Hi again.  i'm back after all this time.  I don't really expect anyone to read this or find it very interesting, which is fine because it is really for me anyway.  I feel i need an outlet and an anonymous blog is just te thing right now.

topics:
sadhana
friends
life activities
"success" and "failure"
frustration
willpower

sadhana.  yoga in gerneral actually.  I am really frustrated because i feel that i am not progressing, and may even  be backsliding.  this is annoying since i progressed so much during the month i was at YTT and the first month i was back from that.  now i feel like the slow kid in class again.  last week they all started doing forearm balance, and i didnt even attempt because i felt that i was about to start crying and i knew if i tried and failed, i would cry, and i didn't feel like crying in class.  it's embarassing.  so i left a little early, which is also embarrassing but not as bad.  and i didn't go on monday evening, and i don't think i'm going to go this morning.  I feel like each class i skip makes me less good at yoga and then i am mre inclined to skip the next class.  which is certainly a vicious cycle! but what can i do when i keep bgetting worse and worse instead of better and better?

and then i come up with a plan to reverse this trend, like i will do this one kinda hard dvd everry day and then in a week i will be way better and make it through a class.  but then schedules happen, throughout the week, and i only end up doing it twice or so.  cycle repeats.

last week i slept a lot.  i gave up caffeine (only green tea, but still, i seem to be remarkably sensitive) and couldn't wake up for like four days.  today i was trying to get on an early-rising schedule again.  alarm went off at 5:30 and i was like, "what the hell is that noise???" and turned it off and slept until about 8:30, by which time i was pretty depressed about oversleeping, and once again feeling like an asshole for "failing" at a goal of mine.  Which translated into not wanting to go to pilates and yoga this morning, becuase of feeling hungry and remembering last week's "failure" and not wanting to repeat, and being aware that this past week of not much asana would mean that a repeat performance of lameness is certainly not out of the question.  *sigh* so now i have slept in, and am skipping yoga, which means i am two for two on the "failing" to meet my goals for the day, and it's only 9:12 on a saturday.  kee-rist.

---------

So here i sit.  just ate a hard-boiled egg.  and it's raining, which i love, rain is my favorite kind of weather.

My good friend (whom i've talked about here before, actually) yesterday said to me, "in an infinite game, success is continuing to play."  An excellent piece of thought from "fininte and infinite games" which book i highly recommend to everyone who likes to think about life.  I started trying to apply it to my current understandings of my life.  continuing to play.... infinite or finite games.... which do i see before me now?

---------

To be honest, i really do need structure and organization and willpower, all those seemingly harsh and non-organic and non-flowing things.  It is appealing in a way to say, nah, go with the flow, what happens happens.  But i know from experience that what "happens," with me, is most likely that i sit around and do things like watching an entire tv series on dvd in two weeks, or several books in a row. and end up feeling unhealthy and unwell and unhappy.  Whereas, with just a little bit of "must-do" attitude, i end up going for walks in the woods and hitting the yoga mat with enthusiasm and going out there and doing trainings, seeing people, reaching for the next big thing.  and i end up tired, enthused, and happy.

So, to anwer my inner stoner, the one who says, "hey man, relax, don't try so hard, dude, life isn't about striving, be more yogic," i say, TAPAS.  Dicipline is yogic.  not to say that the only yogic attitude is one of tapas, but from where i sit, with a serious dearth of it and starting to get depressed about it, tapas is just what i need.

well that brings me to the next problem, though.  once i have decided, "i'm getting up at 5:30 tomorrow," how on earth do i force myself to actually do it when that horrible alarm clamors on and my head feels full of mud?  It is not so hard after a week of consistency,  but that first time can take a week just to make it happen.  ugh.

When i was in school, I was taking a crazy amount of art history classes all at once. art history is a very paper-heavy subject, so  i had at least one, usually more papers due every week. i had to make a study schedule and stick to it so that i didn't fall behind.  I got one of those planners that has each hour written on it, and i literally scheduled every hour of my day on a weekly basis.  First i wrote in the classes, and then i wrote in the due dates for all assignements.  Then i worked backwards and filled in each step of each assignment, so that my days were blocked off with things like "Lunch: proof second draft of pantheon essay" and "library: print first draft of jackson pollock," as well as things like "free time" and "relax."  That way, i just looked at my schedule and went and did it, no deliberating necessary.  I did this because procrastination was simply not an option that semester: if i had put off one thing, i would not have had time to do it at the last minute becuase by then i would have to be working on something else.  it all fit together like bricks, and scheduling in free time meant that i coiuld enjoy my free time without guilt, and that i didn't try to "steal" free time elsewhere because i knew it would come up later.

As i write about this, i am reminded of writing out yoga lessons.  Part of my desire to do YTT was to learn how to plan and sequence a yoga experience.  usually when i do my own sadhana, i just flow from one thing to the next, based on what my body tells me it needs right then.  like if i am tired and groggy maybe i'll do kappalabhati or a series of quick suryanamaskara, or if i'm feeling pumped i will throw in some one-legged-side-kick adho mukha svanasana.  Well i wrote a plan out a week ago for the yoga class i am beginning to teach, and just to get a sense of the flow of it, i did it myself a few times in my personal sadhana.  I found that while the flow was not quite up to my level, which is as it should be since i wouldn't be teaching things i haven't really learned yet, it was really great to work off a peice of paper.   it kept me on track and kept me from stopping mid-stream to think about where i was going next.  so then i was thinking, i should write my own "classes" as well.  Write a plan for my own personal sadhanas.  that way i can just read it off the list and not have to think about it overmuch, just keep flowing, plus i would have a record of what poses i do each time and i would be able to see a progression from day to day or month to month.

feelings of failure and inadequecy make me ambitious. and depressed,  it's a very strange combination, born of frustration with my personal status quo.

on a more global life level, i think it may be time to revive that planning-the-whole-day thing.  i don't want to carry that big of a planner around with me, but i think i can get one that will fit in the shoulder bag i carry and still have the hours of the day marked in it.  then i can go over each week and plan out what needs to happen when.  This would also be good because i could start writing my bills in it, so that i know when things are due and don't have to check bills one by one online.

staples today maybe? or tomorrow?