Dear Blog, sorry for ignoring you, Love Me.

Three people asked me about my blog in late December. One of them is a pretty important person in our town and two of them I see often; when I go to work. I talked animatedly to each of them about my blog, what I write about, and how much I love it. I did however feel like a bit of a fraud; as I mentally calculated how long it has been since I actually written a post.

For the whole of November and some of October before that, I was obsessed about NaNoWriMo. I wrote and I wrote and I wrote. Every Tuesday, I sat at Lonsdale Street Roasters (coffee heaven, hello everyone) and wrote and drank coffee til my bum went numb on the hard chair. I then went home and wrote some more, on a more comfortable chair.

Racking 'em up!

I ignored most other things. I tried not to get distracted. I still had to work three days a week. I still went to yoga, I went to the shops. But I didn’t watch tv, I didn’t garden much, and I certainly ignored my family more often than normal. My patient and kind Robert, looked after the children. Both the big and the little were restless, filled with end of year angsty tiredness.

Cheers

It quickly moved from celebrating NaNo victory to mad christmas and December rush. We have a lot of December birthdays in our family and immediate circle – a lot. Every spare moment I was buying gifts, wrapping, sending acceptances, thank you notes. We made Christmas cakes, and puddings, and then mince tarts. And ice-cream. After being away last year, and labouring away the year before, it was like we were cramming three years of christmas into one. We had visitors, we went visiting. Frankly, while some of it was very enjoyable and some of it hilarious (especially Christmas eve when the carefully set kettle BBQ went out after half an hour, necessitating a few changes of plan and then later due to extreme drunkenness we forgot to cook the potatoes) it was totally exhausting.

So here we are in early January. I am half-way through a significant milestone. I have enrolled in a yoga intensive for this week. Two classes per day for five days. This is much more important than it looks because of what it represents. For me, this week is about bringing myself back to a position where I can move on. And it is hard. My muscles remember how much work it takes. I know the poses, I know what it feels like to do so many classes. I used to do it all the time. Then I stopped. And I shouldn’t have left it. I should have made myself go, had more courage to overcome the fear of changing schools and leaving my familiar and-well loved teachers from Sydney.

Sydney Yoga Space Intensive 2006

I am back now. Back on the mat. Significantly, my past experience is assisting me. What is so significant about yoga for me, is that it gives me back control of myself. It helps my body become strong and relaxed, it gives me mental and emotional space from my responsibilities and it allows me to feel good about my outer shell, as well as my inner world which it is easier for me to feel good about.