Today was day five of a seven day hot yoga marathon. There is no one good reason why I am doing this, other than feeling like I need a little detox, particularly before the crazy kicks off next week. I did this once before, sometime last year, and I don’t remember it having quite as big of an impact as it is having now. For the first three days, every ache, pain, and complaint that had been sitting anywhere in my body surfaced. By the third night it passed, and I was sleeping better.
This afternoon class slipped by in a minute, and now, stillness. Issues that were a frenzy in my head a week ago are less frantic. Ah.
Earlier today I was regretting not going to wordcamp Boston; the event looked fun enough, but mostly it was an opportunity for a solo trip to Boston that I could write off. Something has been calling me back to Boston lately, calling me to go back there alone. I think of it often, and for the past couple of weeks I have been dreaming of the city.
How incredibly freaking cool is it that in thirty seconds I can find a picture of the exact intersection that has been in my head for days?
The memory that I come back to over and over again is of one Saturday morning in late September or early October of my sophomore year when I was awake at some ridiculously early hour for a college student. I put on a new sweater and purple blazer and went for a walk, all the way down to and through the commons. I remember walking back, being at the intersection of Commonwealth Avenue and the commons and starting to sweat as the day got warmer. I do not know what it is about this moment that is important, but it keeps coming up.*
As this evening rolls by, I am thinking ahead to WordCamp Midatlantic, and wondering about the future of this blog of mine. I am not sure that what I do fits into any one category, although my tagline does sum it up fairly well, especially the “other fixations” part. I have only recently gotten comfortable with the idea of acknowledging my audience (hi, audience!), but if I want to grow this, and I guess I do, I wonder how I am going to define myself, and if I need to narrow my focus. “I write fiction, and about vegan baking and yoga and airy fairy spiritual stuff, and hot shoes and sexy feet and boys who are into hot shoes and sexy feet, and sometimes word porn, and whatever else I’m obsessed with this month,” is a lot harder to fit on a badge than “mommyblogger.”
(At TEDxMidatlantic, the “talk to me about” section of my badge was supposed to say something about “writing, yoga, your favorite joke,” and a bunch of other stuff. When it printed, that was shortened to, “writing, yoga, your av. joke,” which turned out to be apropos, as there were abundant av. issues early in the day.)
In April it will be six years that I have been blogging -publicly for the past three- and what surprises me about the little audience I draw is that a) Scott’s friends are far more entertained by me than my friends, especially surprising since Scott had no interest in reading my blog until I asked him repeatedly to read it because it kind of hurt my feelings that he wasn’t interested; b) honest to god, people keep reading this stuff even though I’m only funny, like, what, an eighth of the time? Sixteenth? and c) I have inspired at least two women to paint their toenails, and that is just cool.
The point is that in all of this stillness, I have questions rising about where I am going, but no real need for answers, and yoga is good. I am just looking forward to seeing how this part of my life unfolds, because I have a feeling that it is going to unfold in a big way this year.
Maybe it is like that episode of Buffy in season five, when Buffy goes catatonic and Willow enters Buffy’s mind and sees her going to the bookshelf over and over again.
