I am a BLOGGER!

It is 6:30 a.m. Saturday morning. Ivy has been waking up before 6:00 the past few weeks. She is a smart one: she figured out I am the only one up and it is her one time during the day to have me all to herself. I love it too. Even though it is my "meditation" time, or time for my physical therapy exercises, these are both things I LOVE to procrastinate doing, so cuddling and reading is soooo much better.

Last night I decided I needed to start a blog. I was reading a book of poetry by my friend's husband, ( book: Down the Road the Children Go) and I was inspired. His poems are mostly written about his kids and for his kids, and like my author friend from Boise, who wrote a memoir for his twins during their time in Italy, I thought: I want to write some memories of my kids, for my kids. I gave up on the baby book long ago, so maybe this can be part baby book. Then again, this may be my one and only entry. So, that's part of it, but the other part is I need to keep journaling to manage my expectations of myself. My expectations are so sky-high and I don't always show myself compassion when I don't reach them (trying to practice the brahmaviharas: the Yoga Sutra and the Buddha taught these 4 pathways for cultivating a more loving, compassionate relationship with OURSELVES and others: lovingkindness-metta, compassion-karuna, joy-mudita, equanimity-upeksha). Writing through my thoughts provides moments of clarity.

I have always needed motivation for my journaling, and for some reason the blog appeals to me. What does that say? I need someone to read my writing? Could be. But, I still have never gotten quite comfortable with a "diary" maybe something about telling my inner most thoughts to no one but myself (who already knows them). Maybe it is my way of embracing technology since I don't Facebook and still feel the need to connect with others. So, what actually REALLY inspired me wasn't just the poetry book, or memoirs for my kids, but the need to write about yesterday. I wiped my kids' butts 10 times. My kids are 6, 4 and 4, and the fact I am wiping their butts is not an every day occurence, but a result of the outbreak of diarrhea that has plagued us for a week, culiminating with 10 " COME WIPE ME's" yesterday. That is A LOT of wiping.

This was a hard week. I talked about mudita (joy) in class and by the end of the week my joy had substantially diminished. In fact, by the time I missed the song singing (as did Piper and Ivy) at the Montessori open house (why call it an "open house" if there is a performance from 6:30-6:40?? ) and Ivy was hysterical and my state of overwhelmed-ness peaking, I just thought, "how am I going to do this? How am I going to run a yoga studio, teach classes, and manage a household?" It was my 5th commitment of the day, I still had our first Yakima Yoga staff meeting that evening and I was flat running out of steam. Luckily, I was able to soothe Ivy and watch her do her lessons at open house before I ran to my meeting. After jotting a zillion more things to add to my to-do list, I was brought to tears. Here in enters the Living My Yoga blog. When you lose perspective, the smallest tasks can seem like mountains. I 100% lost all perspective. Suddenly, all of these task were creeping closer to my June 1 deadline. I can't do it all. After canning asparagus yesterday ( I know. I just wrote canning asparagus and can't do it all in one sentence. That's my problem.) and doing the things I find joy in (yes, canning) the day got easier. My VOJ (voice of judgement here is a link to a great article: http://www.yogajournal.com/lifestyle/1951?utm_source=DailyInsight&utm_medium=newsletter&utm_content=b&utm_campaign=DI__2010_05_04 overtook my life and left me with a lack of joy for yoga. My dear yoga compadres provided a pep talk and my perspective is slowly becoming less cloudy (yoga=lifting the veil in order to see ourselves more clearly and lessen the suffering). There are always going to be days like Thursday. And there will always be friends to save us from ourselves.