Half of the eggs in the robin’s nest in our lilac bushes hatched

At noon today, it was exactly half way through 2018. I don’t know if that’s accurate because I didn’t figure it out myself or hear it from an expert, but rather one of my friends posted it on Facebook this morning. True or not, it got me thinking. Just like we often do for the new year or on one of the solstices, it offers the opportunity for reflection. It’s as good a time as any to consider what we’d like to relax, let go of, surrender, and what we’d like to invite, seek out, cultivate.

I shared this with the yoga class I taught this morning. I wasn’t off to a great start — when I got there the downstairs door was locked, and it’s been so long since I had to open that one, when put my key in and it didn’t work, I panicked and assumed I didn’t have the right key and wouldn’t be able to get in. I finally got some encouragement to try my key again, and it worked, reminded me that back when I used to teach a 7 am class and was the first one there, the key was kind of sticky sometimes. It worked out, but the confusion had gone on long enough that I felt frazzled, off center. For the first few minutes of class, I couldn’t find the right words, had to try really hard to put together what I was trying to communicate, but eventually I softened and relaxed and was able to connect with the truth of what I was teaching.

When you feel yourself tense up, allow yourself to relax and you might float. This was a realization I had last week during my swimming lesson. If you missed it, I am 50 years old and even though I took swimming lessons as a kid, I never really learned. I was bullied and learned how to be afraid of the water and of people judging the way I tried. This summer, I signed up for private lessons with a teacher who had the right mix of skill, kindness, and humor. Only five lessons in and I am swimming on my own. Still terrified a lot of the time, but trying.

In last week’s lesson, my teacher asked me to float, first on my belly and then on my back. I confessed to him I didn’t know how, hadn’t ever done it before on my own, at least not that I could remember. He gave me some simple instructions and encouragement, and I tried it. First, I leaned forward, letting my face go into the water and my legs reach out behind me. There was a moment when I was tipping and my feet were starting to float when I felt myself tense up, resisting what was happening. I wanted to quit, to put my feet back down and stand up. The instinct is old and deep and sticky to “save myself” when I feel myself going under and the water filling the space around me.

Instead, I relaxed and let go. I surrendered to the water and the way my body wanted to rise to the top and hover there. Next, I did the same on my back. Later, I was on my back kicking my feet and moving my arms, swimming the length of the pool. My ears where covered by the water and it was so quiet. Even though my limbs were moving, it felt like I was gliding along the top without any effort — floating. Unlike when I was on my belly, my nose and mouth were out of the water and I could breath easily and normally. I felt utterly safe and content.

I keep thinking how this applies to life in general. When something scary or even just uncomfortable is happening, I tense up, start to shut down, withdraw, and maybe even run away. To float, you have to breathe past that moment of resistance and relax instead. Soften, let go, surrender. It’s only then that you can know the truth of what’s on the other side. I keep looking for the other ways I do this – resist instead of relaxing – and wondering what I’ve been missing all those times I chose to run away instead of surrender.

Eric and I went out to dinner last night. I wanted to celebrate earning a Superior ranking on my annual evaluation for the 7th year in a row and getting the word from the radiologist that everything looks good, Sam doesn’t need surgery and we can start physical therapy.

I am very aware of my good luck and fortune. You can also call it privilege, and you might even say there’s a bit of good karma in there too. I have a job that would be anyone else’s dream job, and it affords me the luxury of being able to take Sam to the vet, buy him supplements and pain meds and good food and a new orthopedic bed, take him to physical therapy, and spend the time away from work that I need to in order for all that to happen.

I work hard, too hard. I do my work, according to my evaluation, with a “high level of professionalism, competence, patience, and good humor.” I don’t get compensated for it like I should, and the work load keeps increasing even though it was overwhelming to begin with. I do this work under the constant shadow of anxiety that I’m not spending my time and energy the way I should.

These past few weeks, I’ve been watching the way I’ve handled Sam’s situation. Early on, it seemed pretty clear he’d need knee surgery. I did what I always do — a ton of research, consulting with anyone I knew who knew anything, made a plan for how we’d handle his rehab down to ordering an inflatable collar for him so he wouldn’t have to wear a plastic cone. I overthought and over planned, worried and was anxious, found it hard to focus on anything else, even though I absolutely had to. I made sure to practice every day so I didn’t completely lose my mind and I got extra sleep, expecting a time in the near future when I wouldn’t be.

Watching myself spin out, I thought about my habitual pattern of trying to control everything. I think if I’m prepared, careful, do my research, and am ready, I can handle whatever happens, fix whatever goes wrong. But that’s just the surface level stuff. When I dig a little deeper, it’s clearly anxiety about impermanence, which is masking the real fear — we are all going to die and there’s absolutely nothing we can do about that. The more I thought about it, the more it became clear that there was something below even all that — the real anxiety, the actual fear is that all of my effort means nothing, that I try and work so hard but it amounts to a hill of beans, (nothing against beans).

What I have to offer that I don’t have the necessary time, energy, or space for is facilitating experiences that cultivate compassion, ease, and sanity. That foundation then leads to a more sane and compassionate world, cultivating the necessary ground for social justice and change. This thing I have to offer is stifled, suppressed, silenced because my current focus (my work at CSU) is an obstacle — not only to the work but to my own health and wellbeing.

When I renegotiated my position from 12 to nine months, my intention was to spend the summers on my “other” work. I thought that if I had summers off to focus on my own projects, it wouldn’t be perfect or even ideal, but it would be workable.

Turns out, it’s not. I burn myself out in those nine months and need the summer to regroup and recover. The summers we go to Oregon, that’s all that can happen — the work of planning the trip, preparing, getting there, being there, and the work that has to happen once we get back. It’s a vacation but it’s also draining — energetically and financially — and by the time we get back, the whole summer is over and it’s time to go back to CSU, start the whole cycle over. When we stay here for the summer, we spend our time doing all the things we couldn’t get done during the rest of the year — cleaning out closets and the garage, doing repairs and maintenance on the cars and house and our own bodies. Neither version of summer has turned out to have the space for teaching an online class or working on a book or hosting a workshop or running an in-person class.

Turning 50 for sure causes a shift in perception. Two futures are not only possible but likely — either I am 50 and have a good 20 to even 40 years ahead of me and in that case have time to build another career, to get good at something else; OR I don’t have that kind of time, and if so I want to spend the next 5-10 years I’ve got finally, finally, finally doing what I’ve always wanted to do, trusting my own gut about what to do next, following my own True north. Working at CSU doesn’t fit with either option.

It’s become clear to me that there will never be a time when my CSU workload and expectations are workable. It asks way too much of me, at the expense of my health and wellbeing and just about everything else I want most for myself. Not to make it seem like I’m so sure, that I don’t doubt myself or feel confused, or that I’ve decided, but when the amazing Laura Simms posted on Instagram the other day, “Your work should support your life, not compete with it,” something in me felt very very sure that I knew what I needed to do.