The other day I said to myself, “I need to set my own course and steer my own ship.”

What? 

I never think of my life as a sea journey. Not at all. But that metaphor of navigating rough seas, bounding through crests and troughs, weathering the lashing winds to reach my destination, just spurted out.

Another metaphor I use to describe my life is the long hike. 

Picture Cheryl Strayed’s journey along the Pacific Crest Trail in her memoir, Wild. 

Or people pilgrimaging along the Camino de Santiago, or the Appalachian Trail. 

But do I actually see my life as a series of uphills and downhills, peaks and valleys? Is my life just a matter of  putting one foot in front of the other? 

Most of the time, no. 

But how many times have I coached myself (and my yoga students) with that tired line that “the journey of a hundred miles begins with one single step?” 

Hundreds.

These metaphors are so ubiquitous that they just trip off the tongue. We say this stuff without ever considering if it fits how we feel.

Everyone is now on some kind of a journey: a weight-loss journey, a healing journey, a sobriety journey, a trauma-healing journey, and even (raises hand here) a sourdough journey.

If this journey metaphor works for you, great, but what if it doesn’t, and you’re just mouthing cultural cliches? Maybe we need to think about how we actually see our lives, and align our metaphors to fit better. 

I don’t see my life as a journey. 

I’ve considered switching to “Odyssey,” but that doesn’t work either. 

Yeah, sometimes I see myself caught between Scylla and Charybdis, or needing to put wax in my ears to resist the siren song of some bad-for-me thing I can’t resist, but most of the time, no. My life isn’t an odyssey either. 

When I see myself moving through life, moving through time, I see the calendar, I see seasons. I am a writer. I am a yoga teacher. I see my life as a set of seasonal projects on a long-running calendar. 

The calendar is the spine of my life: years, quarters, months. Seasons, in the Ayurvedic sense, provide elemental themes for each period. Within each season, I run a small number of projects that fit the season’s mood and my own. 

For example, this spring (the Kapha season in Ayurveda), I focused on spring cleaning and decluttering.

In my teaching, I built gentle strengthening sequences to prepare my students for the upcoming summer sports and gardening season. 

In my reading, I switched to easy-to-read popular novels (Margo’s Got Money Problems, Yesteryear).

My life isn’t moving down a path; it’s tending projects that belong to this season, in this body, in this place.

Instead of a journey, I now want to get into the habit of saying, “This season’s project in my life is…” or “I’m in a pitta-tinged phase of my work, so my current project is…”

This new metaphor allows endings to become completions rather than failures. I can pause or archive a project at season’s end without implying that I abandoned my path.

Rest is baked in. A fallow or integration season isn’t a detour from the journey, but allows it to emerge.

I can run multiple projects at the same time, like a small writing project and a small teaching experiment, without feeling that everything must serve one overarching epic.

Having a consciously chosen metaphor (or cluster of them) helps you see your patterns. Someone whose life metaphor is a garden, will evaluate decisions in terms of what they’re tending, pruning, or allowing to go to seed, which is more meaningful than, “I guess I’m on some vague journey.”

I think the point isn’t to find the perfect metaphor for your life, but rather to reclaim authorship over the language that shapes your sense of duration and purpose. 

Some days, “hike” or “odyssey” are useful metaphors; a specific transition is a mountain pass; and that one phone call was a battle. But having a consciously chosen metaphor for your life is important because metaphors steer your moods, set your priorities, and clarify your identity.

Someone had hit a deer right outside our house, and it was dying on our lawn.

The car that hit it never stopped, and there was a fender on the road and pieces of a headlight. 

G,  still in an anesthesia stupor, wrapped in a blanket, yelled at me to, “Stay there! Don’t look! A deer is dying on our lawn!”

She grabbed her phone and called campus police, who called the town police, and soon a cop was in the yard.

 I waited in the kitchen, actively not looking, listening for the sound of the pistol that would put the deer out of its misery. 

Thankfully, it died on its own.

The cop said he would call someone to take the deer off the lawn.

And in the kitchen, I am sick with sadness for the deer. As I am for every deer and dead animal on the side of the road. This one died in the soft spring grass of our lawn, under the maple tree, next to the flower bed.

When the pickup pulls into the driveway, I watch from the mudroom, shielded by the weeping cherry, as the cop and the guy with the pickup drag it. I don’t see how they get it into the pickup, but they do. And when they finish, they knock on the door, and this part I can handle.

I squeeze out the front door, between the dogs who are frantically trying to squeeze out ahead of me.

The men have taken care of the deer, but there is a lot of blood on the driveway, they say.

I get the garden hose, and they hose down the driveway. There’s a lot of blood on the cop’s shoes, too, so I spray them. 

These guys are kind and competent and capable and not afraid to look, as I am, at a newly dead deer, probably still warm, in the back of a pickup.

I don’t ask, but I want to know what they’ll do with it. Around here, it’s possible that someone will take it for the meat. It was a doe.

And when I walk back in the house, G is still wrapped in her blanket, icing her shoulder, and we settle in at the table and have the shepherd’s pie that Cristin made for us.

In every relationship, there’s one person who’s the supported, and one person who’s the supporter. 

In our relationship, I’m the one who is most often supported. She shields me from daily unpleasantness and discomfort, and anticipates my needs before I have them. 

As the date of this shoulder surgery approached, I was looking forward to the reversal of our roles. For once, I would get to do for her what she always does for me. I saw myself administering pain meds, fetching ice, making food, and fluffing pillows. 

I hated that I cowered in the kitchen, leaving her to take care of that deer. I wished I had told her to, “Rest, honey, I’ll handle it.” But I didn’t. I was afraid to watch that deer suffer and die. 

I was relieved when she told me not to look. I let her handle it, even though she was still groggy from surgery, wearing a blanket, out on the driveway, dealing with a cop, and a dead deer.

It turned out I couldn’t do what she always does for me. I couldn’t step up. Instead, I allowed myself to be supported again, and I felt eternally grateful for that support.

Maybe it’s not true what I just said that one person is always the supporter and the other always the supported.  We have never had any patience, sfter all,  for rigid gender roles, or keeping score about who does what. 

In our house, there’s no “woman’s job” or “man’s job,” just the right person for the job. We divide tasks based on context, skillset, availability, convenience, and squeamishness. 

I would like to think that my not stepping up with this deer situation was more of an expedience issue, than a lack of support.

She already had the campus police number in her phone. She also has a relationship with them, and because of that, the whole thing was resolved in less than an hour. If I had to make that call, it would have been way more complicated.

I still feel a bit of shame/guilt that I didn’t handle it because I know if I had stepped up, I would be damned proud of myself for doing so. 

But I also know that after it was over, she felt so grateful for the warm food, and the meds, and the help with the velcro straps on her sling. 

We have never, ever kept score in our relationship. But I think if we did, our score would perennially stay at Love-all.

She asked me what I’d been up to and, as usual, my mind went completely blank.

“Nothing, “ I said.

No. That’s not what I said. I said, “Whenever anyone asks me that question, my mind goes completely blank. I can’t think of a single thing I’ve done that’s worth talking about. Walk dogs, scribble here, clean the house, teach yoga, walk, read.

That’s the way it is with writers, and that’s what has always frustrated me. They have nothing to hang on the wall, or fire in the kiln, or play for an audience.

To be a writer, you have to read. 

A lot. 

And you have to write. 

A lot. 

And you have to pay attention, take notes, and practice metacognition—you have to notice that you’re thinking, and not just what you’re thinking about. 

And even after all that, there’s still no stuff, except for an expanding line of notebooks on the shelf. 

Notebooks that are never even reread.

Because the purpose of the notebooks isn’t to read them. The notebooks are just for practice. Like playing scales.

Just like Sue practices her oboe, or Christine practices her flute,  I scribble in notebooks.

 We do it to get more fluent.

But unlike Sue or Christine, I’m not performing regularly.

What I should perhaps be doing is take on a writing project, like Gretchen Rubin, who describes herself as “A writer who studies…” and then goes on to list what she studies. “Happiness, good habits, and her current project, which is this idea of “The Open Door,” which is her reframe of “The Empty Nest.”

If I were to try this on myself, I might say, “Kath is a writer who studies the intersection of yoga and meatloaf. She wants to know how to bring the practice of yoga into real life.

But is that what I do?

Maybe. 

What I do is simply wonder about things. And notice things. Like what triggers me, and things I like and don’t like.

Like yesterday, when G was having rotator cuff surgery, I waited in a Barnes and Noble with a Starbucks-ish cafe. It felt like writing in a library and it was perfect. Much better than any coffee shop I had ever worked in.

The difficulty of being a writer is that you have nothing to show for it. No painting on the living room wall, no ceramic mug in the pantry, no quilt on the bed, no live performance with your name on the program at the concert hall. 

It’s different if a writer is working on something for a publisher. In that case, there’s a project, a plan, a commitment, an advance.

 But I am not doing that.

I’m sitting here chronicling my days in the hopes that something interesting will float to the top that might be interesting or relevant for someone else to read. It’s very self-serving what I do. 

So that’s why I’m always asking: “Who cares?” And, “What’s my why?”

I think I write to prove to myself I’m alive.

It’s a bit like graffiti. Except in typescript rather than spray paint. 

Kath was here. She likes meatloaf. And yoga. And the first sip of coffee in the morning, and Paris, and cashmere sweaters, and Yosemite, and the little spit sink at the dentist, and the word tweezers, and cedar waxwings, and…

When new people come into the yoga room, I ask them a million questions.

But I never ask them what they do for a living.  

Never.

I’m as curious about other people as anyone, but we’re not supposed to ask that question anymore.

Instead, we’re supposed to ask about their projects or things they’re excited about.

And I approve of this approach. 

Wholeheartedly.

Because I used to be a stay-at-home mom, and this “What do you do?” question bugged the hell out of me. 

Mainly because the image of the stay-at-home mom was one of domestic drudgery: endless dishes, laundry, and carpooling, with no acknowledgment of the subtle skills that went into intelligent parenting.

And even when I got a real-world job with that real-world paycheck, I still got the squirms when I was asked the “What do you do?” question, because that thing that I did, which resulted in that paycheck, never felt like a living. 

It felt like working. 

The living was what came after the working. 

And then I opened the yoga studio—a one-woman operation in the smallest of markets—with rent due, and a class schedule, but it didn’t feel like a job.

It felt like what I was supposed to be doing. But it wasn’t my whole life.

 I know people whose jobs are their whole lives. These are the ones who get paid for doing something they’d do even if no one paid them.

They call their jobs careers. They’re trained professionals. They’re doctors, nurses, lawyers, musicians.

They sometimes call what they do their vocation. They say things like, “ A musician is who I am, not what I do.” Or,  “I wouldn’t be myself if I couldn’t (fill in the blank) play the oboe, see patients, write books. 

Their job isn’t what they do, it’s who they are. 

I don’t think of yoga like this. It’s not my career. It’s not my vocation. It’s not a job. What is it?

A few years after my yoga certification, I also became certified as an Integrative Health Coach.  At the end of this pretty rigorous one-year course of study, there was a unit devoted to The Business of Health Coaching.  In this unit, they kept saying,  “Don’t think of your Health Coaching as a Jobby—something you do on the side. Think of it as a JOB, and yourself as the professional you are! 

This word, “Jobby,” irked me. It seemed to sneer at the idea that a person could do something with both the professionalism of a job, and the joy of a hobby.

I thought: “What could be better than a Jobby?” Isn’t that what we all aspire to do? To get to do the things we love, without tying ourselves, ball-and-chain-like, to one thing?

I thought these people who spoke disparagingly of Jobbies were snobby.

People I know, when they retire, experience an existential crisis about not knowing who they are anymore. The loss of professional identity is the loss of their whole identity. They mistook their job title for themselves, so now what?  

 Many people in retirement wish they could still do what they used to do, just not as much, or be able to pick and choose and just do the fun stuff now. 

And they can! This is where the Jobby comes in. Why not take an aspect of your old job and turn it into a hobby? You don’t have to pick some random activity (mahjong, pickleball) just because AARP says you need to get a hobby. 

What seems like a better idea is to take something you already know how to do, and like to do, and used to do as a job, and make a jobby out of it. 

You could even charge a little for this skill set if you want, by hiring yourself out as a freelancer in your old field. 

Or you could teach or tutor in your area of expertise. 

Or do something just for the hell of it. 

Any of the arts can be done as a jobby. Painting, music, writing, collage.

You could do social justice work or focused volunteerism on behalf of animals, the environment, or the homeless. That would make a wonderful Jobby.

So this most-hated question, “What do you do?”, can become a most interesting question if it’s followed by “for fun?”, “to feel happy?”, or “to feel most alive?”

What do you say when someone asks what you do? Do you tell them the truth? Do you tell them what you’re doing now, or what you used to do when you were getting paid? I’d like to know!

For someone like me, who has spent the past year lecturing herself about cognitive sovereignty, limiting news and social media, and guarding the drawbridge of her mind, it feels a little strange to be this emotionally invested in a stranger’s success. 

But there it is: my carefully defended inner kingdom just threw confetti for a woman who doesn’t know I exist.

Over the past few years, I’ve learned the hard way that my nervous system is not built for unfiltered feeds. The more I marinated in outrage, bad news, and “highlight reels,” the more brittle and hopeless I felt, even on ordinary Tuesdays. That’s why I started talking about cognitive sovereignty—my attempt to be queen of the kingdom of my own mind instead of letting the algorithm rule by coup. I’ve been slowly building a moat: fewer apps on my phone, stricter time limits, a policy of exiling any account that leaves me anxious, envious, or numb.

Isabel was one of the rare exceptions I chose to keep. Her posts are not polished highlight reels; they’re middle‑of‑the‑night stories about flea baths, medication schedules, and learning the particular quirks of yet another terrified rescue dog. 

Isabel and the famous “Tiki”

Instead of inflaming me, her little videos reliably lower my shoulders and remind me that there are still people in the world quietly sacrificing sleep and social lives so that one more creature can feel safe. In a sea of content designed to keep me scrolling, her account feels like a small, stubborn channel of goodness I’ve intentionally allowed to cross my moat.

At some point, Isabel stopped being “an account I follow” and started feeling like someone I knew, even though our relationship is entirely one‑sided. 

Psychologists have a name for this: a parasocial relationship, the phenomenon where we spend enough time with a person’s stories and emotional expressions that our brains file them under “people we care about,” even if they’ve never once said our name. 

When I saw her book on the bestseller list, my reaction wasn’t neutral consumer interest; it was full‑body relief, like watching a friend finally cross a finish line I’d seen her training for. That outsized joy told me something important—not about her, but about me and what I’ve allowed to shape my inner life.

We’re used to hearing about social media as a wasteland of comparison and misinformation, and there is plenty of evidence that it can erode our well‑being when we use it passively and without boundaries. But curated with care, it can also offer models of courage, kindness, and persistence that gently recalibrate our sense of what’s normal. 

My delight over Isabel’s success is, in a way, proof that this experiment in cognitive sovereignty is doing something: instead of being flooded with dread about the state of the world, I’m unexpectedly practicing how to feel glad for someone else’s hard‑won joy. That feels like a small but meaningful victory in the age of the algorithm.

We don’t get to opt out of that age, but we do get to choose which faces we let sit around our virtual hearth. If an account leaves you more clenched and cynical, that is useful data; if it leaves you softer, more likely to cry happy tears over a rescue dog and a writer you’ll never meet, that is data too. Maybe the quiet rebellion available to us isn’t abandoning the internet altogether, but curating it so ruthlessly that our so‑called “para friendships” become practice in feeling unselfish joy. 

So, the next time you notice yourself rooting for a stranger online, instead of rolling your eyes, you might ask: what part of me is this lighting up—and how can I live a little more like that in my own, offline life?

I was talking to Riah before yoga on Tuesday. 

“How’ve you been?” she asked.

“Eh,” I said, “Okay. Not great. The world is getting to me. The war, the Rape Academy, the lack of sun, warmth, and hope. But other than that, I’m good. You?”

“Same,” she said. “It’s not that I’m sad, I’m just off.”

That’s what April’s been like.

Off. 

If I stay in my bubble, I’m okay. Go out of my bubble? Not okay.

I saw Susan yesterday at Pride. 

“How’s it going?” I said.

“Busy,” she said. “Working a lot. My life is boring.”

“Mine, too,” I said. 

Later, I thought about that. Yeah. Outwardly my life looks boring, but here? Inside the bubble?

 Inside the bubble, things are anything but.

Words are being written, books are being read, real, no-bullshit conversations are being spoken over Moosewood lunches.

In my group activities, the women in my writing group with Zee are writing amazing, heartfelt pieces. In my yoga classes, especially Gentle Yoga, people who made a yoga resolution back in January are still showing up, week after week. 

My book group is so smart! Every month, they blow me away with the insights they bring to that month’s selection.

The day after the book group met, Kathryn Marco Polo-ed me, gushing about how grand the discussion was. 

So even though the world is so very fucked up right now, there have been things that have been inspiring me in April. 

Clothing

We had a few warm days this month that had me searching for shorts and tees. I discovered I could use a few new things. I’ve found Bayleaf.

https://www.baleaf.com/?srsltid=AfmBOor-Jnzn_zKGzHVF2t201KrZwlnGg0Reexhv71yCeDbkO7AQF8Bi

I think I saw an ad on Facebook and ordered some capris. When they came, I was delighted at the fit, comfort, and quality. I have since ordered shorts and tees. I am a fan. 

I am also happy with Pact. Organic cotton stuff. I got a pair of joggers, a tee, and a bra. Love everything. 

https://wearpact.com/

Apps

I’m using the Cronometer app to track my food. Today I discovered I can input my food by simply talking into the app. It also has an amazingly accurate photo feature where you take a picture of your food and it breaks down every ingredient. I got a burrito from Timmy B’s the other night, photographed it, and it calculated things in there I couldn’t even see. 

https://cronometer.com/index.html

I am also using the Streaks app as an accountability tool. It’s simple and fun.

https://streaksapp.com/

Books

In addition to the book group selection, The Awakening by Kate Chopin, I read The Correspondent by Virginia Evans. I had started it but abandoned it because the narrator is my age, yet she seemed like such a fuddy-duddy. Ugh. No. But Rebecca, in my writing group, read it, liked it, and urged me to give it another chance, and I wound up loving it. 

Currently, I have 3 books going, plus an audiobook: 

On my Kindle, I’m reading Project Hail Mary, and Dirtbag Billionaire.

In hardcover, I’m reading Isabel Klee’s memoir, Dogs, Boys, and Other Things I’ve Cried About.

I’m listening to Wellness by Nathan Hill on audio, and I have  Aldo Leopold’s A Sand County Almanac, this month’s book group pick,  sitting here in paperback. 

The hope is that all this reading will keep me away from news, and news podcasts, which only inflame me.

Tomorrow is May first.  I have never been more ready!

Thanks for reading. What inspired you in April?

That’s what my mother called menopause. I used to hear her talking on the phone about it to her girlfriends. The Pause. The Big M. 

Back then, there was nothing to do but endure it, just like they endured The Curse.

Today, my algorithm is filled with perimenopause and menopause snark and euphemisms, too.

I’m out of estrogen, and I have a gun.

I’m in my rewrite phase; the editor cut the periods.

The uterus has left the group chat.

My hormones are in witness protection.

I’m running on legacy estrogen.

I didn’t even notice The Change when it happened to me twenty years ago. That was the medieval era, when there was nothing to do about it but endure it. What else could you do? 

Now there are podcasts about it, tons of books, and superstars like Mary Claire Haver who have NAMED it and are calling out the male-dominated medical system for ignoring it for all these years, so yay.

I got an email the other day summarizing her Menopause Toolkit, and I’m going to try to implement it.

I’m probably too late for HRT, but the nutrition and lifestyle recommendations make total sense.

Here’s what she says.

Nutrition

Protein: 1.3 to 1.6 grams per kilogram of ideal body weight per day.

I had to go online and have Google convert my body weight in pounds to kilograms, and it turns out I need between 62 and 76 grams of protein a day. That’s a LOT. I’m not eating anything close to that, so this will be a big shift for me, especially since I want my diet to be mostly plant-based.

Fiber: Ideally, for me, 35 grams a day. Again, this is going to be a struggle. 

Sugar: Less than 25 grams added sugar, not carbs.

She wants you to track your food intake for a while. She recommended the Cronometer app. I downloaded it yesterday and have started to learn how to use it. It’s a little tricky, but not hard. I’m finding that logging my food keeps me away from the pretzels. 

Movement

• Stretch every day
• Practice balance training every day
• Resistance training 3x/wk. Bands or weights. Progressive load over time.
• Cardio: 150 minutes a week in Zone 2

The big message for me? Get serious about the weights!! 

Stress Reduction

• Sunlight
• Grounding (walking barefoot outside)
• Meditation
• Yoga
• Time in nature

Sleep

Cool dark room. 7-9 hours

Supplements

• HRT maybe
• Fiber supplements if your diet doesn’t meet it.
• Omega 3s, 2 grams/day
• Vitamin D 4,000 IUs/day with K2
• Creatine 5g/day

So this is my new plan. 

Little by little. 

I already have my sleep, cardio, and yoga dialed in. Meditation, too. 

The food is going to be the struggle, but I went into Perplexity AI, explained my situation, and was amazed by what it came up with. My food is particularly hard on the three nights I teach. I have to have a relatively empty stomach when I teach, but then when I get home at 7 PM I’m ravenous, but have to be in bed by 9 to get my sleep, and don’t want to go to bed still digesting. 

I laid this all out for Perplexity. I asked it to figure out meals and eating times for me that meet all the protein and fiber needs Mary Claire Haver says I need in a day, and voila! In less than 15 seconds, it had timed my meals and met all my protein and fiber goals! Then it asked: Do you want some easy recipes?

Yes, please!

I love AI for this kind of thing. 

This is going to be my new project: to get my Nutrition, Movement, Sleep, and Stress super dialed in. 

The guru agrees to help him and asks what he wants. The man says he needs to know the meaning of life.

After many hardships, it takes him almost a year to reach the guru, who is venerable and over one hundred years old.

The guru answers without hesitation: “Life is a rope.”

The seeker is dismayed and says, “Life is a rope?” After coming all this way to find you, all you have to tell me is that life is a rope?”

The guru, shocked and angry, exclaims, “You mean it’s not a rope?”

Terra has been trying to get me to try rock climbing forever.  Last night, the stars finally aligned, and we met at the gym at 5.

I found her doing the splits at the base of the wall— warming up.

I think: Dear god, what have I gotten myself into?

Terra is a trained gymnast. 

She’s also been climbing rocks since she was a little kid in Boulder, Colorado. She’s been taught by the best. 

“I’ll teach you! It’ll be fun. You’ll be good at it, what with all your yoga flexibility and proprioception.”

I think: And my fear of heights and my right/left dyslexia.

But I say, “Sure! Let’s do it!”

I sign the waiver, and am told I can climb in my Allbirds.

Terra squinches up her nose. She says, “No. Shoes are the most important piece of equipment.”

She pulls a pair of LaSportiva climbing shoes from her backpack.

“Here, try these,” she says. “They didn’t fit Silva.” (her daughter).

They fit me perfectly!

She also has a harness for me. And a chalk bag.

We approach a wall covered in confetti-colored rocks.

And it is here that I encounter the rope.

“The rope is your lifeline,” Terra explains. You have to tie a double figure eight in it, like this.”

She proceeds to do some magic with her fingers, and the rope suddenly looks something like this:

I cannot do this. My brain shuts down. I will never be able to rock climb. My life depends on a rope that has to be tied exactly like this. 

Terra is patient. She shows me again. She tells me to “follow the snake.” I can’t even see the snake.

After many hardships, it has taken us almost a year to get to this rock wall.

Terra has agreed to help me. She gives me shoes and a harness and a chalk bag and asks me what I want. I say I want to know how to climb the wall.

She says, “The wall requires a rope. Tied like this.”

I say, “ You mean I’ve come all this way to climb a wall and you say I need a rope?”

And she, shocked and angry, exclaims. “You mean you don’t need a rope?”

Terra on a gnarly part of the wall.

Terra and Kath

Linda on the mid-row machine a few years ago.

Broke the first Rule of Kath twice this week. On Wednesday, I took Linda to her doctor’s appointment to get her staples removed. She asked that I pick her up at 9:30. 

In. The. Morning.

The First Rule of Kath

No humans before 11 AM.

Because if I have to deal with humans before 11 AM there’s no time for the Meditative Morning.

And when the Meditative Morning gets squeezed out because I’ve agreed to break The First Rule of Kath by interacting with humans, rather than reading, writing, and meditating, bad things happen.

My nervous system becomes dysregulated. 

I can’t cope with our current dystopian nightmare of a political system, and then I start to circle the drain, and become anxious, sad, enraged, and unable to sleep.

Whereas, if I spend a Meditative Morning doing my foundational practices, I am able to “touch grass.”

A 3-page pen-write with purple ink opens the lines of communication between me and my inner wisdom guide. 

Twenty minutes of meditative headspace allows me time to remember to be grateful for my privileged life, the people I love and who love me back, and my great good fortune to be in great health, and be able to do and teach yoga. 

But I was very happy to forgo my meditative morning to help Linda after this hip replacement surgery, even if it meant interacting with her before eleven A.M.

It feels really good to be able to help someone.

 And she is very grateful. And she’s in good spirits. 

And she’s not a complainer, and she will tell you exactly what she needs. And she exhibits no self-pity.

She’s also okay with me sashaying into her house and doing stuff, unasked.

Yesterday I brought over a mattress cover for the pull-out she’s been sleeping on. That thing was as hard as a rock. I could feel the iron frame through the pathetically thin mattress. 

One thing I’ve noticed about Linda is that she lives a very Spartan lifestyle. 

I admire her minimalism, even if it is forced upon her by her extremely small house. 

I used to think I lived in the kind of house storybook rabbits live in! But she’s the one with the true rabbit house! When I come home from her place and walk into my own small kitchen, I think: Wow, how spacious!

But while I respect her lack of stuff, I do not respect her apparent disregard for luxury.

Why the hard bed? For instance.

Why the rough, scratchy sheets and towels?

If you’re going to have very few things, why not have wonderful, soft, luxurious things?

Why not one beautiful, fluffy spa towel? Why not one set of high-thread-count sateen sheets?

It’s probably a generational thing.

Yesterday I took the scratchy muslin fitted sheet off her mattress and laid down the spongy soft mattress pad. Then I replaced the muslin fitted sheet with a buttery soft one.

I, myself, felt much better. 

But even though I haven’t heard yet if she liked the new bedding, I can imagine Linda preferring the rough muslin sheets, I really can. I can hear her say, “But I LIKE the feel of muslin! I really do!

And I think: Of course she does!  These are probably the fabrics of her childhood. The scratchiness could be comforting to her.

And I get it. 

A little. 

Kinda. 

But not really.

As I’ve been helping Linda, I’ve become newly aware of the need for the kinds of help I’m providing. I’m finding out that there are quite a few people around here whose lives would be infinitely easier with a person who could take them to appointments, do their laundry, or take them shopping.

Not nursing care, just little things like replacing a washer on a drippy faucet, raking leaves, or shoveling snow.

I feel grateful I’m in a position to help. I say this to my yoga classes: 

You think you’re doing this practice for yourself?

You think this practice is your personal self-care?

It’s not. It’s for you, yeah, of course. But it’s more for the people who depend on you to be healthy and calm. Because when you’re healthy and regulated, you can be truly present.

And when you’re truly present, you can show up for yourself, and also for the people you love and who depend on you (kids, parents, friends, co-workers).

When you’re healthy, you can help the people who aren’t.

You can be there when the people you love need you.

One big reason I feel so good about helping Linda is that Linda helps herself. 

Linda takes care of herself.

Linda’s not sick due to years of self-neglect.

She needs my help now, because she decided, at 83, to have a hip replacement so she could continue to move and live her active life.

She’s brave, and she’s scrappy. She doesn’t have an ounce of self-pity. She just gets up, grabs the handles of her walker,  and forges into the day. 

Does she get tired? Sure! She’s human, but when she’s tired, she rests.

She says her big goal is to get back to yoga.

And what is the posture she’s dying to do again?

TADASANA.

Freaking Mountain Pose.

Do you know what’s involved in doing Mountain Pose?

I’ll tell you.

1. Anchor your feet with your weight evenly distributed.

2. Engage your core.

3. Roll your shoulders back.

4. Keep your chin even with the floor.

5. Keep your arms at your side.

Stand there. Perfect posture. That’s it.

That’s the pose she wants most to do again.

With her wonky hip, she couldn’t get her weight distributed even in her feet. One leg was shorter. Standing meant leaning into one leg more than the other.

This new hip will correct that imbalance and enable her to stand evenly on her two feet again. 

She keeps saying how much she wants to get back to yoga. 

I say her whole life is yoga.

She’s doing the purest form of the practice I’ve ever seen, and she’s doing it every damned day.

She’s my teacher. Not the other way around.

A new month! A new quarter! A new opportunity to get back on track and do all the things!

What things?

1. Eat better

2. Drink H2O

3. Get in at least 10K steps/day

4. Lift weights

5. Meditate

6. Write every day

7. Finish the Pranayama course

8. Do some yoga every day

9. Keep to the ADHD cleaning schedule

10. Look at finances/track spending

That’s the list.

That’s pretty much always the list.

Every “new year.” Every “new month” Every “new quarter.” Every “Monday,” I start over, thinking this is the week, the month, the quarter, I will totally nail it!

But does it happen? No. Of course not. But do I stop making the list? Of course not. I launch headfirst into April, full of determination, optimism, and hope. This time I will do it. This time, things will be different. This time, I will make real progress. This time, I will make a positive change for the good. 

That’s where my head is today. Full of optimism, full of excuses for why Q1 was such a disaster, but now that we’ve shed the snake energy, and it’s no longer 200 degrees below zero, and our brains have thawed enough to focus on things other than survival, let’s make that list and get after it!

But here are 30 Things I Know About Change

1. Change takes TIME.

2. Change takes consistency over TIME.

3. Change takes incremental change over TIME.

4. It takes TIME to turn the ship around.

5. While the ship is turning around, there is NO VISIBLE CHANGE.

6. Repetition is key. The first sled run down the slope doesn’t make much of a path.

7. The 100^th run down the slope makes a deep groove.

8. Every day I do not run the sled down the slope, the snow fills in the groove.

9. That is why the sled must go down the slope every day.

10. It is impossible to run the sled down the slope EVERY DAY.

11. That’s because shit happens. BUT, as soon as the shit is over, the sled must go down the slope. If too much snow falls between runs, it will be very hard to re-establish the groove.

12. Every goal takes TIME.

13. Every goal takes more TIME than I think.

14. I must grow to love the PROCESS.

15. The PROCESS is the whole game.

16. There is nothing BUT the process.

17. I will never BE strong and fit.

18. Strong and fit is only something I can BECOME.

19. I am not a BEING. I am a BECOMING.

20. BECOMING takes place moment by moment.

21. Becoming takes place with every decision I make and ACT UPON.

22. Becoming will never happen just because I make a LIST.

23. Lists are not worthless, though.

24. Lists help me see what I want.

25. The things on the list that don’t get done are not the things I really want.

26. I do not believe this at all.

27. I believe everything on the list is what I really want.

28. I am SURE about this.

29. I am wrong.

30. Only the things I actually DO are the things I REALLY WANT.

Why is it that we know all these things philosophically, —that the process of living is what life is all about; that the path to the goal IS the goal, that lists don’t work, only actions work? Why do we set goals for Q2? Why do we point our ship in a particular direction?

In Alice in Wonderland, Alice asks the Cheshire Cat which road to take, and the Cat replies, “That depends a good deal on where you want to get to.” When she says she doesn’t care, the Cat replies, “Then it doesn’t matter which way you go.”

I am not like Alice. It matters to me where the road goes.  But once I’m sure I’m headed in the general direction of my dreams, I can turn my focus to the streams and the flowers and the sky. I can, as Kerouac says, “dig the ride.” 

My list is my road.  But it’s only that consistent effort, those daily footsteps along the path, those dedicated runs down the slope that give me the impression that my life might have some meaning.