Words in Sentences

Sometimes @ Window Seat

December 16, 2020December 16, 2020by ErinLeave a Comment

Sometimes, if I’m lucky, I can move through a motion like pulling a curtain back in the morning and feel this awareness of young Erin, 8 year old Erin, who has grown.

Hard to put into words, this awareness feels like « oh so this is what happened ». There is a quality of wonder and appreciation. Like I am seeing who I wanted to be when I grew up and stepping into the power that it is, in fact, me.

In teaching these days, I try to provide a path to this feeling. Many times in my personal practice, my hand will find its way to rest on my rib cage or my one foot will tuck under the other and I’ll witness the other worldly way the body comforts and supports itself.

I believe it is in the moments in yoga when the body interacts with the body or when the breath guides the body into a pose (either through vinyasa or through restorative release) that doors open to connect with who you have always been.

When you witness your body and allow yourself to delight in things like « huh, this is how you like to stretch when you wake » or « how funny I always go to the right side first », you invite the same observatory appreciation to things like « I laugh like that when… » or to parts of your personality that are truly you; unmasked and unmade by others.

All the sudden, you trace your hand under the running faucet or you smooth the sheet in a way just so that you see yourself. Your movement, a constant paintbrush – your energy, a constant color.

I believe these things to be very, very true. As in these things, we come to a place of non violence – of grace – within ourselves. This place fruits compassion for others, an honor of limits and space for self study.

It’s in yoga, I find the heartiest season of advent: the expectation of peace, the surrender to goodwill, and the rest available in what we can imagine an unconditional, non judge mental love feels like.

The refuge.

The light.

Words in Sentences

Oatmeal @ Clean Bedroom – Webster

December 14, 2020by ErinLeave a Comment

This morning I overheard a conversation in the other room about the annoyance and inconvenience of maple and brown sugar oatmeal.

Of all the oatmeal flavors: apple cinnamon, bananas and cream, blueberries and cream, etc, maple and brown sugar oatmeal is not only less preferable but it actually causes offense. Serving this flavor to a child will bring scorn on your household.

Thing is, depending on where I order groceries from, the Fruit and Cream only pack may not be available. Added to that, given the fact that we could survive a small developed country for a year on the amount of oatmeal consumed in our household in a month, I kind of assume that the worst thing that could happen if we have a few of these MBS packets laying around is that a teenager will shrug their shoulders and eat them sometime between 2a and 3a in the morning when they reached the end of TikTok.

Try as I might, as I have been cleaning today, I cannot shake “the inconvenience of maple and brown sugar”. The call for action to ban MBS oatmeal in the household had a gravitas to it and it just got in my head. All morning as I have been cleaning, I found myself thinking “this is so inconvenient”.

Caked mud in my rug? Inconvenient.

Printer paper removed and not replaced? Inconvenient.

8 cereal bowls when 3 people ate? Inconvenient. The fact that two of them had almost entire portions of strawberries and cream oatmeal sitting in them for me to scrape out? Comedic and inconvenient.

Squashed blueberry in between the floor boards? Inconvenient.

Clean laundry heaped in a laundry basket? Inconvenient.

But more inconvenient than any of that was the fact that I was thinking this and my Monday morning groove with the tunes and the caring for the house was tainted by a pervasive voice in my head marching a rebellion of spirit. And I didn’t want that. I don’t want that.

“How disgusting to have maple and brown sugar oatmeal in the house. How offensive.” I kept thinking as I wiped down the toilet seats or as I scraped out caked applesauce with my thumbnail.

As I was putting the plants back in the south side window, I realized maybe I was grieving.

Maybe the sting of what came across as an insult resulted in me grieving the purpose I felt in my work. It’s not that the purpose I felt in my work is something I lost when I retired from corporate life. Purpose was something I hoped to reignite when I took a leap of faith on a new job in February and it just did not happen.

I let myself explore this for a little bit and found myself replaying some thoughts I had last night about work.

When I was falling asleep last night, I wondered if something had come up in the past couple of weeks that would have been “a job for Erin”. These days, the satisfaction of the perfect Excel filter is rivaled by the satisfaction of vacuuming up this one particularly popular corner in the kitchen and so today? I found myself wanting to be the smart person.

I found myself missing that feeling of showing up to a meeting and hearing, “oh good – you’re here”.

I miss the importance I allowed myself to feel when preparing for a meeting and having what I thought were the key questions to get answered so I could jump on and then jump off to a different collaboration I knew I was going to play an active part on.

My purpose felt reduced to the right flavors of oatmeal. Ah, yes, that is the emotional crux I dealt with this morning.

And the thing about it is that I know what I need to do. I need to finish up the odds and ends to button up my Monday cleaning and get to my notebooks. I have a self set deadline to send the content for the writing project I am working on to Delene (editor) this Thursday. I need to follow up with the publishing team at Village books. I need to get down in my creative hole.

I need to binge a show while I put together Christmas gifts and enjoy my creativity.

I need to align with my real, real purpose: giving, creating, serving.

It can be so hard to zoom out though, can’t it? I’m getting there. The brain is an interesting thing. Writing helped. :)

Words in Sentences

The Work of Not Working @ Bedtime

December 7, 2020December 7, 2020by Erin2 Comments

All 5 kids are home. Lucy came back around dinner time and I heard Elle come in towards the end of the yoga class I was teaching out of my bedroom.

There is a group of about six 40+ year old women I teach to twice a month. I started praying over them at the start and end of class. We have grown into a little community. It’s a sweet, kind hobby.

I cleaned the house from top to bottom today. I think Mondays are my cleaning days now. I feel like I need to dislike Mondays just like everybody else. It just doesn’t seem fair if everybody is going to work and to school and I’m like “k gonna pack your lunch and read a book”. I want to stay relevant, you know. So I deep clean on Mondays.

Side note – Happy to report that my latest towel strategy (delivering a fresh towel on the bed, every three days) is keeping the conundrum to a minimum.

Today was grueling because I was tired but it had lots of sweet moments. I gave Kara an old black blazer from my junior career days. Ellen and Lucy never wanted it but I hung on to it bc it’s a great blazer. (I just had eventually upgraded to J Crew ya know)

Anyway – She has been wearing it since the moment I gave it to her – it looks awesome. You can tell she loves it.

Lucy got her cast off. Not sure if I ever wrote about that but she fell and broke her wrist back four weeks ago. So she got a yellow cast for Christmas :) we took care of that this morning. I put on heels and jeans bc I was leaving the house. It was interesting. :)

When Ellen got home, Maddox was all about her. Fred the elf has been visiting (and writing) every day. Karma got me for never doing elf on la shelf for Ellen and Lucy and now I have an 8 year old who has “researched elves” and is really (super) into it. Not going to lie, my elf game is pretty strong. I’ll share more sometime.

I had a meeting this afternoon with a designer, Beth – a friend of mine from church who is crazy talented. I’m doing some inquiring about getting professional help for the look and feel of my books.

The appointment was at 2:30pm. And pretty sure it was the highlight of my day.

I was tired this morning from binge watching Emily in Paris yesterday. My eyes were burning at the cast appointment. Once I got home, cleaning made me crabby bc fatigue makes me take everything personally.

After meeting with Beth, I shared what I learned with David and he said his heart felt full bc of how lit up I was about it.

Every day I allow myself to recognize myself as an artist, I become more of an artist. I grow a deeper happiness and into a more true nature.

Which is great but more importantly I need to keep David’s heart full bc I accidentally forgot to put the guard on the buzzer yesterday and legit buzzed a line at a 0 (bald) down the right side of the back of his head.

The laughter that pours out of me related to my humiliation, how extreme of a mistake I made and how kind he was about it simply makes me belly laugh. It has been my ab work out.

We did have an agreement that there may be a mistake I learn from before I embarked on cutting his hair, so that worked in my favor. I feel so bad. I’m fascinated by how bad I feel and how that feeling makes me laugh. What is that? So curious.

I just had to capture this full full day. I feel like I barely scratched the surface. Going to attempt some home made granola tomorrow and make Instagram videos of my facial reaction while I check each of the kids grades and missing assignments.

The work of not working is truly in being yourself. I have been thinking a lot lately about how many artists and writers and musicians are in 9-5 jobs for health insurance. I wonder how much better our culture would be if we had universal health care (with a private option of course) so we could have more artists creating art.

Ok – here are some pics :)