Yobbity, yob

I am living a new kind of existence. Every day, I wake up at the same time and get dressed and leave my house. Recently, I've been walking but sometimes I drive.

I go to work.

From about mid-August until the end of November, I didn't really do that. A very, very sweet baby was  delivered to my living room two - four days per week and I walked to a local yoga studio to teach classes. After a blisteringly hot summer full of activity, a two week trip to my second homeland (Espain), and working three jobs flung from all over the city, I was ready for a break. So I quit things. And hoped and applied for others.

I don't think I realized it at the time, but it refreshed my soul in a way I still don't understand fully. One day I was sitting in my grandparents' armchair, which I've inherited. I was feeding him a bottle, hoping he'd fall asleep before the bottle ended. I realized, "Why would I want to be anywhere else besides right here with this little baby?" At that moment, he closed his eyes and went to sleep.

I don't know if you've ever been schooled by a seven month old, but that sweet baby taught me how to be present to my body, mind, and spirit. I am learning this still. I am learning gratitude and that God always, always provides.

So I have this new job now. And most of the time, I love it. When I was first starting, someone said to me, "The money's not great. None of us are getting rich here." I snickered inside my head and thought, "That's what you think. This is more than twice what I was making before starting here!"

Starting a new job is an adjustment though. It's been good to walk to work, to be at work, to feel like I am getting things done everyday. Watching a baby sometimes does not feel like getting anything done. I'm glad for both practices though. One job of presence and one of task accomplishment. They overlap though. Presence is something that I often feel the need to race through in order to complete something. I am actively fighting this though, and trying to take the time to linger at lunch and when speaking with a coworker.

Linger.

Sometimes I start a blog post with an idea of what I will be writing, and by the time it's finished I no longer remember what I was going to say in the first place. I think, mostly, I am writing to remember the woman I became in those four months of liminal space, to hold on to it, and to carry it into this new place in my life called work.