The Revolution Begins...

Who I want to be when I grow up. via FFFFOUND!

Nearly 25 of us - lycra-clad, pony-tailed, mostly women, ranging in age from college students to grandmothers - crowded into the smaller room of the yoga studio to begin our 40 Day Yoga Challenge: Revolution from Within.

The program of 40 consecutive days of yoga, meditation, dietary changes, and calm focusing is based on noted yogi Baron Baptiste's book, 40 Days to Personal Revolution: A Breakthrough Program to Radically Change Your Body and Awaken the Sacred Within Your Soul.  

 

Big promises for a program of just over a month, but my long-time yoga teacher, in whom I have great trust, promises that it is "ahhhh...mayyyyzzzing!"  

Having felt a bit like a hamster on a treadmill for the past few years - unsteadily balancing grad school, fieldwork, personal life, work, learning to be a wife - it felt like time to reclaim a bit of spaciousness and sanity in my life.  And fitness.  I spent a month over the holidays doing nothing but eating delicious foods (probably as a come down from the hectic pace that preceded the holidays), and a month after the holiday fighting off a vicious cold (ditto).  Time to ratchet back a bit and take stock of the moment.


There wasn't much active, hatha yoga in the two hour orientation today, though we were all prepared with our stretchy pants and yoga mats.  Instead, the teachers invoked the Four Directions to watch over us and purify our practice during this program.  I often feel a little itchy when well-meaning white people employ Native American practices, and today was no exception.  The invocation seemed to be be half prayer, half instructions to the students.  I would have preferred them separately.  Also, I'm unclear on the connection between an ancient eastern Indian practice, and the Native American tradition.... is there really a match?  Had we started off chanting in Sanskrit, I would have been more at ease.  However,  I'm trying to calm my judgmental, hyper-analytical mind, and what better time to begin than the beginning of the first class?  Judgment noted and set aside.


The teachers gave some instructions on food choices, and noting our mood and energy level when we eat.  I think that will be helpful.  Even more, I need to note what I'm doing when I don't eat.  During the week, I often get so caught up in meeting a deadline that I forget to eat, ending up grumpy and lightheaded hours later.  I'm not really sure why this happens, and I know my days would be more pleasant if I ate healthy meals on a regular basis.  This is a good reminder to pay attention to that.


Finally, we were released from our cross legged positions for a few Sun Salutations.  I was ready to move, it felt good to stretch.  But after only two Sun Salutations, we sat down again to proceed with introductions, facilitated by a Native American (again??) "talking stick."  Yes, it helps group process to have an item for people to hold as they speak, but this east-west mashup is bugging me.  Several people shared trying personal circumstances that had brought them to the class.  Tears flowed.  People shared their goals and desires for the class - for me, a greater sense of spaciousness and ease in my life, and a deepening of my yoga practice.  Two people had been signed up by others - a husband and father, respectively - and the lone man in the class was there because his wife was also there.  So many different motivations brought people to this program, and now we set out on a journey together.


I think the biggest challenge will be simply getting to yoga class six times a week.  Usually, I go once or twice a week, and practice a few days on my own.  Now I need to carve out time to get across town every day, and to meditate for five minutes each morning and evening.  I'll try to write about it each day, and share my progress.

The dilemma of the modern wife

With the light slanting to indicate autumn, and the Bay Area temperatures finally approximating summer, I am transported to this time last year, and eagerly anticipating our first wedding anniversary six weeks from now.

During that week, Eric and I both have work-related travel scheduled.  I was adamant that we should be together at least some time during the weekend on which our anniversary falls.  He'll return from the east coast a day before I have to depart for an annual departmental retreat.

But wait!  I've been invited to a week-long planning meeting for a really interesting project in Asia the same week.  Participating in the meeting would mean missing the departmental retreat, and leaving the US two days before our anniversary.  This, after I insisted that he get home in time to celebrate! 

The timing feels like a cosmic joke:  take the romantic route, choose to celebrate your anniversary on the actual day; or take the professional route, and jet off to Asia instead.  To be clear,  Eric is absolutely fine with me grabbing this opportunity now, and celebrating our anniversary with a long weekend up the coast later in the fall. 

I'm the romantic here: we have a first anniversary only once, and I'd like to eat thawed wedding cake and dance around in my wedding dress on the actual day.  The practical and ambitious side of me knows this is a great opportunity, and I'd be foolish to pass it up.  Still, do they have to be on the same day? 

What would you do, oh recent wives and brides-to-be???

What a difference a year makes!

Psyche!  This is not a wedding anniversary post.  For that, you'll have to wait a couple more months.

This is a doctorate anniversary post.  Equally significant in my mind.*  The last academic hurdle: now I get to learn to be the expert.  Sure, there are other hoops to jump through:  tenure/ contract renewal, The Book, this #@$)~*%# article that's been torturing me all summer.  For now, it's nice to know that I've got the Seal of Approval, entitling me to take on such projects.

Last year, I didn't even know it was summer.  The only evidence of change was the creep of the afternoon sun up my office walls, where I was cloistered, 12-18 hours a day, pounding away at the dissertation that I had rashly promised my future employers I could complete in a year.

That hasty promise, made months before I began writing, before I even began analyzing the data, while I was, in fact, still in the field collecting data, came back to bite me in the butt** last summer as I typed furiously to meet a deadline that my advisor had initially said was impossible.  I met it without a day to spare.

As 18th century author and lexiographer Samuel Johnson said, the prospect of a hanging concentrates the mind wonderfully.  Indeed.  I've always been deadline driven, and the biggest writing project of my life was no exception.

But, I missed some of my favorite things in life: ice cream on warm evenings, chatting with friends over cold drinks, travel, mountain hikes.  All was put on hold for the tyranny of my final academic deadline.  The constant panic and anxiety I felt spurred me on to work harder - when it didn't paralyze me. I was happy to have wedding planning as a constructive distraction when the dissertation felt just too weighty.

This summer, though, this summer... it's SUMMER!***  Though Eric had his own major deadline this summer, we've made the most of our freedom from strict schedules.  We started out here, in May, following a work-gig that took Eric to Milan:

Bonus points if you know the locale.

Hint.  (They clearly have great taste!)

By early June, we were soaking in art in Florence.

On a tour of a Tuscan castle winery, surrounded by a bunch of 20-something honeymooners from the States, we realized that it wasn't too late to consider our trip Part III of Multi-part Global Honeymoon Tour.

Former family home to the namesake of the Verrazzano Bridge

Next stop on the Global Honeymoon Tour was Seward, Alaska, where the food didn't exactly live up to that of Italy.

 The best and biggest dinner around.

We earned our dinner by hunting the ever-elusive Loch Ness Monster...

(Ok, you got me.  It's really a mother and baby humpback whale playing.  Nessie prefers the Atlantic.)

....communing with friendly marmots (which apparently could grow to super-size with climate change)...

and visiting yet another receding glacier****...

Where it was in 1926

The Seward Exit Glacier today.

One of my work projects this summer took me to this spectacular spot, where people live off the grid, dependent on the sun for all their energy, and the mountain snowmelt for their all their water, including for the organic gardens. I was able to unplug from internet and gaze at the Milky Way each night for an entire blissful week.  What a treat to have work that requires being in these beautiful mountains!

Lama Foundation, New Mexico

Finally, back home, we took in some local nature, at the awesome National Seashore just north of our wedding site.... more on that tomorrow.




* And all the sweeter (and way more bearable) for having someone to share it with.  I cover my ears when he makes noises about getting a PhD.  Does he really want to enter that special hell???


**Quite literally. I developed a tailbone injury from spending so much time sitting!  My one break from the desk chair was to see the physical therapist who insisted that I get more exercise.


*** You'd never know it from the foggy, chilly weather here in the Bay, though.

**** The cynical among you may be asking what my contribution to climate change is, with all this flying around.  This issue continues to vex me.  My work and family life are both international in scope, and it's hard to reconcile keeping up with my family and my field while being worried about climate change.  When I'm home, I rely on my bike and hope that it offsets my plane travel a little.

Whither spring?

Another rainy weekend. Following on a too busy week. Many, minor professional ups and downs for the Mr. and myself, all part of our crazy, wonderful lives in academia. The fabulous - and frustrating - thing about academia (or is it life?) is that it's always in flux, never predictable. Opportunities arise and fall away. Decisions are ever pending, ever changeable.

I learned about an amazing post-doctoral position across the country. Was it the sublime opportunity to do months of uninterrupted writing that would result in numerous published articles and a book, catapulting me to academic fame - or at least tenure? Or was it a siren song, threatening to draw me away from all that I love: my home, my friends, my job, the Bay Area, and most of all, my new husband? Husband wants what's best for me; I want what's best for our marriage.

My dissertation advisor and current departmental chair encouraged me to apply, suggesting that the prestige of a postdoc could only enhance my future career success. Another advisor, who knows me better, discouraged me, pointing out that I've 'got it made' with a job and husband in a place I love.

It's hard to know what to do. Initially, I planned to apply, thinking that the chances of getting it are relatively slim anyway, and I could sort out my decision if and when I came to that. On the other hand, there's nothing in me that wants to move across the country right now... but is that just exhaustion, following on the heels of a year full of transitions?

One more week until spring break - to be spent catching up on home and work tasks. Including getting hooked up with my new doctor and dentist, because, according to this stress test, via 2000 Dollar Wedding, I have "High susceptibility to stress-related illness." Yikes.

Spring break, and even better, SUMMER, can't come soon enough.

If it were sunny, I'd be wearing this

or this

with this, via Oh Joy!


or this

Howdy, Pardner!: An argument for marriage

I always look forward to reading the Modern Love columns in the Sunday New York Times. This week's, in which the editor of the column distills some of his wisdom gleaned from reviewing hundreds of submissions over the years, was particularly insightful.

He addressed a qualm about marriage that both the Mr. and myself have expressed - to each other - since we got engaged: is it possible, or even reasonable, to stay faithful to one person for dozens upon dozens of years? That we're both older than your 'average' newlywed takes a few years off that count, but we're still looking a loooooooong way into the future. How to sustain a relationship until we're in rocking chairs?

The insightful Daniel Jones suggests it's all about confiding such concerns, and offers this reassurance:

Some people think we live too long to commit to one person for life. Monogamy may have made sense a few centuries ago, they argue, when we tended to die in our 40s (after raising a dozen children). But being with the same person well into our 70s and 80s? That simply can’t be natural.

This is a question, by the way, asked almost exclusively by people in their 40s (or younger). People in their 70s and 80s do not ask this question. They are, by and large, very happy to have shared a lifetime with the same person.

O.K., but that’s three decades before the appreciation kicks in. What if you want to feel appreciated now? And what if the person who makes you feel appreciated isn’t your spouse?

Here’s a heartening trend — husbands and wives choosing to talk honestly with each other about their needs, desires and temptations, even (or especially) when they threaten the marriage. In the stories crossing my desk, sneaking is increasingly being replaced by confiding. And the sky isn’t falling and clothes aren’t being thrown from windows. The conversations are hard, rage may have to be expressed, but many couples find a way through.

After reading hundreds of columns, Mr. Jones is no stranger to the 'what to call your spouse' question, as it relates to all sorts of couples. His answer, which could resolve both the Trouble with Wife, and the Introduction Conundrum, is for all of us - regardless of gender or orientation - to refer to our partners as just that: partners. With a spot-on allusion to Dr. Seuss, he writes:

Why not tear a page from the wranglers’ handbook and require all married folk to call each other partner? Think of the benefits. Not only would life start to sound like a permanent square dance, we’d also lose the language that distinguishes gay marriage from straight. And perhaps like Dr. Seuss’s famous Star-Belly Sneetches, who finally learn that no one kind of Sneetch is the best on the beach, we’ll see that marriage is marriage, meant for devotion that thrives, and not just for unions of straight husbands and wives.

Though I referred to Mr. Barefoot as my 'partner' before we got married - as did/do most of my friends with their respective sweethearts - I've made a conscious effort to recognize our new status in my references to him. But, now I wonder, why? There's the social recognition of a public commitment -- relevant in the personal arena, less so in the professional one. It's not really the business of my professional colleagues and students what my marital status is. And I wear a ring, so people will most likely assume I'm married. In any case, I like the gender and orientation neutrality of 'partner,' the solidarity with same-sex couples, and the whiff of Wild West cowboys and ranches, so... meet my partner, Mr. Barefoot.