Change

75% of people in the U.S. hate their job.

Ok so this statistic was based on a population of 8 people from a party last night, but seriously how many people do you know that can say they love their job? Some people may be in between, which is better than hating your job, but honestly I can only think of one or two people in my life who can honestly say, "I've found my calling."

Finding what you were meant for takes a lot of work. You have to spend time and money searching, trying, and experiencing life. You have to get to know yourself and what you care about. You have to change. Rip the band aid off, jump off the cliff, and do what is hard. Success doesn't come to those who sit comfortably. Successful people have suffered and sacrificed. Truth. You can't have it all. At least not right away.

Remain steadfast, open minded and most of all keep in touch with your friends. Change is hard, but change is good.

Enseñando y escribiendo

Last night I was teaching yoga and three older Latin ladies walked into class. They were little and seemed nice and they planted their mats in a row like best friends. It was great, but it soon became obvious that they spoke very little English. They weren´t following my cues and often looked at me to see what I was doing. One of them seemed to follow better and so she was kind of the relay point between me and the other two. I had started about 30 minutes prior to their arrival because we had changed the class time a few months ago. I had never seen them before so I think they were still used to the old time. Anyway there was no way I would be able to start using Spanish. I´ve hardly begun to grasp the tenses let alone translate yoga cues into Spanish after I had been teaching for 30 minutes. But it really made me want to work on becoming fluent. Knowing another language opens you up to so much more. If I could I would learn them all.

But alas, I can only learn one at a time. So now I´ve promised myself that I will be translating my blog posts to Spanish as best I can just for my own benefit. If you see a mistake please let me know! Don´t worry if you don´t know Spanish there will be no difference in content compared to the English version. But if you feel the need, there is always google translate.

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Anoche estaba enseñando yoga cuando tres mayores mujeres llegaron a mi clase. Ellas pusieron sus tapetitos de yoga en una línea como amigas mejores. Que linda, pero fue muy obvio que ellas no hablan inglés. Ellas no me comprendían y miraban a mi mucho. Quise que usar español pero llegaron treinta minutos tarde y usando español habría muy difícil. No fue posible. Después de les encontré, yo quise hablar con fluido. En lo sucesivo, yo voy a traducir mis notas para practicar español. Sabiendo otro idioma te das muchas oportunidades. Sí es posible, yo aprenderá todos los idiomas. Entonces, Este es mi primer nota en español!

Emotionless

I can be pretty emotionless. I remember last year my brother came to LA to visit me and my co-worker asked if I was excited. I was, but I kind of replied with a shrug and a ¨yea sure¨. It´s because I spent a lot of my life holding back my emotions. Stuffing down anger, frustration, and anxiety was the norm because I lived with a particularly difficult person. Expressing my emotions was always fruitless and worsened the situations so I had to practice being the bigger person which meant holding my tongue and changing anger into calm in order to manage the situation. I got good at both. Too good. As a result I´m not good at expressing myself and in time the pressure builds and well you can imagine the end game sometimes.

I use the skill almost daily in a lot of situations like work, volunteering, etc. It´s not like I´m a robot or really hate the way I´ve become. But I have been doing it too often and too automatically. I don´t take the time to feel out my emotions and let them out. I just push them down and move on. Part of the reason is because I was working in a complexly frustrating arena and my strategy was to manage my emotions into nothingness.

Actually for the most part I value the skill because there are plenty of situations where anger and frustration won´t help. I used to believe that it was a waste of time to be angry or frustrated. But the other day I was volunteering and this woman who felt like she was my boss (but actually isn´t) was constantly telling me what to do, what to say, and giving me orders. I was infuriated because she was condescending and rigid in the way she wanted things done. But I decided not to pick a fight or say anything because I didn´t think it was worth it. Instead I just pushed it all away and kept a calm face. After I left I felt completely off the rest of the day and I didn´t know why. It´s like walking in a circle over and over again. I knew that woman had made me mad but I wasn´t sure why and how I let it get to me so badly. I didn´t seek anyone to talk to because I didn´t know I should. That´s not something I ever do. But I see now that I should have. Now I see that I need allow myself to feel out my emotions more and to address my anger and frustration.

Usually I turn to exercise, cooking, piano, writing or drawing as an outlet for emotion, but there really is no substitute to ceaseless ranting. My roommate asked me how volunteering had been and even just telling her that this woman was mean felt like a depressurizing. I feel like I´m sort of rediscovering this aspect of life. My adolescence was one big ceaseless rant about anger and frustration. Somehow I came to the conclusion that doing so was not good and stopped completely. Now I am back full circle. I guess this is my second iteration on the subject. I can work on becoming more balanced. Hopefully this time around won´t take 27 years.