What is Authenticity?

Since I pegged 2011 as "The Year of Authenticity," I thought I should attempt to define what I mean by authenticity, and what I am striving for through this blog and in life:

Authenticity is being able to speak your truth and not being afraid of what other people think when they hear it. Authenticity is acknowledging that clothes can't hide the reality of your body, just as your body can't hide the reality of the spirit dwelling inside of it. Authenticity is being honest about how you feel, and accepting of those feelings. Authenticity is accepting your imperfections and your flaws, and forgiving yourself for those imperfections and flaws.

Authenticity is when you stop pretending to be the person you think everyone wants you to be, and start being the person you truly are.

Idea vs. Reality

Stella and I are currently in the market for a new living space.

Nothing highlights the down side of having a dog like searching for rental housing. Finding a place is stressful enough on its own, but few places allow dogs so having one limits your options, and the options you find tend to be less nice and more expensive.

To illustrate this point, today on DC Craigslist, there are 86 postings for rooms for rent in shared housing situations. When you narrow the search parameters to include only places that accept dogs, only 10 postings remain.

Of the places that do accept dogs, many have weight restrictions which Stella's 57 lbs fail, and many have breed restrictions, which Stella tends to fail (although no one can actually prove what Stella's breed is, since she was a stray, and people have varying opinions as to whether she is a pitbull or a bulldog, the former being a notoriously banned breed and the latter not, which could get me into a rant about breed restrictions in general, but that's enough fodder for a separate post at another time.)

So finding an apartment for Stella and myself is a little trickier than if it were just me.

When I got a dog, I did it because I felt that I wanted a dog, that I needed a dog, that my life would be more fulfilling and complete if I had a dog. I didn't really think about things like this. Wait, clarification: I didn't think about things like this at all.

What is the difference between the idea of something and the day to day reality? Often a great deal, but we make decisions based on our thoughts and ideas about something, because you can only have the reality by making the decision.

I always feel terrible about thinking and saying these words, but I often wish I didn't have a dog. Now mind you, I love Stella to pieces. Last year, when I thought she might have life-threatening cancer, I was devastated at the thought of losing her. Still, when I think about day to day life as a dog owner, it's not really as appealing as I may have dreamed.

The day to day: You wake up, you trudge out into the cold with a dog who is tugging you around, eating garbage on the ground, dragging you toward other dogs and people to say hi. In the period of time you spend outside, said dog urinates and defecates, after which you bend over and pick up the smelly, steaming poop in your plastic bag covered hand, and search for an appropriate receptacle in which to place the poop.

**Side bar notes on poop scooping in DC: 1) Garbage receptacles along the sidewalk are a great benefit of city living, as opposed to the suburbs where you have to carry the poop around with you for the remainder of the walk. 2) Since I moved to DC, every time I have forgotten a bag or run out of bags, I have always been able to easily find an appropriate nearby piece of garbage (cup, bag, box, paper) with which to scoop. I always think, “Wow, how convenient,” followed by, “Wow, how sad that the sidewalks consistently have so much garbage on them.” But then it seems a little silly to complain about it, at that precise juncture. **

So anyway, when you own a dog, you spend a large part of your daily existence trudging out in the cold to scoop up smelly poop.

Other inconveniences include travel arrangements, and always having to make sure you are home to care for the dog. Doggie daycare and dog walking services are a tremendous help, but you pay for them. Stella has food allergies, so I spend a ridiculous amount of money on this special food. Etc. etc. etc.

There are other drawbacks to having a dog, which I won't delve into any further, and of course, there is also an up side: Love, companionship, protection, etc.

In any event, the day to day is different than the idea.

I think this is true for a lot of things in life. Relationships. Children. Jobs. Living spaces. Hobbies. Purchases. You have an idea of what something will be like, but the day to day reality turns out to be much different than what you envisioned.

Knowing this, going forward, I want to spend more time exploring the day to day in advance of my decisions. For example, if I were now making the decision as to whether or not to get a dog, I would begin by dog sitting for friends, not just for a few days but for a few weeks, to get a better understanding of what it meant to incorporate a dog into my life.

Or, maybe, on the flip side, spending time envisioning the ideal day to day, and then figuring out what realities need occur to make that ideal into a reality.

But maybe the ideal wouldn't be as good in reality, either.

Back to the Days of Yes

Relocating to DC has opened up a Pandora's box of opportunities for relationships, including the rekindling of those lost through time and space. Next week, I am going to have coffee with the first real boyfriend of my life, who I dated during my freshman and sophomore years of high school. He is now a reporter, covering the Hill, living in the suburbs of DC with his wife and baby.

I haven't seen him in about fifteen years.

I can barely remember who I was when I was dating him. I had braces and acne and running a mile was agony. I have come a long way since then.

But things were much less complicated then.

We watched movies and listened to music and worked together on our high school paper. He became part of my family, even in family portraits, and I joined his on yacht trips along the East Coast. We wrote each other notes on paper and in journals back and forth, and spent hours in phone conversations into the wee hours of morning on the land lines of our parents' houses before they even had to be called land lines.

I loved him without worry for what would happen when he went to college and our relationship unraveled, that I would hurt him and that my world would crumble having been based for a year and a half around spending the majority of my time with him. We loved each other and gave to each other freely and openly without fear.

But it came to an end, as almost all relationships do. And I learned from it, as I have from every subsequent relationship.

The big lesson of this one was, don't ditch all your friends when you get a boyfriend because when you break up, you will have no friends, and that really stinks. So when the next boyfriend came along, I made sure I kept up my friendships and made new friends along the way, so I wouldn't be stuck a lonesome loser when it inevitabley ended.

The lesson of the one after that was, don't confuse physical chemistry with love. And then, don't date a guy who doesn't have a career path. And then, and then, and then.

The lessons have piled up. I've learned so much along the way. I could write the book on it all: What the red flags are, how to bow out gracefully before getting in too deep, how to maintain the perfectly manicured “own life” in the context of a relationship, how to weed out the guys who are serious from the guys who are players, and so on, and so on, and so on.

Fifteen years later, I would never talk on phone until the wee hours of morning. Don't I have better things to do than devote hours of my life to something other than what I can list on my resume or check off my to-do list? I wouldn't include a man who wasn't my husband in a family photo, or join his family on a yacht trip—what kind of message would that send? What expectations would that create? 

I won't, I never, I shouldn't, I can't.

I wish I could go back to the days of yes, and why not, and without cognizance of the potential consequences.

I think all of the lessons have piled up so high they may now be blocking my view of the possibilities.

It's going to be very strange to see my long-ago once sweetheart, the one who came before I could've written the book. I wonder how it will impact me, or what it will make me remember or think about.

Maybe it's too tall an order for a chat over coffee after 15 years, but I am hoping it somehow brings me back, even the smallest bit, to the openness of heart I possessed those many years ago, before I got so smart and wise.

How Far Have You Come?

I wrote this on the plane back from my trip to Memphis and Little Rock, and I think it's somewhat influenced by the Baptist preacher I heard on Martin Luther King Day. Not the message, but the rhythm, and the preachy-ness.

How far have you come?

It's so easy to look out on that ocean of your life and see how far you have to go, or where you're getting caught up or how fast the other boats are going compared to you.

But what about how far you have come?

How many good decisions will you make today that would not have crossed your mind five years ago? What thought processes will you go through, whose advice will you heed that you would have ignored in the past? What mistakes will you avoid today because you made similar ones yesterday and you learned from them?

How far have you come?

We don't think very much about how far we have come because it somehow implies that we were bad before, we were worse before. But we weren't bad then. We were good then. We are just better now. And maybe we were better before in other ways; we have just made some trades. Idealism for practicality. Freedom for security.

It's hard to measure how far we have come.

That's one reason we runners like road races. Year after year we can time ourselves running the same course and maybe we can improve from the year before, if we train more.

But eventually we are going to get to a point where we are never coming in faster than we once did.

My dad is 64 and has been running for about 40 years. He used to run much faster mile times and sometimes he speaks of this, somewhat wistfully, when we run together.

But in those 40 years, though his mile times have slowed, the number of miles he has logged continues to build each day. He goes farther with each one.

How far has he come?

He has raised two children and helped countless people through his professional and personal dealings. He has nurtured my mother through her battle with aggressive breast cancer; he has cared for his aging mother. He has seen my brother and I through every up and down. There is nothing in this world he could do for us, that he hasn't already done.

These are just a few examples how far he has come, and how far he has helped others go.

At age 62, my dad ran his first marathon and proceeded to run two more in the same year. Now he's training for his fourth, here in DC in March.

My dad has come so far but I don't think he spends much time reflecting on how far he has come. He's too busy thinking of how much farther he has to go.

We all do it, and it's okay. But in the moments when we question ourselves, or feel we are coming up short, we need to stop, pause our watches, turn around, and look behind us. We need to realize that we have come so far that we can't even see where we started from, it's so far behind us, and appreciate all of the miles we have logged along the way.

How far have you come?

The International Two Cent Blog

Thanks so much to everyone who has read my blog so far! I don't know all of you because, according to the wonderful stat collection services provided by Google, I have more than 300 views, most of which are from the U.S. but also a handful from other countries including the Netherlands, South Korea, Japan, New Zealand, Greece, and Canada. I know few (if any) people in those countries, so it is very exciting to be making these virtual connections. International readers, please say hello by leaving a comment! It would also be great to get comments from people in the U.S. who are reading that I don't personally know. Basically, I just love to make new friends. (And of course, I always love comments from people who I do personally know, too...much love to my friends in real life who read this blog!)

As I wrote in a previous entry, I "monetized" my blog a few days ago in honor of my very fiscally-prudent mother's birthday. She will be proud to know that I have officially earned two cents for my blogging efforts! Yes, that is right, two cents...so there's my two cents. Hardy har har har.

It's probably too late to come up with anything coherent, especially since I have been on work travel all week, but I will leave you with a thought that has been permeating my mind as of late:

Everything is just exactly what it is, and at the same time, and just as exactly, so much more.

I'll get into what I mean by that in a near-future post. Hopefully this entices everyone back here so that I can get up to three cents by next week. Ahh, Capitalism!

Love on the Rebound

Rebounds in basketball are a good thing.

The shot is missed, but somebody grabs that ball as it bounces off the rim, and gets a second chance to score. (To be precise with basketball terminology, we'll stick with offensive rebounds for the purpose of this analogy...just bear with me here.) Your rebounds get tracked in the stat box, along with your points, assists, blocks, and steals. If you are getting a lot of rebounds, chances are, you are helping your team to win.

Rebounds in love don't work that well. If you wanted to compare it to a rebound in basketball, it would look something like this:

Someone took a shot, and the ball didn't make it in the hoop. Instead, it bounced off the rim all the way over to the opposing team's basket on the other side of the court. Since you're so eager to catch that ball, you make a mad dash to that side of the court, and although you get your hands around that ball, you are now surrounded by the entire opposing team. All of these people happen to be much bigger than you. At the same time, your teammates have gotten confused and think you have called a time out, so they retire to the sidelines and drink Gatorade. So now, in addition to being on the wrong side of the court, and surrounded by your opponents, you have no backup. You've got that ball, but it's all you've got. And you're not going anywhere with it.

So I recently dated someone who had just caught that ball.

We met randomly, he seemed to be (and actually, is) a completely awesome person. On our first date, the first thing he said, as we sat down to a lovely dinner, was, “Full disclosure, I am going through a divorce right now...it's been five months...but we're both being adults about it.”

I thought nothing of it, ordered some fantastic wine and food, and soaked up the wonderfulness of the person sitting across the table from me. He was thirty years old and had no children. My perspective was/is that a divorce is just like any relationship that doesn't work out, which I have had a few of myself. No big deal.

We immediately embark on one of those insta-relationships, just add alcohol. For two weeks, we are in near-constant communication, and see each other at every opportunity. He is brilliant, dynamic, ambitious, warm, kind, witty, generous, thoughtful, and the possessor of heart-meltingly beautiful blue eyes. We seem to have amazing amounts in common, and I fall hard and fast.

Towards the end of the two weeks, the communication starts to taper off, along with some of the initial intensity, and I realize that this is probably not going to work. I start thinking about some of the things he has said to me, which make it clear that he is in a great deal of pain over his ending marriage. I start to feel like being with me, which was probably a wonderful distraction from the pain, in the beginning, is now making him sadder.

Which makes sense. I've been there. When you lose someone you love, there is a huge, gaping hole, a devastating emptiness that demands frantic efforts to eradicate. The only non-chemical way to numb that feeling is the attention of a new romantic partner. It works perfectly, for a short period of time, and then it begins to wear off, like any drug. And when it wears off, you are left with that new person, going through the motions of a relationship, with a person who is not the person you love. But instead of numbing the pain, it is now reminding you of what you lost, rubbing salt in the wound.

At least, that's how it has been for me.

When I was in this situation, in desperate anti-devastation mode, mere weeks after ending a long relationship, I had two dates with a very lovely man named Tom, who was divorced. The first date was terrific, and the second date made me sad (for the previously described reason). One of things I remember Tom talking about on that second date was his experience with dating after his divorce—which had been about two years ago at that point—and the regret he felt for the people he had hurt when he was fresh out of the marriage and really not ready to be with anyone else.

I never went out with Tom again after that second date, because I shortly thereafter got back together with my ex (for what turned out to be one last hurrah).

***As an aside, through mutual friends and facebook stalking I have learned that Tom is now very happily remarried, so, hooray for love :) ***

But Tom's words came back to haunt me as I thought about my current experience. I did not want to be one of those people who got hurt, one of the casualties in the frantic battle to numb the pain of a broken heart. I was already so far into this, emotionally, and it became apparent how vulnerable I was, and how precarious a situation this was. I had put my heart in a food processor, and was waiting for someone to flip the switch.

I went into fight or flight mode and ended the relationship via email, which made me sad but relieved. He replied to my email agreeing that it wasn't going to work out, and that was that.

Maybe I'm wrong about the whole thing, and the reason it wasn't going to work out had nothing to do with the divorce or the timing. Maybe it had to do with the fact that he has cats and I'm allergic, or that he organizes his clothes by the visible color spectrum and I draw the line at clean vs dirty. Or maybe other things that I'll never know and probably don't need to know.

Maybe with the right person you could find the opening, even while surrounded by those five guys on the wrong side of the court, and dribble your way out, back to the other basket, fast break, layup, score!

Maybe it happens, but despite my love for it, I've never been very good at playing basketball, let alone scoring off a rebound.

Happy Birthday, Valerie!

Speaking of trips, my mom is a trip. There's really no way to describe her. You just have to experience it for yourself. That's why I usually have to refer to her as Valerie, because “my mom” is so generic, and she is anything but generic.

In honor of Valerie, and her steadfast wisdom which I have resolved myself to listen to instead of fight, I “monetized” my blog today. Yes, ads! This way, as long as I am blogging and have people reading it, I can be earning some money. I'm sure not a lot, but hey, D.C. is an expensive city and every little bit helps!

I knew that Valerie would think this was a good idea, so I did it, and when I told her about it, she said, “Wow, that's a great idea.”

Happy birthday, Valerie!

Teaching Yoga is a Trip

I'm dedicating the title of this post to my friend and fellow yogi Paul Alkema. Because, well, I think he said those exact words, so he deserves the dedication. We did teacher training together this past summer and fall, and he now teaches like umpteen classes per week, and has been sharing with me his amazement with how very “trippy” it is.

I regularly teach two classes. One is at work, every Wednesday during lunch break in the large conference room, unless we have some emerging situation or the conference room is already in use. This began while I was doing teacher training and has provided me with a wonderful opportunity to get experience teaching, and bond with my colleagues. The other class started at the beginning of the year, Sunday mornings at 9am at Yoga District's Dupont Circle location. I cannot even begin to express my joy and gratitude to be teaching at Yoga District. This beautiful studio has become my home away from home in D.C. To be able to now share the yoga that has been shared with me since I began going there in April...is trippy. See, Paul is on to something.

Being a teacher on the Yoga District roster allows you not only the opportunity to teach your assigned class, but also opens the door for substituting when other teachers aren't available for their classes. Last week, I subbed for the lovely Lauren's Power Yoga class on Sunday evening. It was a packed class, at least 20 people, which is by far the largest group I have ever taught. It was an amazing experience. There was so much energy in the room, it lifted me to a level of presence and awareness that I'm not sure I can adequately describe.

This morning, I was signed up to sub for a 7:15am class at Yoga District's Bloomingdale location. I was absolutely petrified going into it, but not because of the class itself, because of the logistics. I had never taught there before, let alone opened the studio on my own, and I was afraid that a few things might happen:

1) I might not wake up in time to get there
2) I might not get there (last time I tried to get to that studio I got completely lost)
3) I wouldn't be able to unlock the door (the lockbox/combo/key situation would somehow not work for me)
4) I would set off the alarm system and the police would come (it's happened there before)

Actually, I imagined there were countless other possible situations of woe that wouldn't even occur to me until they were causing the unanticipated disaster that the class could become. I woke up in a panic four times last night over it.

Guess what? It went beautifully. I got there at the ideal time, got in easily, the students came, and halfway through teaching the class, which I was thoroughly enjoying, it occurred to me that I was actually getting paid to do this. Unbelievable! Something that brings me this much authentic joy, and I'm getting paid for it as well.

Trippy!

Follow up to Previous Post

I wrote this in the morning as a comment/addendum to my post last night, but since it doesn't show up when you click on it, I'm posting it here:

Upon re-reading my previous post (and from the reaction I seem to be getting from it) I think my tone might be unneccessarily harsh.

I was pretty tired last night when I wrote it, which might account for the tone, rather than the degree to which the matter at hand brings me actual distress (which is actually minimal, it's just one of those random things I think about, and jotted down on a post-it note today to write about on the blog later.)

I could edit the post, or delete the post, so that I don't ruin my reputation as that nice, yogic-ly inclined, patient, philosophical bloggess out in DC. (If this is my reputation. If I even have a reputation. I think everyone who is reading this so far actually knows me, so probably my posts aren't really changing anyone's opinion of me, and if they are...well...I guess that's what authenticity is, right? You are as you are, regardless of what others are going to think.)

So in the year of authenticity, deleting or editing blog posts seems to contradict my intention. At 11pm on a Tuesday night I am cranky-pants about email signatures, but really I'm probably more cranky-pants about the fact that it's 11pm and I shouldn't still be awake, but my sleeping habits and caffeine addiction are things I plan to wax on about in depth here -- stay tuned!

That's all for now. I have a really big day today at work. The project I have been working on for the past 5 1/2 months is going to be announced to the national media, and I am really excited about it. Will probably be posting about it here, for everyone's reading pleasure.

Love,
Casey

Work Request

I have one request for anyone who sends email as part of their job:

Please put your contact information at the end of your emails. ALL your emails, not just the ones that you instigate. People use the those email signatures to contact you. Everyone I know uses them. If you don't have the email signature, then it's a big pain in the neck to figure out your phone number (compared to how easy it is to find other peoples' phone numbers, who have them at the end of their emails), and inevitably we always need to know your phone number.

So just do everyone a favor and put, at the very least, your name and phone number on your email signature, but preferably your address and the whole nine yards. You can set it up so it happens automatically -- no effort on your part, and it helps out the people you work with. A win-win!

*Stepping off soap box* Thank you for your attention to this matter.

2011: The Year of Authenticity

As someone who writes constantly, it's been a perpetual disappointment that I have failed to create something for the blog-o-sphere that lasts longer than a few posts. I have decided that 2011 will be my "Year of Authenticity" and that lends itself to blogging. A non-anonymous blog designed for public consumption, it will serve as accountability for the harmony of my thoughts, words, and actions.

I will probably blog a lot about yoga. I will make a lot of analogies. I will probably blog about people, relationships, and love. My active quest to identify my soulmate. Food, restaurants, and music. I'm not sure what else. I guess that will come. My goal will be at least one post a week, for all of 2011. I hope lots of people will join me here throughout the year, and that what I write can be helpful to others in some way. I see this as a contribution to a much larger conversation between the connected human beings who happen to be alive in 2011.