Time Well Spent

So the idea of balance continues to come up. Today one of my friends commented that she felt like she’s wasted several years of her life because she’s not in a relationship. I pointed out that in those past several years she’s completely changed careers. She quit her job in advertising to get trained as a yoga instructor. She has built up her credentials and is not only teaching kids yoga but is goes around the country training other instructors how to teach specialized yoga classes. She also suffered a major and complicated illness which took a long time to properly diagnose and which she eventually had to have surgery for. Her life hasn’t been idle. 

But, I know what she means.

We only have so much time in our lives. I, for one, tend to get excessive in some areas of my life and leave other areas neglected altogether until the scream for attention. I’ll lose myself in work completely until I am having dreams of about my coworkers turning into vampires. I’ll sign up for multiple online dating sites and have to keep a spreadsheet to get names and details right. Or I’ll huddle down in my Bat Cave until friends start calling me Snuffleupagas. It’s a problem.

Right now I’m filling my calendar with too much. I’m going to fitness classes, taking Tamil 

lessons and going out with friends. All of these are great. Except, I have no “free” time.  For example, today a guy I met a couple of weeks ago discussed getting together, last week. But I literally didn’t have a single free night until maybe the second week in October, if something falls through. You could get some doctor’s appointments easier than a date with me. 

Here’s the problem. I am not leaving room for new opportunities to enter my life. It takes more energy for me to meet new people than hanging out with those I care for. I haven’t been giving to myself and spending enough time restoring my energy to do this. Nor have I truly been connecting with people when I spend time with them because I have little to give.  And then I wonder why I’ve been feeling so lonely.

So, maybe the whole feng shui/if-you-build-it-they-will-come approach is needed. Leaving gaps in my schedule for new opportunities. Or some much needed quality Me Time. 

Ten Minutes

I do my cardio at the gym. It’s not exciting or sexy, but it gets the job done.  It’s not a long workout but I do it most days and have done for years. If I’m honest, I’d feel weird if I didn’t do it. Despite all of this, I dread doing it.

Here’s the thing about the dread. It’s all mental. My body can handle it, but my mind insists on worrying over it like an animal licking a wound. It sits heavy on my mind like a weight until I actually get on a machine and start. And the first ten minutes are the hardest because I’m still carrying that weight with me. I think about how my muscles are tired today or how I just can do the intensity I did yesterday or how I just want to be home in bed. From all the whining and complaining, you would think I had never worked out in my life and in tremendous physical agony. Sadly, I think that a part of me does believe I am. 

Around the ten minute mark, my mind realizes I’m not getting off the machine and there is nothing to be had by yammering on. When my mind shuts up, my body can be heard and more often than not, she’s doing just fine. 

Think less. Do more.

Synchronized

I was on the swim team as a child for several years, but moving around a lot and the general tedium of swimming laps eventually caused me to stop. Then I found synchronized swimming. I was sixteen and looking for something new. I went to observe a class at my local recreation pool and it was love at first site. The girls on the team were beautiful. Gracefully moving to music under and above water. Better still, absent were the pasted smiles and ridiculous swimcap clichés I had seen on television. This was a revelation. I was on the team for a year. It was hard work. Harder than swim team in a completely different way. In swimming, you goal is to be as streamlined as possible. Speed was everything. In synchro, speed gave way to exerting extreme muscles control doing figures and keeping the rhythm with your partner(s) during routines. I was in the best shape of my life during that year (until recently, but more on that in another post). 

Sadly, it only lasted a year. My coach decided to quit teaching the teenage team because they didn’t pay her enough to deal with the parent drama that is notoriously correlated to most school sports, and the next nearest team was over an hour away. I got out of the water and though I tried to find synchronized swimming classes in every city I moved to, I ended up staying out for about sixteen years. Until I moved back to the Washington DC area and found that the same coach was still teaching her women’s synchronized swimming classes. Though I’ve been on an off for the past four years, I’ve been lucky enough to spend many a Tuesday morning swimming with some wonderful ladies. 

It makes me feel like a kid again. It’s not just that I love playing in the water that brings back my youth, but the ladies in my class are almost all my parents’ age. I guess it’s a bit self-selecting as it’s a mid-morning class and only my unusually flexible job schedule allows me to attend. But these women were doing synchro with my coach before I had met her at sixteen. A couple of them compete in the 55+ bracket, but most of them come for the exercise. Synchro and these ladies are the best part about Tuesdays for me and I’m excited that after our regular summer hiatus, I get to spend tomorrow morning with them.