rue-madame's Diaryland Diary

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

this was on my teabag! \"You are not a human being having a spiritual experience but a spiritual being having a human experience.\"

Every morning after yoga, I try to bring a little of that calm and centered-ness home with me and it rarely works.

A couple of times I�ve been stymied by complete strangers. One time, it was a little cold out so I was wearing a cap and a coat, and an old woman said to me as I walked by, �Kind of cold out?� to which I replied, �I think so� whereupon she muttered something nasty and mean in my direction. Huh? In San Francisco, I gave up taking the streetcar to and from class because there was invariably someone standing or sitting near me who was intent on ruining my day. Sometimes I wish I were 6 feet tall and 300 pounds because I know that then, no one would give me any kind of shit.

It just completely bums me out that I am unable to maintain a yogic feeling of compassion and optimism outside of class. I know it�s unrealistic to expect those feelings to become an armor against all the assholes on the planet, but that is what I�d like. And I suppose that in some ways, that weakness (for lack of a better word) is precisely what I am working towards by committing to a daily practice. Maybe this is where the psychotherapy comes in?

Anyway, these days it is my very own boyfriend who is preventing me from staying on my kumbaya high. He is having a crisis about finding a job, and has been slowly unravelling. Today I found him surfing some hack, second-rate design sites, and I just had to put my foot down. I felt like a mom scolding her kid, but I could not help myself. Yeah, it�s sad to have no money, and yeah, it�s sad that there are very few industrial design offices in Los Angeles, but do not waste time considering jobs that are beneath you just because you�re feeling desperate. Goddamn, it took every ounce of strength in my body not to reach over and shake his brain loose from its cranial hinges. Why do people do this? Aaargh!!!!

Anyway, we talked it out (or rather, I coaxed the reluctant words out of his body) and helped him make some decisions. So now, *hopefully*, he is feeling a little more positive about his mission in life.I�ve made him see that maybe his ideal job is elsewhere (it doesn�t matter if we have to move again or if we have to maintain a long-distance relationship,) that maybe his ideal job doesn�t exist (I can�t work for The Man, so this makes perfect sense to me,) that maybe he needs to create his ideal job (it doesn�t matter if you have to take a dumb part-time job to make space/time for your own work.) I�ve never understood why people think it�s so hard to look at your life from the outside and assess what needs altering. Fear of change can be so crippling.

Which brings me to my latest crazy thought: going from being a graphic designer to being a yoga teacher. It will take a few years for that transformation to take effect but I can actually visualize it. And I get really excited when I think about a life free of deadlines, print schedules, budgets and branding guidelines. I also get pretty psyched when I consider that there are no Anusara yoga schools in Paris, and that I could open a bilingual studio for French and English-speaking students.

== time out to make a cappuccino ==

Ugh. My client just called and I need to rework 3 PhotoShop files for one of the brochures I designed. So much for all of this philosophizing, this girl�s gotta get cracking.

5:06 p.m. - 2002-03-06

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

previous - next