Blessed

For all of the...

Moments lived

Exquisite people I've had the pleasure of connecting with

Naps

Yoga poses

Pages written

Pages read

Dreams begun

Gifts of time, trinkets, and love

Yes's and No's

People who've come in and out like tides

Clarity

Times I've spoken freely and felt the resounding 'yes' in my chest and through my toes

Beautiful places I've seen

Beautiful people I've loved

Wounds I've nursed

Lessons I've learned, even the ugly ones that had to knock me on my ass

Growing, the painful and the pixie-like

My fairy godmothers and Auntie Mames

Mirrors

Music

Jumping into fires and of cliffs

Walks

Dances

Smiles and tears

I thank this year and the people (myself included) and things who showed up.

Flourish

All of the end of the year hoopla and nonsense grates upon me. Best of, worst of, a year in pictures, celebrity x, y, or z of 2013. Exhausting and unnecessary. We don't need yearbooks of other people's lives. We don't need to measure our metrics of success up against someone else's. I'm having a pretty irritating weekend. Someone in my presence is posting myriads of motivational drivel about the importance of seizing the moment and then playing games on the phone. I'm not throwing stones. I'm just tired of messes from the poorly prepared or unable/ unwilling to follow through. I don't want to play semantics with reasons why they aren't moving forward in the 'direction of their dreams'. I don't want an ontological debate or to get into culturalist, universalist, essentialist, or constructivist conversations on the dialogic nature of human behaviors and positioning in society and self-concept. I just want a breather. I want to work on my stuff and not be force fed the fluffy bullshit of canned motivation with 0 heart, gonads or brains behind it. I believe the chicos would paraphrase this post as STFU. 

13 & change weeks of grace...

There are 95 days between me and 33. Just over 13 weeks to go.

Here's the check in: weight is higher than it was at the outset. I have a lead on a new studio for Bellyfit and I'm scheduling my first 2-3 practicum classes for the downtime between Christmas and New Year's at another location. I have yet to  learn how to sew & start my dissertation. I am further along on my proposal than ever and have simplified my data collection incredibly. I'm thrilled with the way some things are moving and realize that I can change the rest. Baby steps. Cleaning up the eating and the thinking, and preparing myself for the best of what's to come.

Tangibles this week: stay within calories for eating. Sleep on a schedule- yes it is 2:13 in the morning right now... Hot cocoa is not an evening drink. Move on the proposal. Check into the most pertinent resources and write. 2 hours a day. Practice and close on a studio for the rest of my practicum & to teach. Do something just for fun everyday. Deep breaths. It is all a gift. All of it.

Dragons and dinosaurs

I think we need to believe in dangerous things. In nearly infallible beings... In beings so strong and so threatening that their own demise is something to write legends and poetry about.

I think we need to have guardians of our treasures: something to guard that which makes us rich from the rest of the world. So we build our towers and invite our dragons to come and stand watch. We create our own victim hood when we realize we've become prisoners of our own design.

It's exhausting. My dragon is more like a bucolic bouncer, standing at velvet ropes and breathing out bile and disapproval when he isn't bouncing worthless young men out of the club. He mitigates my fears... He thinks he's protecting me from the world and myself, but he can't... And I don't think my inner princess needs to wait to come out from behind him until someone has proven himself both beautiful and bold... She isn't waiting for someone valiant who will be her soft place to land... She's working on her sword fighting and teaching the dragon how to dance.