to default to that. Learning how to process more quickly/easily would be helpful, but without the thicker crust…

Then there’s the open sharing of practice information aspect of a public blog. I have learned a lot from other practitioners who are willing to share their thoughts/practices, and I like the idea that we can all chip in to a collective database of sorts.

And of course there’s the question of whether privatization will make the blog too circumscribed, too private.

On the upside, I heard from some folks who I had never “met” before, and that is totally cool.

So, there are a few of the arguments against. Later on, I’ll write more about the pro-privatization arguments.

Here’s the first thought this morning: I need to sit more. This thought arises from an intersection of Owl’s and Zee’s correspondences. And is sealed by a note from the zendo with the January/February weekend schedules. Also factoring in: The Cop’s comment, “So don’t read blogs in the morning.”

Yup, a little coffee, some circumscribed surfing, and then some pre-practice zazen. I got into the habit of coffee and Ashtangi.net because I had some time to kill while the coffee settled. Zazen would fit in there quite nicely. LOL! Plus there is something kinda funny about using the quest for enlightenment to kill time. Mucho zen.

I feel kinda sheepish, like a diva who has a bunch of “final” tours. Sorry for the drama. The privatization question is open right now, and I guess I’ll learn something by thinking it over a bit.

 

7 Comments

  1. You are entitled to have as much publicity or as much privacy as you want. You are even entitled to change your privacy levels as many times as you want. I can’t understand why you should be a free target for the meanies. You wouldn’t put up with someone being nasty at you in a room, right? Why do it here?

  2. Yes, there is alot of bs in cyberspace. Thats why your site is refreshing. We can count on you for an interesting read without too much irrelevant angst. Stay in the light!

  3. oh, okay, as usual, i read the old post before the new one. anyway, if you do go private, count me in!
    As to crust, I have a bit of crust, but I don’t think it’s a bad thing. I mean, it can be seen as a way of processing: it just doesn’t really go in. I have to handle angry parents at my job and over the course of 5 years of angry parents, for the most part I can take it without taking it in. Seems like I’m totally missing all the bs–I haven’t been around the blogs much this week so I missed whatever is going on.

  4. Interesting about the crust Laksmi. I wonder if in your case it’s mostly about not taking things personally. It’s not like you become absent from the situation of conflict at work and just shut down: it’s more like you ask yourself to see it clearly, understand it’s not about you and that other people are being crazy, and then take action that’s way more sane because you’re not distracted with being all hurt about it. Maybe I’m wrong. I’ve just thought several times when you mentioned conflict at work that you got through it well not so much because you weren’t inVOLVED… but because you weren’t inSANE.

    Maybe that’s the same as having a thick skin.

    In a sense, I agree with wanting not to have a thick skin. I want to be receptive in general. And I’m really interested in people in themselves, for some dumb reason. I admire accessibility and transparency. How that interacts with the whole blogging thing is always interesting.

    (In my case blog-wise, I’m sort of transparent, but almost nobody realizes this because my bad writing feels dense–inaccessible. But ironically, that density keeps the nasties away, at least from the comments. As the writing gets better, maybe all of that will change.)

  5. Karen, I dropped you an email. I want to keep reading your blog, especially to hear The Cop’s new names for the rest of the poses in primary series.

  6. Hi Karen
    Could it be that you are getting that feeling if you’re reading the blogs through ashtangi.net? That probably opens up to everyone’s blog who is a member of the net, and people are talking about many random things, not just yoga. I usually go to a few sites every morning and only once in a while to many others. I think you make some valid points and I have to email an invitation request if you decide to do this. However, since yours was the first yoga blog I ever read, I might mention how I found out about it. I subscribe to the emails of the ashtanga community in Mountainview (yoga is youth). They use it mainly as a platform to let people in their ashtanga community of things of interests, such as hikes, music shows, the birth of Adarsh & Heileen’s baby, the publishing of their annual calendar. One day, P. mentioned that he had come accross your blog and recommended it to the group. This was about the time that Anne Finstead, who taught there, was blogging from Mysore. If you were to go private, there would be people in the ashtanga world that would not have the benefit of reading your blog. That’s my opinion. I haven’t seen blog wars recently. There is one blogger whose comments and blog I never read, for reasons similar to the ones you list.

    (0v0) I love your writing. You’re right that its complexity makes it inaccessible. Personally, I’ve written too much this weekend.
    Cheers,
    Arturo

  7. I want to keep reading your blog too.

    cj x

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