Ayurvedic Doshas

I've been reading about Ayurveda lately, and I'm finding it fascinating. Ayurveda began initially as a means towards facilitating attaining enlightenment. Yogis seeking enlightenment couldn't get there with their heads aching, stomachs grumbling, and skin itching, so Ayurveda developed as a way to get the body in order. In the mind-body-spirit connection, Ayurveda focuses on healing the body so that you can be free to heal your mind and spirit.

Within the 5,000 years of Ayurvedic knowledge is lots of practical health information and wisdom. It starts with determining what of the three Ayurvedic doshas is most prevalent within you. You can think of a dosha as an element. According to Ayurveda, three elements make up the human body - Vatta, Pitta, and Kapha - and each person has a main body type that is one of those three elements. The dosha body types, in turn, have general guidelines for maintaining health and balance through such things as food choice and lifestyle. Permeating all of this is a sense of mindfulness and balance - two things I have come to believe are essential and highly desirable in life.

I, apparently, am a Vatta. I'm also apparently a Vatta with a Vatta imbalance (although I'm working to balance out!). I have a little bit of Pitta, and almost no Kapha. Vattas are air; they are in their heads, very sensitive, constantly thinking, obsessing, feeling anxiety. Vattas in balance are all of those things, but enthusiastic and grounded, something they can achieve through grounding activities like yoga and meditation.

Reading about Ayurveda and Vattas has been like an unfolding revelation. It's put the last couple of years, where I was so clearly out of balance, and then the last year where I've been working on attaining balance by exploring practices like yoga and meditation into perspective. One way of looking at it is to say that I have been trying to balance out my Vatta - unknowingly - by adding more Kapha (basically, chillness) into my life. I'm just an Ayurveda baby, so there's lots more to learn, but so far I think it's pretty freakin' cool.

Don't you want to know your Dosha? Take this quick quiz and find out. Namaste.

The Deep Blue

I get a "Daily Om" post sent to my email each day and though I'm always so busy I try to take at least a minute to read the posts. It's a positive centering exercise that reminds me to take some time for myself, and that the be-all, end-all is not work, men, or anything else other than what's inside of me. The posts also remind me to do basic stress-relief type things, such as to breathe and to be thankful.

I really like today's post because it's about this concept of interconnectivity. It imagines all of us as part of a great ocean of "love" - which I know sounds very new-agey - but which I take to mean the positive life essence that connects us all to one another and to the undefinable energy of the universe - whether you want to call that a higher power, God, the Universe, or some other name.

The negative aspects of life, the challenges, fears, and notes of discord that we all experience are imagined as sharks swimming about in the otherwise tranquil ocean. The sharks - despite their fearsome appearance - are not totally negative either because they too are made up of "love." The point of the post as I interpret it is that we are all part of this love, the ocean. We, like the sharks, are made up of the ocean, and despite sometimes feeling like we are surrounded or attacked by sharks, beyond the sharks is a much larger ocean of... tranquil bliss; the happiness that is within us all that I personally tap in to through yoga, bubble baths, clearing my mind, running, practicing my Swedish, going to church, and spending time with people I love, among other things.

Sometimes I focus too much on the "sharks" and forget about the ocean, so it's nice to be reminded about it. It's calming.

Here's the Daily Om:

"What We Are Made Of

Choose Love

Love is often presented as the opposite of fear, but true love is not
opposite anything. True love is far more powerful than any negative emotions, as
it is the environment in which all things arise. Negative emotions are like
sharks swimming in the ocean of love. All things beautiful and fearful, ugly and
kind, powerful and small, come into existence, do their thing, and disappear
within the context of this great ocean. At the same time, they are made of the
very love in which they swim and can never be separated. We are made of this
love and live our whole lives at one with it, whether we know it or not.

It is only the illusion that we are separate from this great love that
causes us to believe that choosing anything other than love makes sense or is
even possible. In the relative, dualistic world of positive and negative,
darkness and light, male and female, we make choices and we learn from them.
This is exactly what we are meant to be doing here on earth. Underlying these
relative choices, though, is the choice to be conscious of what we are, which is
love, or to be unconscious of it. When we choose to be conscious of it, we
choose love. We will still exist in the relative world of opposites and choices
and cause and effect, and we will need to make our way here, but doing so with
an awareness that we are all made of this love will enable us to be more
playful, more joyful, more loving and wise, as we make our way. Ultimately, the
choices we make will shed light on the love that makes us all one, enabling
those who have forgotten to return to the source.

This world makes it easy to forget this great love, which is part of why we
are here. We are here to remember and, when we forget to remember again, to
choose love."

Turkeys: Before The Table

I don't eat meat. It used to be for health reasons, but now it's mainly because I literally cannot stomach the cruelty perpetuated against animals in the industries that prepare them to become food. My personal view is that we all have a responsibility to understand what happens to animals before they wind up as carcasses on our dinner plates, and it's also my belief that if more people were aware of the poor treatment that animals receive they would work to make the system more humane - so at least if humans must eat animals, we can do so in a way that minimizes the pain caused to them.

If you are interested, check out the below video, filmed by an undercover investigator from PETA. It's short and not as informative as some of PETA's other videos, but it gives you a sense for the kind of senseless cruelty that turkeys are exposed to while waiting to be slaughtered. If they have to die, they should at least be treated with dignity and compassion. After all, if giants invaded the world and started eating us, wouldn't you want to be treated - at a bare minimum - with dignity and compassion?

One Grind At A Time

As many of you know, I've been trying to create the type of life that I want to have, one in which I feel in tune with myself and my ideals, where I nourish my soul and feed my passions, where I'm at peace in the present, balanced, and completely happy with me. It's harder than one would think. I date the beginning of this effort to around the time I eliminated two major causes of toxicity - a job and a boy - from my life. With those two negative elements pruned away, I was free to focus on making positive changes for me (many of which were kind of about rediscovering me), and that's what I started to do.

I found a new job that I really enjoy, built new friendships, and took a trip that I had been wanting to take for years. I tried a diet, started going to the gym more frequently, and opened myself up to new social experiences, dating, and enjoying this amazing city and all that it has to offer in the way of restaurants, clubs, museums, outdoor space, and, of course, shopping. Kidding (kind of). I assumed a new motto, which though not neatly encapsulated in any little phrase, is about living life in the present, trying to focus on being happy now, and making each moment the best that it can be. It's about making the changes that I want to make now, at once, and not waiting any longer to be who and what I want to be. A worthy goal.

Though I have accomplished a lot, there's still a lot I need to do. I'm still far away from where I want to be, and I don't know why. Attaining balance, for example, has proved elusive. I understand that many people, including yogis, struggle for years and entire lifetimes to attain a state of balance, and I recognize that I'm in good company in my current state of failure (or current state of partial success). However, I want it now, and it frustrates me that I haven't done a better job of reaching that point.

Part of it is the city. There's so much going on here all the time - much of it fantastic, pleasurable, and stimulating -it's hard not to feel stretched thin on a regular basis. Part of it is my job. I'm a lawyer for a large corporate law firm in New York. Even under the best of circumstances, working with the best people, it's stressful, and it's a challenge to make good choices to deal with that stress (such as yoga instead of happy hour). Part of it is being single. I'm on my own - along with my friends and family - in this journey at the moment; I don't have that sense of stability, security, or added strength that comes from being involved with a loving partner. I'm also dating, which with its ups and downs, uncertainties, doubts, and unknown future poses its own challenges, many of which, on occasion, pluck away at my best efforts to be wholly happy in the now.

I don't like that dating does that to me. I don't like that I'm the type of person who could have my center pricked and bruised and thrown off kilter by the unknowns of the dating world. As I think I've expressed before, I'd like to be impervious, invulnerable, and perfectly and absolutely one hundred percent happy in my singledom. I hate, loathe, and despise more than words could ever say that sometimes I feel like I'm missing something from the present by the mere fact that I'm not in a relationship. Ugh, did I just say that? I don't want to be that woman - the type of woman that needs a man to be happy. I know that I'm not that woman. But yet, I also know that I'm not completely 100% happy in my singledom, and I must admit that I think it would make me happy to fall madly in love with someone terrific. Or to go on a date with someone terrific. Or someone remotely interesting, for that matter.

I don't like nor want to get emotionally caught up in the dating thing. I realize that's a funny thing to say for someone who also says that she wants to fall in love, which would presumably involve the embroiling of emotions. That raises the question of whether I truly want to fall in love right now. Good question. The truth is that I just don't know.

No, that's not right.

The truth is that a part of me does not want to fall in love right now. I haven't yet attained in my singledom the life that I want for me. I want to fully maximize and appreciate this time when I'm on my own (and that's why it irks me that sometimes the pitfalls of dating make me blue). I want to make more of the changes that I've been trying to make forever. I'm sure your familiar with the litany by now: yoga, going to the gym regularly, meditating, being healthy, etc. I want to prune away the rest of the negativity, get my shit in order, fill up on positive elements, and make my life how I want it to be, now. Before some boy waltzes in and mucks things up.

This weekend, I took some much-needed me time and turned something that could have been negative and discombobulating into a positive wake-up call. I spent Saturday cleaning my room, sorting though piles of paper and boxes that I hadn't gone through since moving out of my Ex's place, getting rid of old clothes, and reorganizing. The end result was a far less cluttered bedroom that is actually quite cute and inviting now that a portion of the junk has been cleared away. Internally, I feel less cluttered as well. On Saturday night, I went out but kept my alcohol intake to one drink and then called it an early night (1:00 am) so that I could wake up refreshed on Sunday morning for yoga and church.

That's right. How much to I rock? I did yoga and went to church this morning, and I'm not even religious. I did yoga on my newly de-cluttered floor from a DVD that I had bought months ago but never opened. The DVD is called "Yoga For Happiness," and the guy who leads it is not only hot, but also really funny. His name is Eoin, and I think I just might make him my new imaginary boyfriend. To give you a taste of his sense of humor, while I was leaning into pigeon pose, Eoin said, "Feel the honey in your hip." Recall that pigeon is not the most comfortable pose to hold for more than a few seconds. He encouraged us to lean into it more, and while I summoning my energy and grimacing, he said, "it should feel good, like someone licking ice cream off of your body." What?? Bent over my knee, I burst out laughing and then easily leaned in to the pose more.

This is what I need more of in my life. Eoin. OK, fine, not him. Someone like Eoin? No, focus. I need yoga and other activities that give me something positive in return when I put my energy into them; activities that make me feel happy, healthy, grounded, and balanced. Things that cultivate and nourish the happiness that I have within me, and build a sense of security, peace, and satisfied joy. Visions of hot men licking ice cream off of my yoga-fied body are also perfectly acceptable.

I guess what I'm trying to say here is that this weekend, though it started off with a little emotional dip, I managed to turn it into something really great and productive that ultimately made me feel balanced and happy - exactly what I've been striving for! Granted, it's how I feel now, and tomorrow may be a totally different story. But, for right now, I'm proud of me. Along with cleaning, yoga, and church I also bought a host of new kitchen appliances that I've been meaning to get for ages, including a super fancy blender and a programmable coffee-maker.

One of my dreams has been to become the type of person who has her life so together that she wakes up each morning to the smell of freshly brewed coffee, and then sets out to face the day with her non-Starbuck's coffee-filled, eco-friendly, reusable mug in hand.

Sometimes it takes big changes to become the person you want to be. Other times it takes small ones. Tomorrow at 8:00 am, barring some technical malfunction, I will be just a tiny bit closer to becoming the me that I want to be. I can't wait.

Excellent Evening

Today was a good day because... I went running. I motivated and left work at a little after 6 pm, and then ran for over 4 miles. I'm psyched. I've noticed that though it's sometimes hard to make myself go to the gym, usually once I'm there and running I end up feeling great. It's probably the endorphins, but I think it's also just being proud of myself for motivating. While I'm running I'm also aware of my body in a way that I'm not throughout most of the day, and that awareness usually leads to an appreciation of its strength, and how cool it is that my body can do things like run 4 miles. It makes me want to nurture and care for it and feed it lots of protein and green leafy vegetables (not fudgsicles).

I think women, including me, need to do that more, think about why they should love and value their bodies, as opposed to focusing on what's wrong with them. I don't spend enough time valuing my body for everything that's great about it and treating it the way I should. It's a superb machine and it needs certain things to function at an optimum level, and too often I deprive it of nutrients and feed it semi-toxic things like sugar (and spoonfuls of peanut butter).

After I went running, I stopped by Origins and bought plantidote face serum because I really digg Dr. Weil and all of his mushroom-based potions. One of the new things I saw there today that I want to try some time are mini herb flavored honey-ies. So cute, and I love that honey can be so beneficial for the body. Yum. After Origins, I went to a little boutique for some more hanky panky undies. I've decided to throw away almost all of my other underwear because all I wear anymore is hanky panky. The rest of my undies just sit in a pile smushed together in the pack of my drawer. They need to be pruned. It's on my list, as is purging my closet of any piece of clothing that I haven't worn for the past year. Egads! I don't know if I can do it, but it's on the list.

Another thing that made me happy today was that I bought a "calm to your senses" lavender and vanilla scented candle at Origins. I lit it in my bedroom and then went downstairs to make dinner. An hour later, when I went back upstairs, my room smelled amazing! So luscious and relaxing. I love it. Every time I light candles, it makes me happy. I think it also makes me feel calmer and more at peace. I need to remember to light candles more often. It's a nice way to really be in the moment.

Photo by Buttercup - Garden in Millennium Park, Chicago

Being a Gentile Is The Bomb

Jewish holidays are the best. Being the non-believer that I am, I didn't realize today was Rosh Hashana until yesterday afternoon when my partner informed me that our office would be closed today for the Jewish holiday. Could anything be better than a free day just dropping out of the sky like that? At my old firm, all the non-Jewish folks had to work on Jewish holidays. I love working for a firm full of Jewish lawyers. It is awesome.

I took full advantage of the windfall by sleeping in, going running down by the river, doing a bit of work from the comfort of my bedroom, and meeting my friends at a boutique champagne sale downtown. I bought a sparkly purple party dress from a Japanese designer that made me feel slightly like a giant blueberry but in a fun celebratory, fashionista sort of way. It's all about confidence and with a banging pair of silver heels, I think I can pull it off.

Today was so good, I hardly need a daily dose of positivity, but here goes:

Thursday's DDP: My therapist called me and I called her back. We talked about the bad session we had on Thursday and I decided to go in another time to see if we could repair the relationship. I'm seeing her next Tuesday and I'm glad about it. Very mature of me, I must say. It made me happy because I know that if I lost this relationship, particularly on such negative terms, it would have made me really sad. I've been going to her for over 2 years! I also texted Bacchus, who texted me back. It's a baby step, but a step nonetheless.

Hope everyone else had an equally positive Rosh Hashana!

New Leaves

I'm turning over a new leaf, two of them actually.

I feel like, especially lately (when I've had the chance to write), I've been spending a fair amount of time on the blog regaling you all with angst-filled stories (Exhibit A), hopefully with touches of humor amidst the emotional turmoil. It's therapeutic, interesting to me, and often times enjoyable to write. However, I don't want my life or my blog to focus just upon the angst-filled moments. I want perspective.

I've decided to change - the blog at least - in one small, but positive, way. For the rest of the month of September, I'm going to try to post about at least one positive thing each day, in addition to the usual stuff. I think it will help me keep a bit of perspective, and I think it's more of what I'd like my blog (and me) to be. I mean, emotional turmoil is entertaining and all, but it can look negative (especially if the dark, dry humor is missed) and I think it's important to balance the craziness with some pure positivity.

Daily Dose Of Positivity: That's the first leaf. The second leaf is also the subject of today's first positivity post: I've decided to start waking up earlier during the work week and today - drum roll please - I did it! I set my alarm for 7:30 am this morning and actually got up on the first buzz. Due to my diligence, I was showered, blow-dried, and out the door by 8:30 and in the office by 8:50 am. That's the earliest I've been in for a while. Go me!!

I want to wake up earlier mainly because I think it will help me organize my days and weeks better. If I wake up early, I'll get in earlier and I will have a few extra minutes to get things together for the day before it begins in full force. On days when I don't have to wash my hair (I wash it every other day), I could do pilates. That's the plan so far, and I'm going to do my best to stick to it.

But, for today, I'm just proud of me for waking up at 7:30 am. Awesome.

Photo found here.

Reflections

This week was intense, filled with a lot of working and playing hard, and now that it's finally Friday I find myself filled with relief at the prospect of a weekend to chill, relax, work-out, eat healthy, and catch up on some much-needed sleep.

I went out every single night this past week, after going out four nights in a row last weekend with IP. Monday I went out to dinner with a co-worker, Tuesday I had therapy and a facial (which sounds relaxing and didn't include drinking which was a plus, but also did not constitute an evening of unadulterated downtime), Wednesday I went out with my co-workers to a fabulous sit-down wine tasting dinner followed by bar-hopping, copious amounts of alcohol, and a massive lime-throwing war (don't ask), and last night I had the first meeting of a book club that I recently started with a friend of mine in which we discussed Jane Eyre (excellent).

All fun, but I'm exhausted! Add to that a relatively stressful week at work, and I'm really exhausted, and in desperate need of some solid down-time.

It was funny because last night, while I was flying up the East side in a cab after just finishing up my book club meeting, I happened to look out the window and catch site of a Blockbuster and I was suddenly filled with a wave of nostalgia and an inexplicable feeling of longing. It was as if the fleeting image of the Blockbuster had conjured up some pleasurable, relaxing memory of the past that I had somehow forgotten or lost. Thinking about it, trying to place the feeling of longing, wondering what it was that I was remembering that was making me feel a sense of yearning, I realized that the last time I was in a Blockbuster was almost two years ago.

During my first year in New York, I used to go all the time. After moving to the city, not knowing anyone and not having much time to do anything except for work, one of the few things I did for pleasure, along with wandering through the city and visiting museums, was to watch movies. During that time, my first year in the city, I was quite lonely. Back then I keenly felt the emptiness left behind from everything that was missing in my daily life, including friends, activities outside of work, relationship prospects ...joy.

A typical week back then included working the entire week with no breaks and oftentimes no human contact beyond work associates (one of whom was Dragon Lady), breaking down on Saturdays, and then picking myself up and trying to make something positive out of the last few hours of freedom left to me on Sunday. It was a very difficult period for me, and I never would have dreamed that almost two years later I would have found myself looking back at any part of it with a sense of longing.

Astounded as I was, I sat for a second with the feeling of longing as the reflections of the city lights flashed across the window of the cab and the reflection of my face mirrored there, and thought for a moment about how far I've come since that time when movies served as poor, but much-appreciated, substitutes for human contact. Now, almost two years later, I have a job and friends in the city that I love, too many activities to fit in each week, and hardly any time to do laundry, much less to rent a movie.

Comparing the two, I'd have to say that I choose the present state of exhaustion over the past state of loneliness, hands down. But, just for old times sake - and because I have a massive crush on him - the only thing I'm planning for this weekend (so far) is to go watch my man Jason in the Bourne Ultimatum.

Art found here.

Zenning Out

If you're sick of me talking about dating, skip this post. If you're not, read on!

As of today, I'm adopting a new aspirational goal in terms of my dating philosophy: I am going to be zen about dating. Zen, zen, zen. From here on out, Buttercup + Dating = ZEN!! (Imagine a chorus of red-robed monks raising their voices to the heavens and crying zeeeeeeeeennnnnn in perfect chanting harmony).

I know a lot of you are shaking your heads incredulously at what you no doubt imagine will be a fleeting sentiment on my part. You're aware of my penchant for over-analyzing everything, for parsing texts and spoken words, for agonizing over the possible meanings behind a delayed call or text back, and for constantly pondering the meaning behind the smallest actions or omissions.

It's true, I'm guilty as charged of all of those things. Although those are all facets of my personality, and in fact part of my considerable charm, I'm personally sick of the knots in my stomach, I'm sick of the worrying, and I've decided that the over-analyzing MUST END. It's either this, or I get out of the dating game now and resign myself to a life of spinsterhood (which frankly, when compared to the knots in my stomach looks quiet peaceful and appealing).

Now, in terms of what it means to be "zen" in dating, as this is a new concept for me, I'm still figuring that out (and I'm open to ideas). For starters, I'm going to try to channel my thoughts into the now instead of worrying about possible future repercussions of this that or the other [insert dating issue]. I'm also going to try to focus less on how the male in question might be perceiving things, and more on what I want in the present. I'm going to try to have faith that all of this will work out eventually, and focus on having fun in the present.

How's that for a philosophy? What's your dating philosophy? (Or, for you taken types, what was your dating philosophy?)

Art found here.

Subway Tadasana

In one of the most basic yoga poses, Tadasana, or "Mountain Pose," you are supposed to stand purposefully with the soles of your feet pressed firmly into the earth, your thigh muscles firm, your knee caps and sternum lifted, your shoulders pulled back and downwards, the crown of your head centered directly over your pelvis, and the weight of your body perfectly balanced.

Like all yoga poses, there's nothing passive about Tadasana. Instead, the pose is a dynamic attempt to create a line of energy running from the crown up your head, down your back, through your groin and legs, and out the soles of your feet into the ground. Standing in Tadasana takes energy, and it also creates energy, energy that you can use to stabilize yourself and ground yourself firmly into the floor. The term "Mountain Pose" makes sense to me, because in Tadasana you attempt to become as stable and evenly balanced, and as firmly rooted into the earth, as the most mammoth of mountains. It's a pose of power that is also excellent for your posture.

I practiced Mountain Pose this morning while riding the subway on my way to work. Usually, I hang on to the nearest rail with a grip of death to keep me from flailing about the subway car. It's express so it goes really fast. But, today I loosened my grip and concentrated instead on planting the soles of my feet, and the weight of my body, firmly against the shaky floor as the car careened down the track. I felt the tension and strength in my thighs, knees, and toes, and envisioned myself as perfectly stable and in balance.

My experiment was a resounding success. I managed to stay perfectly up right without having to grab the railing through both jerky turns and a screeching stop. It was a triumphant start to the day.

Body By Buttercup Update: Week 1

I went to the nutritionist today to get the results for Week 1 of my new healthy eating regime (it's a diet). I stepped on the scale in her office, conscious of the fact that my clothes were adding extra weight, wished silently for good results, and was rewarded for all those Fiber Rich crackers I've been snacking on in lieu of this, this, and this.

In 9 days, I lost 4 pounds!

Woo-hoo! From my starting weight of 139.6 (I left off the .6 in my original Body By Buttercup post), I am now down to 135.4. Later, when I got home and stripped off all my clothes, I weighed in at 133.5, which is only 1.5 pounds more than the top of my usual weight range, and only around 6 pounds above my target weight of 128! It's also the first time I've seen the number "33" in like three months.

What did we learn from this experience? You should always weigh yourself naked.

I was happy to lose the 4 pounds, but, ever the Achiever, even happier when the nutritionist told me that I had done an excellent job. When I first saw the results, I was worried that she would say that I had not lost enough. I had cheated a few times during the week, including having 4 Bacardi and diet cokes, one and a half glasses of red wine, and a small pinkberry frozen yogurt, and I was afraid the numbers were going to sell me out. I had written everything down on the sheet, so my cheating was fully disclosed, but I was afraid the nutritionist was going to look at the results and then say that I could have done a lot better. However, my fears were unfounded. She said I had done 97% of the program perfectly. I got a 97%!! That's an A +. Yay! I love A+s.

Beyond the poundage and the validation, what made me feel really great was the fact that I'm actually being disciplined. Apparently, I'm perfectly capable and strong enough to be disciplined and in control of what I put into my body. Shockingly, I do not have to feed random emotional cravings with chocolate, ice cream, and home made meringues. Who knew? Prior to starting the program, I had been really nervous that I would be unable to stick with the program. It had been so long since I had made a conscious, continuous effort to eat healthy, I honestly doubted if I could get back on the healthy wagon again. Well, good news, it turns out you can totally get back on the wagon. All it takes is one step in the right direction.

It's the same with having a routine. There I was, last week, frustrated at myself for not having a routine, feeling like a failure for not having my life together (I'm aware that this sounds like I'm being hard on myself), and then I took one step forward by going to the gym on Friday, which was followed by another step by going to the gym on Saturday. And then, buoyed up by the success of going those two days, and motivated by my new dress (it seriously is working better than a yellow polka dot string bikini), I vowed to go to the gym three times this week. And guess what? Suddenly, this week, I have a routine! Since I was social on Monday and I have plans Thursday and Friday, I need to go to they gym Tuesday and Wednesday. Presto! It's like my life is starting to run itself.

Here's what I think the routine is shaping up to look like:

Monday: Gym.

Tuesday: Therapy + Me Time.

Wednesday: Gym (or Thursday)(maybe yoga during lunch).

Thursday: Something Social (or Gym)(maybe yoga during lunch).

Friday: Something Social (maybe pilates in the morning).

Saturday: Gym in the morning and Something Social at night.

Sunday: Rest.

I'm sure that was fascinating for everyone. It's actually really important for me to have a routine. I haven't had one since Law School, and I think the lack of a routine has been a big part of why I have felt lost and uncentered in the past. But, those days are gone People. We're changing things up around here tout de suite!

Green Tea Extract

One of the products that my nutritionist suggested as part of my 6-week health program is HerbaSway's Peach Green Tea extract. Peach because it tastes good. Green tea extract because it provides you with an anti-oxidant boost that is supposed to assist your metabolism and enhance weight loss while you're on a diet. The idea, simplified, being that if your metabolism is functioning at its prime, calories will be metabolized efficiently and not stored as excess fat.

Although the bottle suggests swirling a dropper full of extract into a 6 oz. glass of hot or cold water, my nutritionist recommended three droppers full of extract in order to maximize the benefits of the supplement. I've been taking the supplement for a little over a week now, and although I can not yet say if it's had a beneficial impact on my weight loss efforts, I can report that it's a tasty way of drinking water throughout the day.

I'll be meeting with my nutritionist in about 2 hours to discuss my progress during the past week, and to be weighed officially. Yikes! I've never been obsessive about scales before, and though I'm fairly certain I've lost a few pounds, I must admit that I'm slightly nervous. I want to see progress! A full report of my meeting will be forthcoming later this evening. Stay tuned.

Ticking

I have been ticking for 4 days. Specifically, the space just below my left eye has been ticking in near constant spasms. It is so annoying. (It has nothing to do with the "Bush Time Bomb" picture but I thought the pic was hilarious).

A friend of mine said that it might be because of a potassium deficit and that I should eat some bananas. I tried, but I continued to tick. Another friend suggested that maybe it's because my sleep schedule is still slightly off kilter and that I should focus on getting some rest. I've been getting around 6 hours a night, which is less than the 8 I need, because though I've been going to bed fairly early I keep waking up at 3 am as a result of jet lag. Last night, I took an ambien for the first time in 2 months and managed to sleep until 7 am but I woke up with a smashing headache. Ouch. It still hurts and it's almost 5 pm!

Does anyone know about eye-ticking? Do I need to go to the doctor? Will I be like this for the rest of my life? I don't want to tick forever.

Space Making

I'm down to 31 hours before my plane leaves for Bombay and I'm in the final stretch of trip preparations. I've been busier the past few days packing and buying supplies than I was during my last few weeks of work! I was up until 5 am last night organizing, making to-do lists, and revamping my ipod selections. It's funny how staying up until 5 am for fun things is totally doable, whereas being stuck in the office until a similar time would be torture.

Other than getting soaked to the skin multiple times from the torrential downpours flooding New York, my trip preparations have been going pretty well. I've been downtown to EMS at least three times, first to buy my back pack and hiking shoes, then to return my hiking shoes, then to retrieve the credit card that the girl forgot to return to me at the end of my shoe transaction. At first I was annoyed that I had to go all the way back downtown, especially since I ended up wet, chilly, soaked to the skin, and feeling like a drowned rat. However, it turned out to be a great thing because the whole experience prompted me to invest in rain gear and a micro fleece for my trip. Bravo! If I hadn't forgotten my card I would have been woefully unprepared for the potentially wet, chilly evenings I may experience in the mountains up around Dharmashala.

Things still on my To Do List include:

(1) Get traveler's checks;
(2) Laundry;
(3) Get the last of my immunization shots;
(4) Buy a new journal;
(5) Mail things in the post office;
(6) Go to Duane Reade to pick up my immunization shots, medicine, and a travel alarm clock;
(7) Get legs and bikini wax;
(8) Get a massage and facial (Yay! Thanks Mom for the gift certificate!!);
(9) Finish packing;
(10) Make reservation for airport hotel in Bombay (for 5 hours since I'll be going on to Kolkata in the early morning);
(11) Call everyone I've been meaning to the last few days.

I was going to do a post listing every item I'm bringing with me on my trip, but at this point I'm not sure I'll have enough time to do it. Even though I'm attempting to pack light, there are so many things I'm bringing!! I'm going to try to be all packed by this evening and if I have to jettison some stuff, so be it.

By the way, I've been trying to think of the word "jettison" for the last 5 months, because that's what it has felt like I've been doing, working on jettisoning the jetsam in my life. Or, as my astrologist would say, "pruning" the unwanted elements out of my life. Others would say "letting go." Same concept. Suddenly, yesterday afternoon the word came to me. It is defined as follows: To cast overboard or off: a ship jettisoning wastes; a pilot jettisoning aircraft fuel.
Informal. To discard (something) as unwanted or burdensome.

Focusing on jettisoning the junk has been one half of the theme that has been dominating my life since November. The other half of the theme has been all about being open to receive positivity and love in my life. I know I have mentioned this before, but I am overwhelmed with gratitude for the changes that have occurred in my life during the last few months. In so many ways I am so different from the girl I was in November, the major difference being that I feel whole. Before, when I had all of those stresses ripping into my stomach, I felt emotionally shredded on a regular basis. To go from that to feeling a sense of well being along with hope, joy, and excitement for the future is awesome.

As I also mentioned, I've been reading a lot about this general theme of achieving personal happiness and/or freedom. The basic concept is all about pursuing what you believe in, making your life into the one that you want, and freeing yourself from negative distractions that get in the way of you fulfilling your destiny, your dream, your personal path, your ability to attain a state of bliss. If anyone is interested in checking out some good books on the subject I would suggest: The Alchemist, The Secret, and The Four Agreements.

I just finished the Four Agreements and felt like the whole book was speaking my present personal truth. A Mayan man named Pablo who teaches scuba diving on Isla Mujeres in Mexico, and who one day bought be a glass of wine while I was watching the sunset, recommended this book. It offered suggestions and perspectives on the very issues that I've been thinking about, and its messages resonated with me. The basic premise of the Four Agreements is that in order to achieve personal freedom, and to let go of the negative distractions that have stood in the way of the attainment of your personal freedom/bliss, you should make the following four agreements with yourself:

(1) Be impeccable with your word. "Being impeccable with your word is not using your word against yourself...[It] is the correct use of your energy; it means to use your energy in the direction of truth and love for yourself [and it will] clean all the emotional poison that exists within you."

I'm still trying to fully understand this lesson. An example of this lesson includes not gossiping (i.e. not spreading emotional poison), but instead using your word to spread positivity and love. The idea being that if you do this, it will bounce back on you as well because you will not be giving any cause to anyone else to have emotional poison against you. I think of myself as a fairly sweet, loving person but it's hard not to spread emotional poison. Sometimes being negative and cynical is highly amusing. For now, what I've taken from this is to try to be honest with myself, and to try to speak and act in accordance with my personal truth. It's a challenge but I think it's a worthy goal.

(2) Don't take anything personally - "Nothing other people do is because of you. It is about themselves. All people live in their own dream, in their own mind; they are in a completely different world from the one we live in. When we take something personally, we make the assumption that they know what is in our world, and we try to impose our world on their world."

This is a lesson that first came up in therapy for me. I tend to be sensitive and to take the actions and words of the people close to me personally, especially when my emotional reserves are weakened. I've been working on not taking things personally and this chapter was revelatory to me. It makes perfect sense and it goes along with the idea that the only person you can control is you. If others treat you poorly, you shouldn't take it personally, because it's not about you being bad or deficient in any way, it's about their stuff. Instead of taking it personally and allowing yourself to feel bad about it, see it for what it is - their stuff - and then do what you need to do to remove the negativity.

According to the book, "When we really see people as they are without taking it personally, we can never be hurt by what they say or do...If someone is not treating you with love and respect, it is a gift if they walk away from you." Of course I read this and thought of EXBF, and tried to view his walking away as a gift to me. In my heart I know that it was a gift of sorts because I'm so much happier now than I was in that relationship. However, I still feel twinges of pain now and then. I haven't fully let go of the emotions tied to that relationship, and I haven't fully let go of the hurt I felt as a result of how he treated me. I know that in essence I did take his treatment of me personally, and I was very hurt by him. I've struggled with the idea that no one can make you feel hurt, you allow yourself to feel hurt. Half of me believes it, half of me doesn't. My opinion on this at the moment is that the second, third, and fourth times someone hurts you, you are "allowing them to hurt you," but the first time? I guess if you were totally zenned out and someone did something horrible to you for the first time, you could not take it personally, understand it was all about them and not you, and not feel pain. But, I have a long way to go before I reach that level. I'm working on it though.

(3) Don't make assumptions. "All the sadness and drama you have lived in your life was rooted in making assumptions and taking things personally...The way to keep yourself from making assumptions is to ask questions. Make sure the communication is clear. If you don't understand, ask....The day you stop making assumptions you will communicate cleanly and clearly, free from emotional poison."

This is another great one, and a classic thing that I do that I know I shouldn't do. But it's so hard not to!! It takes courage to ask questions, and I'm trying to do that more, as opposed to jumping to conclusions. It's particularly tricky in the context of dating, because you have to go into it with a level of faith and trust and repress the urge to make assumptions. I consider myself quite smart so it almost seems counter intuitive sometimes to try to force myself to doubt what I believe to be true about someone, based on my experience. However, smart as I may be, I'm not in another person's skin and I appreciate that I can't truly understand someone else unless I ask them and allow them to tell me. I'm working on this too.

(4) Always do your best. Do your best to be impeccable with your word, not to take anything personally, and not to make assumptions. "Just do your best - in any circumstance in your life. It doesn't matter if you are sick or tired, if you always do your best there is no way you can judge yourself. And if you don't judge yourself there is no way you are going to suffer from guilt, blame, and self-punishment."

This is a beautiful lesson because it's all about silencing the inner Judge that we all have inside of us. If you make an agreement with yourself to do your best, the best that you are able to do under any given circumstance, and if you honor that agreement, then there will be nothing to beat yourself up about. I also like this lesson because it recognizes that Agreement 1-3 are very challenging, and it gives you space to not be perfect. As long as you are doing your best to be impeccable with your word, to not take things personally, and to not make assumptions, then you should be proud of yourself.

This was a much longer post than I had intended and my To Do List is calling me. Go out and pick up the Four Agreements and have a wonderful Monday!

Connectivity

Something crazy is going on with the universe. Namely, it's spinning a web around me, bringing me all these people, books, ideas, wonderful synchronicities, coincidences, crazy things that are making me smile and realize how connected I am to everything. It probably started a long time ago but I was preoccupied so couldn't see the messages. Now I can and I feel so happy I feel almost high, like my heart is swelling, wanting to burst out of my chest. This is crazy. It's not just the absence of a destructive job and a destructive relationship. It's experiencing the fruits of months and months of work, of letting things go, of opening up my self, of gaining new insight, of embracing who I am and finding, surprisingly, trust in some kind of greater order.

It happened by accident. I had no intention, during the last few months, of becoming remotely spiritual. I wasn't looking for anything other than me; I was just trying to be still, trying to be present, trying to live in the now. And, all of a sudden I started feeling connected with myself on a deeper level. And, in that connection, I suddenly realized I wasn't alone. I felt connected to the universe, whatever that may be. To me, it's some kind of higher order; a sense of connectedness. Despite "Life of Pi," I'm an agnostic, so it's not exactly a God that I envision pulling the strings, although Tara has captured my imagination. It's more of a sense of connection to all things living. I see me in you and you in me. I know this sounds loopy. I still have a long way to go to figure all of this out, to fully embrace it. But, it feels good to be filled with more positive emotions, to be detached - at least for the moment - from anger, jealousy, and hurt. We have only one life; why fill it up with anything other than something beautiful? Why bring anyone into it unless they enhance your experience?

What is the greater meaning? I don't know yet. I know that ideas of personal enlightenment resonate with me. I'm on a quest - one among many - to explore Buddhist thought more fully. First, because it is a philosophy based on notions of kindness and compassion. It's concerned with personal growth, not conversion. Second, because in the last month I have felt content, happy, and blissful. I now understand that I have the capacity to feel so at peace. I want to pursue that feeling on a more permanent basis. I want to feel free, relaxed, at peace with myself and the world. I want to integrate it into my being, my daily reality. I don't want it limited to a weekly vacation.

I don't know if I can ever be a lawyer again. Where's my Capricornian ambition? My steel? It's been overwhelmed and diffused in these feelings of happiness and joy. Can I be at peace with the world and go for the opposing party's throat? Do I want to? Not really, unless they're anti-feminist. Then I could channel this zen energy and use the power of the universe to crush them under a tide of truth. But, for now, I'm just going to go with the feelings of bliss. I feel so lucky and overwhelmed with gratitude. Life can be filled with such wonder, if you open yourself up to it.

I have to remember this all a month from now.

Morning Pages and Mindfullness

View of the mountains and the tiny town below from Bean's deck.

At BBC, we were encouraged to take about 15 minutes, first thing in the morning, to write "Morning Pages." Melissa, the co-founder of BBC, explained that Morning Pages were not a "Dear Diary," a place to record what had happened during the previous day, but were rather intended to be a cleansing exercise through which you could purge your mind of all your thoughts and start the day refreshed. The idea for Morning Pages came from the Artist's Way - a book, incidentally, I've had on my shelf for the last 10 years but have never read. It's now on my to do list.

According to Melissa, focusing for a few minutes each morning to record your thoughts is a way to tap into your creativity and inner wisdom. The idea being that writing first thing in the morning, before the distractions of the day have taken over your mind, allows you to see into your core and uncover your truest and deepest thoughts, desires, dreams, and points of concern. Melissa shared with us how she often doesn't recall what she has written for her Morning Pages, but later, after reviewing them she would see patterns of thought emerging, which enabled her to develop a greater awareness of her self. A theme that continued to emerge for her was her desire to have a child. It kept popping up in her Morning Pages, before other thoughts could take hold, and eventually she realized that's what she really wanted to do, and she did it. She now has an absolutely adorable little boy named Dylan.

For me, in concept and in practice, Morning Pages is about being mindful, something which was an important theme for me throughout my week at BBC, and something which I've known I need to work on for quite some time. Being mindful in the sense of being present in the moment, being aware of my mind and body, being still, and embracing where I am at any given moment.

Being mindful is significant for me because for so long I had not been living mindfully. I had difficulty sitting still with myself. I was often in triage mode. I think now that some of my unmindfullness was self-protective. I knew that I was unhappy, I knew that I had to make changes, but I also knew that I was not yet ready to make changes, so I pushed onwards trying to hold on to the small joys that made the rest of it bearable. Mind you, I have no intention of living unmindfully again; I'm just observing that there are reasons for everything, including perhaps my inability to be mindful of my soul during the last couple of years. I had other things to figure out, other lessons to learn.

Other examples of my lack of mindfullness would be the many, many times I have done things such as leap up to go to the refrigerator 10 times in 15 minutes, playing spider solitaire for hours on end in a state of agitation thinking that each game will be my last but being unable to walk away from the computer, ripping off one nail after another, and eating too much too fast until my stomach hurts and my head aches from a sugar overload.

Just this morning there was another example of this unmindful behavior. Waking up at my sister's house, there was no coffee, I had to hunt through her cupboards for breakfast, and there was some minor family stress. My mom and I couldn't get in touch with Bean and her husband at first (because they were sleeping), my mom was stressed about that which was making me stressed even though I was trying to be zen about things, we didn't have a car so we couldn't take things into our own hands (ah, lack of control, interesting), and I felt as if I was stuck in a caffeine-less limbo world. Really, all I wanted to do was know that at some point in the day I would be able to go to the hospital to see Bean and the baby.

How did I deal with this limbo world, you ask? I wish that I could say that I had a nice glass of cool refreshing water, sat in a corner and meditated for 5 minutes, and then purged all of my thoughts by writing my Morning Pages. But, no, that's not exactly what happened. Instead, I fiddled with the TV, sent my sister a text, told my mom to relax, and tried to make myself relax by.... eating an entire bag of Pepperidge Farm Shortbread Chessman Cookies. Essentially, I self-medicated my anxiety with shortbread. Awesome.

I didn't intend to, I swear! I can hear my BBC personal trainer tsk-tsk-ing away. I found the cookies while searching for a healthy breakfast alternative, ate one, then ate two more to make it an even three, then watched some TV, then felt slightly anxious, then went back to search for coffee, then had three more, then channel surfed, checked my phone, glanced at my mother, had three more, etc. Before I knew it, the package was gone and my head was in a sugar coma.

It's not technically true to say that I didn't know what I was doing. I knew exactly what I was doing, and I kept eating them to savor the pure taste of goodness that they created on my tongue. The reason it wasn't mindful though was because the taste of them in my mouth was just a temporary fix, a distraction from what was really going on. The taste is deceptive. Though they tasted like pure goodness, the cookies are not good or pure. Pure would have been meditating, doing my morning pages, and having some water. The good news is, I was able to identify my lack of mindfullness. Tomorrow morning I will be better to myself.

The other good news is that Bean's husband is on his way to pick up my Mom and me. I'll be spending the afternoon ooh-ing and ah-ing over the gorgeous little creature she brought into this world. I can't wait to hold my nephew for the very first time. Make no mistake about it, I'm going to be fully present in that moment.

Blissed Out

I'm back from Mexico!! I had an absolutely amazing time at Bikini Boot Camp. You should all go. Physically, mentally, emotionally, and spiritually it exceeded all of my expectations. It was far more than just about looking better in a bikini... although that sort of happened inadvertently. I swear I have a bit more definition than I used to. With five classes a day and only healthy eating, it was almost unavoidable.

One of the best parts was the group of women who shared the experience with me. Most of them were in their early 30s and like me they were in states of transformation. They were some of the coolest, most inspiring, caring, amazing women that I have ever met. Being around them I felt proud to be in my 30s, and there were several of them that made me think, "I want to be like you." Confident, strong, incredible women, and not a single lawyer, except for me, in the bunch. So refreshing!! Thank god many of them live in New York.

There's so much to tell that I'm not sure where to begin. I want to tell you all about the work outs, the healthy food, amaranth over yogurt and fruit for breakfast, how light my body felt without white-bread carbs, the music I discovered doing power yoga, the perfect way to eat a mango, how I felt at peace and connected with the universe on our daily silent beach walks, how drinking a pitcher of pina coladas may have influenced my decision to go skinny dipping in the sea, and how mindful, connected, and blissfully happy I felt for much of my time at Amansala.

Just imagine how you would feel if every day you could wake up and enrich your life with all of your favorite things, and many more that you hadn't yet even discovered. That's how I felt. It was amazing. My soul opened up, embraced it all, and drank up every drop of the experience until I was overflowing with positive energy. There were days that I felt raw, vulnerable, and emotional as well, but I drank up those emotions just as I did the feelings of bliss. I was reminded that having the capacity to care and love, and to feel sadness and pain - the capacity to feel one's emotions - is not a weakness, but a trait. A beautiful trait that should be embraced along with all of the other aspects of my self. I was reminded of parts of me.

I listened to myself, I took care of myself. I napped when I wanted to nap, I swam when I wanted to swim, I stayed in the hammock instead of doing pilates when I felt like continuing to sway back and forth under the palm trees, and I did yoga even though I was crying one day because I knew that it would be good for my soul and I knew that all of the women around me would understand and support me. I felt safe and cared for, by them and by me. I started meditating for 5 minutes each morning, observing what I was thinking and trying to let any distractions float down the river I pictured in my mind. I went kayaking, bike-riding, and floated for hours in the ocean. I started journaling each day, several times a day. First with "morning pages," and then throughout the day when I wanted to record what I was experiencing or feeling, or when I wanted to jot down another thing I had just learned.

I didn't want to leave, and I didn't want my new friends to go either. But they left, one by one, and then there was only me. And then I too packed up my back pack and set out from Amansala. The next three days were also fun, though they paled in comparison to the incredible time I had had at BBC. I missed my new friends! The highlights of my solo trip were swimming with dolphins and renting a golf cart for the day on Isla Mujeres. How is it that I had lived for 32 years on this earth without ever having discovered how freakin' awesome golf carts are. It was like I was on the go-cart ride except that I could go everywhere I wanted. It was so much fun. If you haven't driven a golf cart, go out and do it.

That's a brief summary of the highlights. I'm sure more of the specifics will find there way into later posts. An hour after arriving in New York, while I was in a taxi en route to my apartment, I talked to Bean and learned that she is going to induce her labor this Wednesday, April 4th. Please send her and the baby-to-be positive energy. I decided to fly to Utah on Wednesday in time for the birth. Bean doesn't want anyone but her husband in the delivery room with her, which I completely respect, but she said it would make her happy if I was in the waiting room, just there if she needed me for anything. I know that if I wasn't there I would be watching my phone and thinking about her every second, so I think it makes the most sense for me to be there.

Do you see how perfectly things are going? Once again the universe is conspiring to make everything work out as it should. I was in Mexico until just two days before Bean decided to induce her labor and I happen to not be working so I have the luxury of being able to hop a flight to Utah to be there for the birth of my first nephew!! Through my travel fatigue, I am radiating quite joy and gratitude.

Gratitude for all of the changes I managed to make during the past 4 months, gratitude for the amazing experience I had at Amansala and the friendships that I formed there, gratitude for my family and the spirit who will become its newest member, and gratitude for where I am right now. I had forgotten that the world can change rapidly for the good, and that the universe is abundant.

In this moment it is hard to remember the girl I was just five months ago. She was so sad, though strong, and she felt so alone. I know she's a part of me, and thank god because without her I wouldn't be in the place I am now. I'm grateful to her for seeing us through the last few years, and happy to report that she's healing quite nicely.

Hypothetically Speaking

If you had started a blog with your sister about a year ago when your life was in turmoil and weighed down by various dark clouds, and then had spent the last few months making dramatic changes in your life, capping things off with one of the most incredible weeks of your life where you actually felt - for the first time ever - completely in tune with the universe and yourself, so much so that you actually have come to believe that the universe has in fact been conspiring to encourage you down this path of transformation, and you now feel so different from the girl who started the blog originally, and you want to let go of the negative memories of your former job and former relationship for many reasons including the fact that you finally started meditating and have been practicing letting things float down the river so that your mind can be clear and peaceful,

...but you still want to be an avid blogger,

...would you continue writing on the original blog, and if so would you keep the name the same or change it, or would you start a new blog with a new title and concept that more accurately reflects where you are in this moment?

p.s. Thanks for all of your messages. I have missed you all and am looking forward to reconnecting.

Operation Spirit

I have this thing about spending money, I don't like to do it, at least not wastefully. Not that I don't love shopping, because I do, and I've been guilty of buying up a storm on more than one occasion, particularly when there are good deals to be had. But, as a general rule, I'm careful with my money and I prefer to save it rather than spend it. I don't like to spend it carelessly, I hate paying more for something than I know it's worth, and decadence sometimes makes me uncomfortable.

I think it's a product of an innate cautiousness and being the daughter of my father, who also has an aversion to spending money wastefully. Sometimes, while growing up, I did not agree with my father's view as to what was wasteful and what was worthwhile, such as when he insisted that it would be wasteful for me to go to a college out of state, even though I had the grades to go almost anywhere. In that instance, I decided that going out of state was worthwhile - for the value of the education I was going to get and the value of being far away from home for a while - so I went away to college and relied on financial aid to make up the difference.

My father also believes that when you do something, you should do it right, and this goes for spending money on worthwhile endeavors. (My mother always had this view, but had a much broader definition as to what qualified as "worthwhile" which is why we went on a lot of awesome Caribbean vacations when I was younger). I'm not sure if my father believed this while we were growing up, but it's certainly a lesson I've heard repeated many times as I've grown into adulthood and started to earn my own money. For example, just before I started my job at the firm, I was stressed out with the logistics of moving to New York and finding an apartment, and I was thinking that I had too little time and too little money saved up to take a vacation. My father, thankfully, talked some sense into me by reminding me that sparing myself some stress was worthwhile and that I was going to be making plenty of money once I started my job. He advised me to use some of my savings to take a trip and to pay the extra money I needed to in order to have peace of mind with respect to the move. I spent the money and never regretted it.

One thing I did regret about that period of time was that I had not taken enough time off. Or, more precisely, I had not taken enough stress-free time off. I took about 6 weeks off which would have been awesome except that I filled up most of that time with stress-filled activities. Bad move on my part, although some of it was unavoidable. I spent a lot of time packing up my apartment, apartment hunting in New York, and stressing about the move (before my Dad talked sense into me). I went on a 10-day vacation to Belize, which was wonderful, and went on a few short trips to visit my family, but other than that didn't do any travelling. I was constantly moving from one thing to the next, figuring out logistics, or worrying about what was going to happen next. I also spent a lot of time worrying about other people, like my family and EXBF, instead of focusing on what I needed.

This time, I'm not going to make the same mistakes. I'm sure I'll make different ones, but I'm not going to make the same ones. For starters, I arranged to take 8 weeks off before I start at my new firm. Although I've been talking about my upcoming 2 months of freedom as if it's the greatest thing ever - which it is - you should know that it was incredibly stressful to ask for that amount of time. I was nervous that my new firm would have doubts about my level of commitment or might see me in some negative light because of my desire to be off work for that amount of time. Most lawyers don't take two whole months off between jobs. It's not the Type-A, over-achieving thing to do, and it certainly doesn't make sense financially. Perhaps because of the money issue, it also strikes me as decadent and indulgent to be off work for such a lengthy period of time. However, despite the stress, doubts, fears, and feelings of guilt, I stuck to my guns and negotiated a late May start date. Go me.

Now that I have the time off, I need to figure out what to do with it. See, I'm already feeling the feverish urge to plot and plan. Why is it so hard for me to just sit still? I actually know the answer to that, I'm a Type-A overachiever (or at least I used to be before my firm crushed my overachieving tendencies into smithereens and turned me into a creature who delays in returning emails and phone calls as a survival mechanism). Sitting still with nothing to do is hard for me. Hence, my difficulties with meditation. In fact, last week, when I realized I was about to give my notice, I was paralyzed with anxiety for a moment thinking with dread about what was going to happen the first Monday that I did not have work. I pictured the worst case scenario: Me, completely undisciplined, staying in bed all day, doing nothing productive, playing endless games of spider solitaire, eating junk food, and waking up 8 weeks later to realize I had wasted my entire vacation! The horror! That's why I need to plan, so that I don't waste this valuable time.

I have goals for my 8 weeks of freedom. I want to cleanse, rejuvenate, detoxify, refresh, and rebalance my mind and body. I want to get back in touch with myself, enjoy life, have an amazing time travelling, and I want to have fun. To achieve these goals I plan to do everything in my power during my 8 weeks of freedom to (a) erase from my soul the negativity of working the last 2 1/2 years in a toxic cesspool, and (b) make up for the last 2 1/2 years of sacrifice by enjoying my work-free existence to the absolute fullest. In honor of one of my favorite bands of all time, and inspired by Starshine's Operation String Bikini, I'm dubbing my 8 weeks of freedom "Operation Spirit." Bonus points to anyone who knows the band.

That's the plan, and I'm indebted to Prue for helping me to kick it off in style. Yesterday, while we were talking on the phone, I was telling her I wasn't sure if I should spend the money to go to a yoga/spa retreat in Mexico for a week, and she basically reached through the phone - all the way from Texas - and started shaking me until I agreed to sign myself up. (Thanks Prue!) Because of Prue, in about 10 days I'm heading down to Tulum, Mexico for Bikini Boot Camp. Yep, that's actually what it's called. Beach, yoga, meditation, fresh fish and fruit, and 5 hours of physical activity a day, here I come.

It's a fair amount of money, and it means that my savings will be temporarily depleted (particularly once I factor in the other activities I'm planning as part of Operation Spirit). But, I'm doing it anyway because it will be awesome, it will be good for me, and it's worth it. My spirit is worth it. Money is something I can always earn again, but - as I learned over the course of the past 2 1/2 years - time is something I'll never be able to get back. While I have both of them, I'm going to live it up. Innate cautiousness, be damned (but only for 8 weeks).

Give Me A "P"

"I have nothing to say of my working life, only that a tie is a noose, and inverted though it is, it will hang a man nonetheless if he's not careful." - Yann Martel, Life of Pi

I can't believe this day has come, but it's here and I'm incandescently happy. Today is the last Monday ever that I will spend at my firm. I have only 5 more days and then I will be free for two whole months!!! All I have to do this week is clean out my office, send files to where they need to go, and trash everything else. The joy I feel at tossing red welds into the recycling bin is indescribable.

I'm almost done!!! I can't believe it. Soon, this whole experience will be a distant blurry spot of grey on my personal time line.

Did I mention that I'm going to be off for two whole months? Bean's baby is set to come smack in the middle of my time off, so planning is a little tricky. I'm planning to stay relatively close by until the baby is born, and may go on a short trip to a yoga/spa retreat. There seem to be a number of them in Mexico that look pretty awesome. I'm going to check out Yoga Journal for ideas later this afternoon. For anyone looking for something like that in Thailand, you should check out Sanctuary. I stayed there for a blissful week last year and had an incredibly relaxing experience. After the baby's born, I'm going somewhere farther afield, most likely to South Asia.

Do y'all have any ideas, suggestions, or experiences with yoga/spa retreats? In the U.S. or elsewhere? I'm looking to rejuvenate, destress, detoxify, and mostly, to CHILL OUT.