Tag Archives: Yoga

NaBloPoMo Prompt: If You Could Have Any Job

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Today’s NaBloPoMo Prompt is: If you could have any job (and instantly have the training and qualifications to do it) which job would you want? This will come as no surprise to most of you, but the job I would want, the work I’d like to do and get paid for, is writing and teaching.

This in so many ways is what I already do, but the current context, the specific manifestation isn’t an exact fit for how I imagine it, isn’t perfect, is not quite what my heart longs for, what I dream of. I’m not paid for most of the writing I do, and as I am teaching on behalf of a larger entity that doesn’t necessarily share my core values, that activity is restricted and contorted in ways that in turn limit and confuse what I do.

I want to teach what I know, what I love, what I’m trying to learn myself to people who chose to learn with me, are there because of a personal choice, interest, desire, and while I would offer them feedback, I’d never again assign another grade (and if I did, it would be an A for showing up and trying).

Through writing and teaching, in this ideal job, I would help people heal, ease suffering, encourage and inspire health and wellness, wholeheartedness. Together, my students and I would cultivate compassion, courage, and confidence. We would do good work together, work that would center us and then ripple out into the larger world, making things better on a bigger scale.

The training I still want to do this work is to be certified as a yoga and meditation instructor. I might also might train to be a life coach or some other therapeutic practice. In this “job,” this heart/life work, I’d blog, write books and essays, give readings and workshops, offer ecourses, facilitate retreats, make art, and work one on one with people. I’m imagining these people as mostly women who are either attempting to recover, heal, reconnect with their creativity, their heart’s longing and hunger, or those healing from, dealing with grief, loss, change, trauma.

But for now, I continue on with my current paid work, where I’m feeling so overwhelmed I’m considering going in on Saturday to try and catch up, even though I’m coming down with a cold, but where I also get to hang out with some really awesome people.

Three Truths and One Wish

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1. Truth: I find it really, really difficult to go on with my life as usual when someone I love is dying. Today is Eric and I’s 19th wedding anniversary, and even though we have tickets for an Aimee Mann concert tomorrow night, tickets I bought specifically as an anniversary present for us, we both forgot that today was the day to celebrate because we’ve been too distracted by the hard stuff in our lives. And it’s not just the big stuff I’m having trouble engaging, it’s all the small stuff. I had a moment last night when I noticed the thick layer of dust in the living room, on the books, the TV, the end tables, and my first thought after noticing was “I’ll dust when Dexter is gone, because I can’t face it right now, can’t waste time on that. It’s just not important.”

2. Truth: I don’t always know what to do. For a retired perfectionist, a master puzzle solver and super stubborn human, this is incredibly frustrating. I try to stay openhearted and present, quiet and still enough that my innate wisdom can arise, but quite often, the panicked chatter of my monkey mind and the howling of intense emotions get in the way and I am confused.

3. Truth: Practice helps me clear my mind and stay in the present moment. When I write, I can dump all the nonsense and the noise and work my way towards understanding. Yoga and walking help me to move, to feel my body in the world, just as it is, to engage with it fully, to release the tension of resisting the way things are and the wishing for things to be different. When I meditate, my mind softens and settles and I can practice being gentle, allowing my deeper wisdom and compassion to manifest. And the practices of love and dog constantly remind me of impermanence, of the reality that change is real and I have no control, that all I can do is surrender, to open my heart and love knowing full well that my heart will be broken as a result.

One wish: For relief, for our collective suffering, shared and private, to ease. For us to find the strength to stand right where we are, just as we are, keeping our hearts open to the way things really are, knowing that we are a part of something beautiful.