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On Wednesday, we (as in, 90% of this work fell to The Cop) moved My Gift back down to the next town over, where she will do her senior year. On moving day, I took a meeting from 10 AM until noon, then we drove up to her place up north (a 2 hour drive), picked up a U-Haul, packed it (Go, Cop!), drove back down here, unpacked (You’re a god, Cop!) and got her set up a bit. Wrapped up at 11 PM. Note to self: next time she moves, hire a mover. It wasn’t fun. (Thank goodness The Cop does Crossfit.)

Still, it’s great to have her close by again. Today I’ll bring her coffee and meet the new kitten she adopted on Friday & we’ll wait for the internet/cable guy.

I am taking a week and a half off from work. Badly needed down time. My goal? To not think about more than one thing at a time and to not hurry to do anything for the whole time I’m off. God, it’s sweet. My job is all about multi-tasking and moving as fast as possible at all times. Not healthy. Not by a long shot. And not optimally efficient, for that matter. The illusion is that the more I do and the faster I do it, the more gets done. But 1) at what cost? and 2) is it even true (that more’s getting done)?

I’m going to try to experiment with one-thing at a time when I get back to work. If nothing else, it makes life MUCH more pleasant. I was definitely work- and task-crazed. It’s an insidious addiction.

Practice. I’ve been suffering a bit with this business of having a practice I suck at. Feeling pretty discouraged for a couple of days there — probably in part because of overwork and burnt-outness. I didn’t have huge reserves of emotional resilience. I don’t care what anyone says — intermediate practice is tough for me, and it takes some oomph to go in and work through it day after day.

But I haven’t done jack since Wednesday except practice and read and sleep (woohoo!) and it seems like yesterday’s practice got me back in a more stable frame of mind. And the fact that it is led primary on
Saturday helps.

There was a small contingent of guys who appeared to be friends of Muscle Man at led primary. Young (in their 20s), muscle heavy, highly tattooed. Still working on their binds and lotuses, but pressing up into handstands & doing aerial transitions all over the place. Now that I think about it, they may be climbers. Definitely had the bohemian sub-culture thing going on. I am so accustomed to the noodly people (generally female) of yoga that I was happy to see some guys troop into the room. And not noodly yoga guys. Mesomorphs.

Class was primary and then a quick selection of intermediate favorites. MM asked me to demonstrate laghu vajrasana before we all tried it. No prob. I can laghu v ’til the cows come home and always have been able to. I don’t even think about it when I practice it every morning, ’cause I’m in the midst of trying to wring all the kapo prep out of ustrasana, then turning my thoughts toward the imminent attempt at kapotasana.

So when one of the tattooed contingent came over as I was leaving class and said, “That was awesome,” I didn’t understand what he was talking about. “That pose you demoed,” he said, “It was beautiful.”

Ha! Silly me. I’ve managed to totally devalue what I’m good at and hyperfocus on the stuff that needs work. (“If I can do laghu vajrasana, it must not be that hard!”) I have to admit, though, it really pleased me to have someone strong give me props about a strength pose. I need to savor my strength a bit more. And I also think we need more focus on strength in Ashtanga. The hell with this flexibility BS.