life changes

It’s been a long time since I’ve written. Mostly that is because I think I utterly exhausted my brains and will in making the decision to move to Florida, cut back to part-time, and go to school for massage therapy. All of that just plump wore me out.

But now the decision is made. And I’m here. In Florida. I tried to be here last week, but Hurricane Irma had different plans for me. Tim and I drove down here on the 4th, unpacked our stuff into our apartment and then promptly packed an overnight bag and drove right back to Iowa. It was Tuesday. The storm was forecasted to hit Sunday. Yet all the stores were already out of water. It scared the shit out of us, to be honest. We are used to dealing with tornadoes, but huge storms in a state with like 3 roads that you can use to exit the state sounded like a nightmare.

So we chose the lesser nightmare and drove the 19 hours back to Iowa.

It was weird going back home again, especially after I already said goodbye to all my friends, family, and coworkers, only to return about 4 days later. HEY! Guess what! I’m baaaaack!

People were actually pretty understanding. They often echoed a thought that was ricocheting around in my head a TON – “Um, maybe this is a sign?”

And, see, this is where I get utterly confused about this whole dharma/life purpose thing. I thought I was watching signs and signals and felt as if this path was chosen for me. But then, a category 5 hurricane started hurtling toward me. Talk about mixed messages.

But, I guess, that just because you are following your dharma, does not mean you will not have tribulations. In the Bible God was always sending his people on missions and quests that were horribly inconvenient and resulted in tons of annoyances and discomforts. Sometimes you just gotta do what you gotta do because you gotta do it and because you know that by doing so, the world will become just a little bit better, and that makes all the difference.

So I decided, after a lot of internal tortuous dialogue, to not cancel all of my plans and aspirations. I came back. I’m here. Now.

I haven’t had much time to reflect/absorb/adjust yet. Granted, it’s only Day 1. I was madly unpacking, buying groceries, getting an oil change, cleaning, cooking food, etc. Maybe perhaps I was a little bit numbing with busyness. But that’s OK.

To close, here are the things that are good about this decision so far:

The people I have encountered here so far are super friendly and helpful. Had THE most helpful guy at the Take 5 Oil Change place today.
We found a super cute breakfast joint on the super cutely named road, Sunset Point, and my breakfast was only 6.50.
The St. Petes/Clearwater airport is only 15 minutes from our apartment. From there you can, for a mere $60-$80, fly directly back to Moline, IL, which is 15 minutes from our house.
I am becoming more resourceful. No ladle? Use a cup! No lids for my pot? Use tin foil! No bed? Sleeping bags and blankets on the floor!
I saw a snake on the sidewalk in front of my apartment, and I only jumped 2 feet and did not scream.

So, that’s it for Day 1. Hope you are having tons of interesting adventures, and thanks for reading!

Where have I been, you may be wondering?? Well, let me tell you. It’s a story that begins at the latest last summer and at the earliest back in high school, with a few milestones in between.

I’ll start at the most recent beginning, which is last summer.

For the past several years, especially since discovering the primal diet (thank you Mark Sisson!), I have felt very compelled to share with others the fascinating things I was learning, namely – we have the power to heal ourselves without the use of prescription drugs and surgeries. As I started to eat better and move my body more regularly, I noticed a huge improvement in my level of anxiety, my body composition, and my energy levels. It was nothing short of amazing. I wanted EVERYONE to know this.

But I struggled with the best way to share this message. I was not content with sharing this information with only the interested friend or family member (or the uninterested family member 😛 ). I wanted a more Official communication forum.

Consequently I ventured down the yoga teacher training path. Teaching yoga fed my deep curiosity about the body, philosophy, and spirituality. It also gave me an avenue to share what I was learning with others. I LOVE teaching, especially those classes where the students and I are on the same wave length, and everything just…gels. Amazing. Total Flow state.

Yet, I still yearned for more. I was/am working full-time at a fairly stressful job, fitting in classes and workshops where I could. I clung to the job because I have a HUGE need for security, safety, and a financial safety net. Yet, I wanted to do more with the health and wellness sphere. But I was running out of hours in the day and energy to do both well.

I was super discontented and unsettled and stressed, and I felt as if my life was being used incorrectly by me. So I started meeting with a psychologist who is also a yoga therapist – a woman who marries west and east and blends science with spirituality. During the first session I explained my plight. She had me write down my intention. I wrote “My intention is to find my purpose and follow it fearlessly.”

A day or two later on the Yoga Tune Up Teachers Page, I learned about a pain treatment modality, neurosomatic therapy, that focuses on posture to analyze the root of issues in the tissues. It is a form of manual therapy, but it also adds in the component of corrective exercise (so patients don’t just revert back to old patterns of behavior).

I was intrigued! I called the school and ended up speaking to a man just a year younger than me who just quit his job in real estate to go back to the school. He was SO HAPPY. Over the next few days we talked for a few hours, as he answered all my detailed questions about the program. This system of treatment gelled SO WELL with what I had been learning in YTU, and it also made intuitive sense to me. It was a natural fit for the style of yoga/movement that drew me as well.

For the next year, I would torture myself with deciding whether or not to take the plunge and do this program. I would talk to students from the program, hear their remarkable impressions of the program, how much they loved it, how they wished they could do it again, how great it was to help people that no one else could help.

Yet I waffled. How could I leave Iowa? How could I ask Tim to completely change our life? How could I leave my parents???? How could we leave our adorable house that we spent 14 years making perfect? What would I do for money? I had grown very accustomed to the lifestyle that my stressful corporate job provided, to be honest.

I was confident that I would love the training program. I was sure that this career path would provide more fulfillment, joy and flow than being a business analyst at a bank. I knew that this career would give me opportunities to learn and grow in a field that is fascinating to me.

So, what to do? On the one hand – security, family, safety, knowing what tomorrow will bring. On the other hand – lots of potential, room for growth, greater understanding of this vessel in which I live, but also insecurity, lack of predictability, increased expenses, and a move 18 hours across the USA.

I finally decided to take the plunge. Tim is joining me on this crazy adventure. We are breaking out of several years of comfy habits and routines which is absolutely terrifying but also exciting. As we are fixing up the house, cleaning out 14 years of accumulation, I realized that our comfy life was also kind of stagnant. We had swung too far off center, and we needed a massive shake-up to reach equilibrium again. Much like the body needs constant movement for optimum performance, life needs movement and change as well!

I hope to continue writing as we progress through this experience together, but I will have to see what this new life looks like. I will be working part time and going to school part time, but hopefully I can still find time to write!

So this is already a super long blog post, so I better sign off. Thanks for reading!

Tag: life changes

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