I haven’t written very much in the past month because I’ve been in my yoga teacher training intensive which means I was busy from 9am until 6pm, Monday through Friday, then another hour or so for my commute each way to and from SoHo, so between the actual class and the homework, I had zero time to write.
But it was a transformative experience. It really was. The week before the training started when I saw my kundalini teacher for the last time, she told me I’d have a transformative experience and she wasn’t lying. I truly did. We all did. Every single person in the training with me is going to be a friend for the rest of my life. There were so many tears during our closing ceremonies.
Today felt like the first day of the rest of my new life. It sounds so cliche but I’m just free writing right now to break the silence on here. I’m not sure what exactly I want to do next, but I know that applying for every-and-any job is no longer a good option. I have savings and I don’t spend a lot, so I can take my time. I’ll teach where and when possible. I have insurance, albeit not very good insurance, but insurance nevertheless. (At least until the ACA is repealed!)
Fear can fuck off for once. I’m going to try this my way.
J and I made a resolution to start a habit of journaling for 5 minutes a day – not to each other, but on our own, and to be honest, it was his idea that he was doing and I piggy-backed on it.
Because I suck at journaling. Seriously, I have a gold journal that I bought at the end of December 2013 that I still have yet to fill in it’s entirety. It is 2017 now. BUT with my new habit of daily journaling, and recording my food diaries in the same journal now, I’m on my way to finishing it in the next week or so. Five minutes goes by really quickly. It feels like too short of a time to record all the thoughts in my monkey mind.
Anyways: journaling for just five minutes a day helps me get my thoughts onto paper and it’s also made it much easier to write in general. I have another blog that I’ve written two entries for in the last week after posting maybe 3 times in the last 6 months. And my last entry about Warsaw? Completely in-the-moment. There was no planning and queuing of that entry.
Another new habit that I’ve taken on is a kundalini meditation for prosperity. I’m on day 4 of the 40 day practice. I need it now more than ever before.
If you can make one last-minute, semi-late resolution, I couldn’t recommend a daily 5-minute journaling practice more highly.
If I’ve been a little quiet the last couple of weeks it’s because a) the atrocity of the election, and b) I was laid off two weeks ago. The first part of that sentence makes me way more sad than the second part.
My layoff was not really a surprise. There was a hiring freeze, so there was no recruiting to be done, and running the office and HR for a staff of 15 was not a full time job. Honestly, I was bored and just sticking around so I wouldn’t look like I was jumping around again on future resumes. The office felt cold for the last few months. But I do miss most of my colleagues. They were (are) a good group.
Since I have savings, I decided to take a week off before I dove into job hunting 100% and after the election on Tuesday night, I could not have been happier to not have to show my face to the world or be forced to talk to people in an office. The Democrats fucked up and nominated a bad candidate (not saying she was unqualified, just not a good candidate because she was too strongly disliked). I never thought Clinton had it in the bag, despite what polls told us, and my deepest fears were confirmed that the American people are, collectively, pretty stupid. Clinton included. She didn’t even GO to Wisconsin. Come on.
How did I cope on Wednesday? I ordered a Trump cat toy off Amazon so she could scratch his face off and went to yoga.
The toy didn’t go as planned. She likes to sleep with it. I pretend she’s smothering it.
I’ve spent the last two weeks going to yoga daily, cooking, sending out resumes, chatting with recruiters, and hanging out with my cat (her birthday is tomorrow, so I’ll tell her you all say happy birthday). I’m also shocked at how much fun unemployment is with a cat. Speaking of cats, I’m volunteering with a few adoption organizations to clean and feed cats who are waiting to be adopted at the UWS Petcos. This is also fun. And kind of sad. I might adopt 5 more cats. Who knows. No promises.
And while contemplating my next steps, given my savings and severance, I’m considering doing a 200-hour yoga teacher training course in January with one of my favorite teachers. I don’t know if I necessarily want to teach yoga, but it’s been a constant thing in my life for so many years now and I want to deepen my understanding of the practice. So, I might sign up for that and do temp work until then to keep myself afloat.
Lastly, I’ve been sucking at this blogging thing lately. I’m still backlogged on my Poland posts and I have so many things that I could just ramble about. So, I’m going to try write once a day if it kills me. Starting today, starting now. Here’s to post #1!
(Really, lastly, don’t forget to donate to Planned Parenthood.)
That Girl Allison 