Time Keeps on Slippin' in Never Say Never

“Life changes fast. Life changes in the instant. You sit down to dinner and life as you know it ends.” — Joan Didion

It’s like I am living in a time warp, I swear. The days are long enough, I guess, but the weeks are slipping by so quickly that it’s all a blurry blur. I wake up: It’s Monday. I wake up: It’s Friday. Weekends are spent in a little cocoon that looks only slightly like my life and feels like a three-day vacation.

I hear this sensation is worse if you have kids. I am glad I don’t have kids.

Updates on various…

Work: This weekend is the last of six weekends of Pilates teacher training. Not since college have I devoted myself to a singular pursuit with such focus. I’ve been going to classes, going to practice teaching sessions, memorizing materials, and/or going to training day after day now for six weeks. It’s a lot. Some days I can barely move I have worked out so hard. But I am strong and I am nearly ready to teach the public.
I already have a job at one studio, and the owner of a second studio has promised me a job after I complete this weekend’s training. And yesterday the owner of a third studio said that if I will attend a couple of their senior classes, that I can be the substitute teacher for those classes – and having a business teaching exercise to old people is ultimately the goal of all this. So things are moving forward nicely. I think I made the right call to become a Pilates teacher instead of a yoga teacher. Seems like there is a lot of opportunity here for me.

On the editing front, I have been managing a big project for the Chamber of Commerce and I think we are all getting along really well. If this pans out like it seems it will, it will be a very nice base of work to carry me through next year. There are a couple of other things that are taking some time to gel, but I think they are going to come together in the next couple of weeks. And then yesterday a person with whom I’ve been splitting a project with for years said she is ready to bow out, so my hope is that the whole project falls to me, adding to the base of steady, predictable income that I am building. When it’s all said and done, I may have six part-time jobs and no company-funded health insurance, but ultimately YAY ME!!! for being able to do what I want, which is work mostly at home, maintain my flexible schedule, and stay out of an office full-time.

Love: Well, it’s not love really. And we both know that. Whether he is even capable of love is up for debate. Whether I am capable of love with him is also up for debate. (And last night I dreamed of Patrick, a big party, a baby goat, and a shopping mall.) But we are having fun, and I am getting a chance to learn some things about myself and to learn some things about what’s important in the world. Some of my friends met him over the weekend, and one of them was like “Run for you life,” to which my response is, “I knew someone would say that.” But it’s not so perilous as all that, folks. My life is in no way in jeopardy. He is A LOT to handle, but it’s everything I said I wanted: intense and complex and challenging and often quite lovely. Sweet and easy has never been sustainable for me. And though he can be sweet and he can be easy, those are not the overriding characteristics of his personality. But neither are they mine – and you all aren’t running for your life away from me. Don’t watch your mail for any wedding invitations, but do expect that this will go on for a while. Until it doesn’t. We’ll deal with that then.

Friends: My heavens it was good to have a couple of my most precious girls with me for a night and to get to spend a few more hours with them individually in the days that followed. One thing really really stood out for me, though, and it was this: No one currently in my daily life challenges me to be a better person. During the course of less than 24 hours, these girls indirectly held up a mirror to me and asked me to take a look at some of my choices. Without even knowing it, they asked me to THINK. Nobody is asking me to think in my life. Nobody is causing me to question my current way of being. If I think or question, it’s all on my own. And mostly I don’t think or question. I just glide along in a bubble of contentment, assuming it’s all going to be OK. That’s how most people do life. I get that. And it’s not the worst way to be in the world, but it’s not the best way either. And it’s not that I need to contribute to the conversation necessarily, it’s more that I need to still be listening to the conversation and considering that there are always things I can do to live better, to be a better steward of EVERYTHING. When we were all living together in New York, this was a constant, a given. I didn’t realize until this weekend how far I’ve gotten away from that or how much I miss it.

Last updated September 05, 2014