First of all, can I just say that I'm totally spoiled? Because I so am.

The store that I used to manage has a yoga studio above it. Because the studio is owned by the same company as the store, I helped out quite a bit there and in exchange took a ton of free yoga classes. When I gave in my resignation, I shyly mentioned that I would love to continue on as a paying student at the studio. The owner smiled and said that she was sure that we could work something out.

The upshot of this is that I'm still going to be helping out at the studio in a kind of energy-exchange sort of thing for free classes. This is awesome for several reasons, because not only do I get to take classes, I get to work behind the desk (which I love) and it gives me an excuse to visit my old staff.

In other news, my shoulder is a lot better. I've been using this Jivamukti China Gel that one of my teachers gave me, and it really does help. I've also been paying more attention to my alignment, so now my shoulder only twinges every once in a while.

In other, other news the new job is good. It's great to leave every day at five and not think about work when I get home. There are a lot of positive things about my new work environment. However, I have to admit that it's weird for me to suddenly be working at this big, faceless corporation. If my idealistic 18 year old self could see me now, she would be disgusted.

I used to think that I would never be the type of person to do a job that I wasn't passionately in love with. I thought that no amount of money could tempt me away from following my dreams, and so on, and so forth. Insert your typically angsty teenage rant here. And of course, it doesn't help that I have friends who have really great jobs with not-for-profit organizations or working with people with disabilities who pretty much spend all day helping people.

I have good, solid employment and I don't want to complain about it, so all I'll say is this: it sucks growing up and realizing that sometimes you have to do less-than-great stuff to pay the bills.

Also, Project Halifax is a lot harder when you work for a financing company than it is when you work at a little neighbourhood store frequented by the very wealthy who really have very little excuse for being cranky. Oh well. I'm not giving up.

Ow.

Lately the transition from chaturanga dandasana to upward dog has been absolutely killing my left shoulder. I think I'm doing the poses properly, and no teachers have corrected me, so I don't know what's going wrong. One of my teachers suggested spreading my hands farther apart on the mat, but that doesn't seem to help much.

Does this happen to anyone else? What do you do to stop it from happening? Because my shoulder is now starting to hurt even when I'm not doing yoga...

Work, etc.

Work is a bit of a challenge right now. I have four days left until I leave, and I'm having a hard time balancing the fact that I want to keep working hard up until my last day and don't want to slack off just because I've quit, and the fact that I need to reign myself in and let others do the work, because I won't be there next week and they need to be able to run things without me.

It's especially hard because as a manager, I definitely have room for improvement in my training skills. Don't get me wrong, I'm not awful or anything, but I do tend to be of the "let me do it, it will get done faster" mindset, which is less than great when you're actually supposed to be teaching people how to do things.

It's also super weird for me that I won't be a manager at my new job. Hopefully I'm not too accustomed to being large and in charge!

Other than my work issues, today was pretty good. I got up early and went to class, and it was fantastic. The girl at the bakery where I get my coffee gave me a free croissant. One of my regular customers brought her adorable dog into the store for a little play-date today. I went out to dinner at a vegetarian buffet restaurant with a friend and ate way too much deliciousness.

Things are good, they really are. I just wish that I could stop feeling like I'm about to burst into tears.

Self-motivation is currently set at "low"

How do I force myself to get up and out of bed so that I can go to a morning ashtanga class before I start work at 11?

Because right now the mornings are dark and cold and totally uninviting and it's REALLY hard to convince myself that not sleeping in is a great idea.

Sigh.

We were driving home along the 401 today, and I was sitting there, watching the bright fall colours fly by. It should have been pretty and nice and it was, but oh, I don't know, for some reason it made me sad, too.

Sometimes I feel like I don't live in the world, I live with it. I tolerate it, and really only enjoy it as long as I can have the things that I want from it. I'm selfish, and all I do is take, take, take and then complain that I don't have enough. I don't notice the seasons changing, except when it affects how I get dressed in the morning. If you asked me what phase the moon was in, I would probably laugh at you.

What I'm trying to say is, I feel apart, separate, and I don't want to. But I don't know how to change, either.

I suppose living in the city is part of it, especially this city. The life people lead here encourages me to be self-absorbed, to care about selfish things. You forget that you live in this huge, beautiful world because everything is Toronto and why would you ever want to leave Toronto, because Toronto has everything you will ever need.

I feel like I used to treasure things, things that I owned, moments that I lived through, the people around me. Now I feel like I tear through life without stopping for a second look. I used to wake up and feel like every day could be an adventure. Now I just trudge through my weeks, wanting them to be over and done with, as if I'm counting down to something that's never coming.

On the way home, we stopped at Tim Horton's for a coffee. The man behind us was explaining to the woman he was with that he'd disappeared for a second because he'd run off to give a stranger back the $20 bill that she'd dropped.

"Oh," said his friend/partner/wife/whatever.

"Well," she said, after thinking for a minute. "She should at least have bought you a coffee."

That pretty much sums up how I feel right now. We're all waiting for that metaphorical coffee as a reward for all the good deeds we've ever done.

Mmmm lentils

I started my home practice again tonight. I did Surya Namaskar A & B followed by some back bends and other fun stuff, then finished up with a handstand. It sounds a bit boring when I write it down here, but seriously, it was SO GOOD. Then Matt (a.k.a. el husband) and I had some lentil soup and challah, and that was also SO GOOD. Now I'm chilling out on my reading couch with the kitties while Matt does homework in the other room.

I read a really interesting article in the NY Times this weekend about possible biological reasons for anxiety. You can find it online here. You might need to have an account with the NY Times to access it, but it's free to sign up. The article talks about how very anxious people seem to have an overreactive amygdala, and warning signs can be present as early as infancy. What interested me is that I don't feel like I was a particularly anxious child (although I am a fairly anxious adult!) but my mother always said that I hated new or strange situations, or any kind of disruption to my schedule, which is totally one of the signs. Anyway, it was pretty timely since I'm certain that the new job will send me into anxiety overdrive. Some people are great in new situations; I am terrible.

Here's a video that makes me smile and pretty much cures any anxiety:

I guess my saying that I was back was perhaps a touch preemptive. Things have been so crazy since we came home. First, it was settling back in to our apartment, which was a giant mess because we had people staying here before the wedding and we didn't have the chance to do anything before we left. Then, two days after we came home, our power went out, and stayed out for three days. Apparently a transformer in our basement broke down or something? This is what they mean when they tell you an old building has "character".

The next big thing that happened was that I was offered another job. It wasn't something that I went looking for, but the hours and the pay were good, so I accepted it. I've been with the same company for four years now, and it was SO HARD to give my notice on Monday. I won't go into detail, but I can tell you that tears have been shed on more than one occasion over the past few days.

So, where does that leave me? In a bit of a crazy head space, that's where. I don't deal very well with change, so I am already feeling very anxious about this. Also, I've totally let my home practice slip since the wedding. It was easy to get up early and practice when it was warm and bright in the mornings, but now I want to stay in bed as long as possible. I know, I know, I just need to suck it up and not be such a baby!

So now tell me something neat or interesting or even mundane that's happened in your lives since I last posted.