CPY 30/40 Day 1: Keeping myself honest as "the eternal beginner"

I'm really good at starting things. I'm not so good at finishing them.

Garance Dore recently wrote a post about yoga and her "eternal beginning" and it resonated with me. The same day, my yoga studio announced their 30/40 challenge: 30 classes of yoga over 40 days. I decided to start it.

I normally wouldn't blog about such a mundane topic, but I a) don't believe you can achieve goals without yelling from the rooftop what your goal is and b) need a way to keep myself honest about actually doing this (and finishing it).

So last night was class #1.

During the warm-up, the instructor talked about what bullshit it is to always say "I can't, I'm busy." Hhhhhhhhhhhh I SAY THIS ALL THE TIME. It is my #1 go-to excuse, even if the task I am busy doing is slobbing about on the couch watching The Only Way is Essex. I say it so smugly too, like "I have so many tasks. I am extremely important and thus better than you are." I will definitely reevaluate how I use the phrase going forward, using it only as a truth and not a crutch.

Then she put us through a routine of 5 trillion ways of getting into (and then holding) HALF MOON. I hate half moon. It may not look like much, but it hurts my hips, the balance is impossible for me, it makes my thighs look fat, and besides Warrior 3, is truly my most hated yoga pose.

This is half moon.

If I had known it would have been a class of half moon bullshittery, I would have said I was busy and couldn't make it.

BUT: Last night I slept like the dead. And felt very smug and proud of myself for only skipping three days before getting started with the 30/40 challenge (sigh).

Today my hips are sore.

Tonight is "Yoga Sculpt" (yoga with weights, aka last week I actually started laughing because I thought the instructor was kidding when she asked us to do something. She wasn't.)

Onward.

Um, well, it took:

4 years, being a surf bum in san diego, countless half-finished applications, some half-hearted studying for the GRE, a broken heart, a mended heart, moving across the country (twice), a lot of vodka, 3 "real jobs," some research, 6 weeks of wandering around Europe, and agonizing over a sufficient personal statement for way too long...

but I start grad school at DePaul in 6 weeks. FINALLY. English MA/PhD here I come. Bitches.

The Sculls

I started rowing again last night. Went out in a 4 with this organization last night, started by my lovely and fabulous friend Jenn: www.recoveryonwater.org

Then sculled for the first time ever this morning...Jenn and I are racing a double in a 1K sprint in 2 weeks. That pretty much means I'm going to live at the Lincoln Park Boat Club:



...and not be able to move for the next week while my muscles (and poor, blistered hands) get used to it again after, oh, a five-year break.

But DAMN does it feel good to be back on the water. Ohhhhh early mornings, you make Chicago look so beautiful, before everyone is out and about.

JEALOUS?!?!

dug up this gem in the southside today. anyone want to go rollerskating like it's 1989??? mr. telephone man...there's something wrong with my line...

damn.

welcome to the household:

LOMO!:


Turntables:


Dwight:

FML

CHICAGO SOUL

New permanent venue! Windy City Soul Club is BACK!

morning routine

kevin and i don't usually talk for a good 20-30 mins after waking up. we bustle around the kitchen. this morning i cut strawberries to throw on my cereal -- he poured a huge mug of coffee, shook a camel light out of the pack, and went to the porch to smoke it.

"our breakfasts are different," he said, after the first drag.

i just really wanted to use that as a line of dialogue.

bikram

So I've signed up for a month of bikram yoga classes. You know, the 26 poses in the 4,000 degree room with 9,000% humidity. Last night was my first class, and I actually really enjoyed it, especially the part when our instructor shouted "RYAN! Spread 'em further! SPREAD! SPREAD!" There's no talking in the yoga room, but Jenn and I enjoyed some deeply fulfilling and soul-inspiring internal laughter. I've signed up for the Sunday and Tuesday classes as well. I bet if I wrap myself in garbage bags I could lose a LOT of weight by the end of the month.

To complete my Friday evening of health and wellbeing, we all went to Greek Corner and had giant plates of meat slathered in tzatziki sauce and then drank PBR while watching Superbad.

Today I can barely move.

chicago nights

our living room!



Southside Irish Parade



Green river


survived my first "walk home alone at midnight" in my neighborhood. i was a little scared of rapists with guns and knives, but the only person i saw was a freakishly old haunted-house-esque lady with a tangled nest of white hair, whispering nonsense to a cat on her porch. i didn't see a single hooligan waving a knife with rape in his/her eyes, plus NOW i know that a witch lives in the neighborhood, a fact that i'm really rather proud of. "oh, the witch of wrightwood ave?" i'll say, offhandedly. "why? do you need any spells cast? because i said hi to her one night. i could probably get a discount."

really, though, my neighborhood pretty much has the atmosphere of north cap hill -- a bunch of stately old houses that used to be filled with the bourgeoisie and are now filled with puerto ricans and the hipsters who like the idea of living in a "diverse neighborhood." the traffic lights are hilarious -- a parade of pristine lowriders bumping that OOM PA PA music, battered corollas filled with children having tantrums in spanish, and then a gaggle of bearded and american apparel'd fixie riders, doing trak stands and staring into the distance in a manner which clearly suggests that they hope that everyone around them thinks they're composing a poem, or thinking about how small their carbon footprint was for that particular day, and how they're going to go home and eat chicken masala tikka and listen to mozart on a 78 before heading back out to drink pabst at the local mexican bar, where i happened to be spinning records last night.

i've been reading too much david sedaris lately. what this translates to in a concise blurb is: chicago is rad.

ok now i need to find a job.

currently craving

california. sigh.

found

snippet from a sherman alexie poem, found randomly in ballard:

"and yet, these days, whenever she flirts, he remembers exactly what it felt like to want her so much---to dream of kissing her beneath a streetlight while unkissed strangers wander past them."

i'm kind of 50/50 on sherman alexie.
but this is just pretty.

I think...

...that all boys should have to be girls for one month of their lives. They would go through the following training:

1) Period 101
2) Pregnancy Scare 101
3) Having a trillion things running through your head at once 101

They would then receive a diploma of sorts, at which point they would be allowed to enter into relationships.

I think most boys would flunk. And cry.

winthrop

if i'm going to say goodbye to washington, than this is a good way to do it.



NEVER FORGET.

hahahahahaha

and it's begun

oh damn

Kelly. You choose the most infectious songs.

If a disco ball were to explode in slow motion, I'd expect that it would sound like this:




Totally road tripping to Ann Arbor to see them on March 26.


And then this is already a classic, obviously:

Thank you, Dove Chocolates marketing team.

So one of the dentist ladies brought in those little individually wrapped Dove chocolates...so I was like "cool, I did ballet class of death last night, I can have one." So I unwrap it and am about to pop it in my mouth, until I notice that the inside of the wrapper says the following:

"Dove Chocolate: Always Your Valentine."

.............................

They may as well have said "Enjoy your shitty death from extreme lonliness and obesity, you freaky teapot-collecting Winnie the Pooh-loving virgin hag."

Anyway, I threw it away.

i'm soooooooo pissed

i should have scalped tickets. i'm seriously kicking my own ass right now.

folks, she's actually doing it.

Silencer.

whiskey & guns.



maybe i should quit my temp job and become a photographer.