10 posts tagged “yoga”

Rain boots and Endolphins.

Oct 28, 2008
4 comments

First of all, I totally need to get an umbrella. This is ridiculous. I'm sitting here at work this morning and I'm almost thirty (I'm not sure what that has to do with this, but just putting it out there) and my Pumas are soaking wet at work because I don't actually own an umbrella or a decent pair of rain boots and it's pouring out. I figured, somehow, that since the subway is a half block from my house and then a half block from work, I wouldn't get that wet. Um... I have clearly overestimated my rain dodging skills. I am not good at that. Seeing as how slushy snow season is coming upon us in New York as well, I think I better get me some boots (and not the fancy cute kind that can't get wet... I already have those...).

Here's the problem, in Macy's last night I made a resolution to not spend any more money on clothes or clothes-like items this month. Now, if you're going to make resolutions about not spending money, Macy's is not a great place to do it. I think the zoo would be a great place to do something like that... you would look at all those naked animals and feel like, hey, look at that noble lion, he doesn't spend any money on clothes! He's not even thinking about it!

Because right when I made the resolution I saw a pair of yellow rain boots with little blue dogs on them. They were really cute. I did not buy them. But I have been thinking about them all day. See what's the worst that I could have seen if I was at the zoo? Maybe one of those awesome helium balloons? A big pretzel? An oversized lollipop? A lame ass pencil with a lizard eraser? I can totally resist those things, no problem. Damn it. I totally want the boots with the dogs on them. Woof.

In other good news though yoga was great today. It felt so good to get up in the cold and then get into that super warm room and stretch around. It was really tough, but I feel like I'm getting better at it and I just feel so f-ing good afterwards. Plus it somehow makes me feel more creative. I was taking all these notes on my novel on the train ride. I don't really care why it works, although I am interested - is it just that because I have all those endolphins flipping around in my bloodstream that I feel more confident and happier and freer to think creative thoughts? Hmm, something to ponder.

Discipline Lite

Oct 23, 2008
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This is something my bikram yoga teacher said this morning in class. It's her philosophy regarding yoga practice - that she tries to be as disciplined as she can about the postures, but if she falls or whatever, she doesn't beat herself up. Discipline Lite. I like it. I feel like this applies to how I feel about my writing and exercise and things I want to do in general. Oh and also my overall attitude toward cookies...

The twenty minutes of writing a day has been really good for me and in general I've been finding myself more committed to revising the novel.

This has not been the best week ever, but there have been some high points, let's remind ourselves of them, shall we?

I spoke to my old boss on Monday. I love her. She's really really amazing. More of a mom figure to me than a boss figure really. Like a parent that you have no issues with. I miss her. Sigh. We are having dinner on Thursdsay night. I can't wait.

The new guy on our hockey team volunteered for every event in the "skills" competition for the hockey league. It's really cute, he's sort of like the new kid in high school who wants to be in the play, and design the set, and be in the stage crew. Or like a labrador retriever.... When you read his emails you can sort of see a tail wagging somewhere. It reminded me how much I love our team, no matter what happens. So we're not in the palyoffs, we're going to be battling for 3rd place on Sunday, and that's not too shabby. Especially when you consider there are 18 teams in the league... know what I'm sayin?

Stupid fight with boyfriend is over. It only lasted a few hours really, but those fights suck.

Feeling good about the writing, there's a lot to do, revision wise, but it feels good.

I really like my new boots. Everyone at work likes them too ; )

A muse, and not a dead parakeet

Oct 2, 2008
5 comments

So I've been sort of avoiding, dancing around starting the revision of my novel. Partly it's because I know there are some major problems with two major points in the novel, and I know that until I figure this out the thing is not going to make sense to me or anyone else. Well I finally figured out what needed to happen this morning as I was waiting for the subway. I've been reading Stephen King's book, "On Writing" which is just a fantastic book.

Whether or not you like Stephen King, it really provides some down to earth advice about the writing process. I would highly recommend this book to all writers. Well I was waiting for the train on the 4/5 platform, sort of reading the book, sort of looking down the tunnel to see if the train was coming. In the section I was reading he says something about how people like to read about work for some reason. He cited John Grisham novels where you're reading about lawyers, and such. My novel is for young adults and I started thinking about what young adults want to read about. I think that mostly kids want to read about being left alone (a world without adults) and sex (not hardcore sex of course, but more the possiblity of it and the curiosity of it.). My book mostly has to do with the first part of this, kids wanting to be left alone. This is sort of a classic theme in children's fiction - parents are rarely present, "The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe," "Harriet the Spy," "Harold and the Purple Crayon" to name a few. BTW, my book is for an older group than this, but it's just more striking in the younger novels when the parents are conspicuously absent.

So I started thinking, you know, kids want to be left alone, but only as a fantasy. The only time kids really really want to be left alone is when something is wrong. Something at home. Anyway, this led me to realize that the two things that were not right in the book were connected, and exactly how to connect them. It was a great moment, one of those moments that you hate when people tell you about them because you get really jealous and really convinced that instead of a muse maybe what you have on your hands is a dead parakeet. Well, so this was a muse day and not a dead parakeet day and I feel really good about that.

I also went to yoga and my lovely and fun friend was there again so we got to be in class together and share the walk home together. What a great way to start the day...

A muse, and not a dead parakeet

Oct 2, 2008
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So I've been sort of avoiding, dancing around starting the revision of my novel. Partly it's because I know there are some major problems with two major points in the novel, and I know that until I figure this out the thing is not going to make sense to me or anyone else. Well I finally figured out what needed to happen this morning as I was waiting for the subway. I've been reading Stephen King's book, "On Writing" which is just a fantastic book.

Whether or not you like Stephen King, it really provides some down to earth advice about the writing process. I would highly recommend this book to all writers. Well I was waiting for the train on the 4/5 platform, sort of reading the book, sort of looking down the tunnel to see if the train was coming. In the section I was reading he says something about how people like to read about work for some reason. He cited John Grisham novels where you're reading about lawyers, and such. My novel is for young adults and I started thinking about what young adults want to read about. I think that mostly kids want to read about being left alone (a world without adults) and sex (not hardcore sex of course, but more the possiblity of it and the curiosity of it.). My book mostly has to do with the first part of this, kids wanting to be left alone. This is sort of a classic theme in children's fiction - parents are rarely present, "The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe," "Harriet the Spy," "Harold and the Purple Crayon" to name a few. BTW, my book is for an older group than this, but it's just more striking in the younger novels when the parents are conspicuously absent.

So I started thinking, you know, kids want to be left alone, but only as a fantasy. The only time kids really really want to be left alone is when something is wrong. Something at home. Anyway, this led me to realize that the two things that were not right in the book were connected, and exactly how to connect them. It was a great moment, one of those moments that you hate when people tell you about them because you get really jealous and really convinced that instead of a muse maybe what you have on your hands is a dead parakeet. Well, so this was a muse day and not a dead parakeet day and I feel really good about that.

I also went to yoga and my lovely and fun friend was there again so we got to be in class together and share the walk home together. What a great way to start the day...

Bikram, bugs and moderation

Sep 25, 2008
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So I broke down and bought a pair of yoga shorts for my bikram class, I figure I go enough that I can justify the $30, and they really do make it much easier to do some of the standing poses becuase the fabric doesn't bunch up or get snag anywhere like the looser shorts do...

I really have not gotten any writing done this week, things have just been way to busy, what with going out every night, yoga and my war with my bugs. But I have gotten to spend time with friends, which has been great. And more of that tonight! Although I am toying with the idea (obviously not starting tonight) of giving up booze for a week. It's not like I drink all that much, but I am trying to lose about 5-10 pounds so the extra intake there doesn't help, and it really fucks with my bikram yoga if I even have one glass of wine at night and then wake up and go to yoga. I can drink lots of water and end up being fine in class, I'm just sort of curious what my body would feel like without it at all. I have this idea that it has to be all or nothing, like I have to totally give up alcohol to really feel the effects, or I have to go to yoga everyday, or write every day to really be doing something right. I think I have a hard time with the wanting these things to be bigger in my life but also making time for all of them.

It's been a kind of stressful day at work, something at work really needs to come through tomorrow morning, I think it will, but... I hate that feeling. The person I'm dealing with is in London, which also sucks because you basically can't get any answers after 1pm...

The theme of the month is patience. But not towards bugs.

Sep 24, 2008
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To the bugs in my apartment: These scare tactics won't work. I am unimpressed that you have found the ceiling. Good luck up there, assholes, I have a little step ladder and a shoe. You do the math. (And yeah, I've always sort of hated that expression but it seems appropriate. And clearly you are good at math, you have like a zillion babies.)

What a strange week it's been already, I kind of feel like I'm sleepwalking through it a bit. The only down time I've had is when I'm sleeping.

Monday night I had drinks with a client at a really swanky place in grand central called The Campbell Apartment:

http://www.hospitalityholdings.com/

It's called one of NY's most civilized places to meet so I was sure that I would be kicked out immediately, but they actually let me stay. It ended up being a super fun night and this client is really cool so we had a great time. It made me feel very grown up.

Last night was fun though, I got to play poker with some hockey buds and friends of hockey buds. It's an every other week game and I've only gone twice, but it's really fun. Me and my boyfriend go together, and that's another thing I like about it. I just like being out with him, I like that I have a good time around him when it's just us and when it's with other people. I've always felt sort of awkward with my boyfriends around friends, like I don't want to admit that I'm dating anyone, but I don't feel that way with him. In fact, someone at the table asked us how long we'd been dating - he knew both of us from hockey, but I guess didn't know we were a couple. And I just felt really happy and really proud to be with him and to be there together.

I think the theme of this month is patience. And you sort of have to be patient in poker. You have to wait for good cards, or fully commit to playing shit cards, but that's a whole other strategy. The night also put something else to rest that had been bothering me. I've been a ref in my hockey league all year, I've really been trying to give back and to do something good for the league, but I had a really shitty experience with it on Sunday. This totally bitchy girl was bascially heckling me while I was reffing and I probably should have turned around and told her to shut the fuck up, but I just didn't do it. It was a miserable experience the whole time and really really bothered me for some reason. Then I was talking to someone at poker last night who used to be a ref but decided not to do it this year. The way he explained it was, "You know, I can either go to hockey and have a great time and play and drink beer, or I can be yelled at for an hour and ruin the whole day." And it just made me feel better about my decision to stop reffing. I've been feeling really guilty about it, but when it comes down to it, it's just not me. Sure I could whip myself into this person who doesn't mind being a hardass and yelling back at people, but that's not what I come to hockey for. And it's not like every experience has been that way, but enough of them are that this is just not worth it anymore.

I'm also trying to be patient with the screenplay - the buddy that is going to be producing it needs to get her great grandmother to sign an option agreement first - sort of complicated, but the screenplay is very very loosely based on a book her great grandmother wrote and self-published in the 50's and she brought us the material and therefore needs to sign off on it... Why this wasn't done before I wrote a 91 page screenplay for the project is an annoying but also moot.

I also have to be patient about the website for the dog tees - my boyfriend and I have set a time to work on it - next saturday when we don't have anything else going on. We're also going to work on finishing unpacking his apartment that he moved into in June, which will make me feel less guilty about asking him to work on the site.

And yoga is about nothing if not about patience. There's still a few postures that are really hard for me, and the rest of them can certainly use improvement.

Oh, and apparently the other thing I need to be patient about is being on a budget. There are pretty things at H&M right now... hey, at least i'm buying cheap clothes, right? I mean, I've been really really good. I haven't bought anything since July. I really just wanted a few back to school clothes : )

Finsihed project blues

Sep 11, 2008
2 comments

I've decided what I need to do to get out of the finished project blues:

1. set a timeline for when I'm getting feedback from the friend I gave the screenplay to and what our next step with it is. I think this will help elliminate the "is anything ever going to happen with this" feeling to some extent. After all, the project isn't over, this is just the first draft.

2. Get busy on other projects that need attention. The dog shoot went great on Monday. I have my drawing, I have my pictures, I'm getting closer to assembling everything I need for the site.

3. Get started on my dad's new beer labels! My dad makes his own beer, and every year for his birthday I design a new beer label for him. I'll scan them so I can upload them here, but they're really fun -they are always drawings that I do of my dad, fit into some context - the first one looked like a Western movie poster, the second one was from the cover of the Beach Boy's album "Endless Summer" and I made all the band members into my dad. The idea I had for this new one is to do a drawing of my dad like a monk and call it "Father Lager." This is the first time I've based a drawing on a name, rather than the other way around, but I'm really excited about it. I'll do the drawing of my dad, put him in a monk robe and then do a stained glass window behind him... maybe have beer mugs depicted in the stained glass windows, or hops or something... The stained glass effect might be hard - I'll do this one in watercolor. I love art supplies and I love drawing. Getting my hands dirty and playing with color is one of my favorite things to do, specially when I am feeling burned out or just at a low point with the wriitng. Visual art is one of those areas that I don't put huge expectations of myself into, I just allow it to be a place where fun happens and where I can just enjoy the materials that I'm working with. My dad's birthday is coming up in October, so I'll have a deadline for myself on this one...

Also went to hot yoga today, I really love it. It was really hard today, but I came away feeling like i had accomplished something... One thing the teacher said really rang true for me - she said that you should work really hard in yoga and really feel the pain and the possible frustrations and challenges so that you can let them pass through your body and then let go of them. You've already accomplished so much when you leave class you aren't looking for these problems and frustrations in the outside world. It's like you've already dealt with that and conquered it. I'm proud of myself that I went twice this week, and alone both times. I didn't need someone else to be there iwth me, I felt comfortable by myself.

Sometimes the scariest people out there look just like Ted Danson

Sep 4, 2008
2 comments

I can't remember the last time I started cursing at my T.V. Especially since I got cable and have actually been able to see instead of just hear the T.V. things have been pretty good between us. And then Mitt Romney got on stage last night and I turned into one of those crazy people who yell at their T.V.s when no one is around. I think it was the part where he said this, "Is a Supreme Court liberal or conservative that awards Guantanamo terrorists with constitution rights? It's liberal!" Um, holy shit, he just called the Geneva convention liberal and something that he wanted to throw out of Washington. He may look like Ted Danson, but this is the scariest dude out there.

I did not manage to go to hot yoga today like I wanted to. I had a little hangover from both the RNC and three glasses of pinot noir. But really, how do you watch one without the other? OK, I am going to try to go to hot yoga tomorrow night after work. That seems like a good way to end the week and physically let go of the stress...

The writing is going well though. I've been having a little trouble with the last quarter of the screenplay, not in terms of what needs to happen, but more in terms of putting into a coherent structure. So I took all the last scenes that I knew fit in somewhere and put them onto flashcards and just shuffled them into an order that made sense. It's a lot easier to deal with the scenes on flashcards than when they're embeded in the script. It also makes it a lot easier to get rid of what's not working.

Obama tees and dehydration highs

Sep 2, 2008
2 comments

I ordered an Obama t-shirt today online. Ok, fine, I ordered two... and yes, I am supposed to be on a budget, but I just can't help myself. I've got Obama fever. I'm entranced. And partly I'm entranced with being entranced. I can't remember the last time I felt this way about a political candidate and damn it feels good. I mean, can you imagine going around with a t-shirt with John Kerry's face on it? I can't hardly. But Obama makes me want to get a tatoo. He makes me want to read the papers every day for the first time in a long time, he makes me care.

Also, if you're feeling nasty and ready to break out the "did we win yet?" champagne, take a look at this:

http://perezhilton.com/2008-09-02-what-did-her-mom-do-wrong

Get 'em while you can, folks: http://pol.moveon.org/obamatshirts/?id=13673-10372399-nrcj99x&t=5

I went to the hot yoga place again today and bought a 30 day pass. I figure this will do one of two things for me:

1. Arouse the thrifty Jewey half of me to want to get the most out of my pass and go to hot yoga all the time.

2. Arouse the anti-establishment teenager in me who doesn't like anyone telling her she has to do anything, even if it's herself doing the telling...

Here's hoping it goes the way of the former. And yes, again, for someone on a budget, maybe not the best idea. But I can also get work to reimburse me for fitness related things, and seeing as how it puts me in a super good mood before work, they should see this as a huge investment in my productivity. Yoga's also been helping my writing productivity. It gets me out of that "I just can't do this, I have no talent" funk and gets me back into a really positive state of mind where I feel like I can do anything. Maybe it's just a dehydration high, but I dig it...

Great meetings and hot yoga

Aug 26, 2008
2 comments

I had a GREAT meeting with a friend who runs her own PR company last night to talk about the dog tees. She's amazing. Obviously really really good at what she does. Right off the bat, as soon as I told her about the conept and the look she had a million great ideas about how to promote and the tees and me : ) This is exactly what I need, someone who can think along these lines for me. One of the scariest things about trying to start my own business is feeling like I have to wear all these different hats - designer, writer, business person, accountant, marketing and PR person. It's nice to know that I can tap into the knowledge of someone else. It's also nice to know that there are all these people out there who are willing to help me, friends offering their dogs for models, my boyfriend taking the time to design my site, and now this friend offering to help me with the PR side of things.

It also reaffirms my commitment to this project to talk to others about it and seek out their involvement and help. One of the questions the PR friend asked me was, "When you work on this project, does it feel like a chore or does it feel like play?" And the answer was obvious, it totally feels like play. I'm engaging all my creative resources and that innate desire to "make something."

Did some hot yoga this morning. Holy crap. It was great. Sometimes frustrating to not be able to do everything that I wanted to do as well as I wanted to do it. But there was a huge sense of accomplishment in completing it and knowing that you'll go back and you'll get better and better. I went with a friend who agreed to get up at the crack of dawn with me to do this before work and there was something really nice about that too. Instead of the usual - get together for a glass of wine (or 4) and bitch about what's going wrong at work, etc. we were sharing this really positive experience. Even though you don't talk during it, there's something about sharing this experience that I really liked...