frustrating day. got up at 6 for an online yoga class, which was ok, but then i wanted to tack on a second, pre-recorded class, and it was just a mess.
i bought this low end tablet specifically for these streaming classes, thinking i "just needed something basic", and it has been the single worst electronics purchase of my life; apparently i'm still having a hard time with the fact that even if you "just need it for email and streaming video", you still have to pay premium prices for even that "basic" stuff to work, like, at all. so i had to spend half an hour wrestling with why i couldn't watch the video rental i had paid for, and when i finally straightened it out, it took me an extra half hour to get through the hour-long class because of uhNOTHER lesson i'm not learning. at the beginning of the pandemic i was lucky enough to find a great yoga teacher in someone i know, who has a fun, inviting, anti-perfectionistic style that really works for me. her online classes have been an absolute life-saver for my atrophying shelter-in-place body. i'm very grateful, there are so many teachers whose approach is very antiseptic and, like, Goop-y if you know what i mean. and then there's this woman who teaches these breathing exercises i really want to learn because i'm asthmatic...but she makes yoga into something so esoteric and impenetrable that i have to watch her like a hawk just to follow basic sequences that i'm already extremely familiar with.
language is the main problem. her vocabulary for physical movement is totally unrelated to any way that i have ever felt about having a human body. my regular teacher is so plain-spoken that i hardly even have to look at her to follow the class. then this lady is like...she uses a bunch of unusual words, interchangeably, so that there's a huge cognitive burden on me to keep interpreting what she means while i'm just trying to get some exercise.
like "float". she asks me to float my eyes open, float into a half-pushup, and float parts of my body that are simply not very float-y in my experience. sometimes when she means "float", she instead says "draw". like, "draw your hand to your right hip point" is something i understand when i read it, but when i'm mid-movement and i'm just trying to get the instruction as fast as possible so i don't have to stop and think about it, it's a lot better for me if you just say "put your hand on your hip". if "float" and "draw" are more or less the same thing, i can eventually get used to that, but then she adds in "release". if you say "release the knee to ground yourself down into the mat" or something, i can understand that you just mean "drop it". but then she's describing what is basically just the "hang ten" surfer hand sign, and the way she describes it is, "extend your thumb, relax your second, third, and fourth fingers, and point your pinky finger so that it RELEASES." i'm sorry, it...RELEASES? from what? i'm pointing straight out, i'm not letting anything go! is it supposed to shoot off the end of my hand into outer space? HOW IS THIS A RELEASE.
so with all these verbal shenanigans going on, i have to constantly pause, rewind, and study the video to confirm for myself that i already know what movements she's cuing, i just don't understand anything she says. in the end, i don't feel warmed up, i never break a sweat, my knees hurt from jumping in and out of poses to make sure i'm following her, and i basically just feel cold and dusty from rolling around on the floor. i HAVE to stop falling for this, there are definitely other ways of learning this woman's dumb old breathing exercises.
sometimes i can't understand her just because she speaks in this bizarre rhythm that makes it hard to grasp her meaning immediately. obviously i don't know if english is her first language, but she speaks it perfectly with no strong accent, so i'm convinced she's just being arbitrary for her own pleasure. i've done a thousand triangle poses at this point, but when she insists on telling me to draw myself into an extended "try-ANG-ehl", my brain goes, wait, WHAT? and i have to stop what i'm doing to double check that i know what she means. many ordinary movements that i don't normally have to think about will suddenly become something i've never heard of in this woman's mouth:
*i'm basically just standing up straight, feet flat, without slouching or clenching any muscles i don't need, and her instruction is, "Lift up out of the kneecaps."
*from a basic runner's lunge, i'm supposed to "Draw the knee higher so the crown of the head extends forward." and in another example of two movements i don't think are related:
*in a similar lunge-like pose, she wants me to "Pick up through the right kneecap to feel the right thigh engaging."
*or i have to sit up straight so i have plenty of room to take a deep breath, but i'm told to "Hold the breath at the top of the long spine."
i'm sure that a lot of this comes from super insidery instructor training language that some teachers realize isn't exactly right for just general public folks taking classes. some people just really get off on obscurity and occultism, and they enjoy things more if they can make everything sound like a big secret. but when i'm just trying to follow a series of movements to get a little exercise, saying "stretch your arms up over your head" is a lot more useful than saying, ahem, "lift the hands toward the cooling rays of the moon." (i'm pretty sure this class has always taken place at 8:30am, but anyway) that's like, kind of a lot for my brain to interpret on the way to just reaching up. and it doesn't help when on the third round, the teacher swaps out the moon for the sun, and i have to go, wait, is this DIFFERENT now? ...oh no, it's the same, she just forgot what she was talking about.
anyway. i have so much shit to do right now, basically all of which i consider a privilege and i can't wait to be able to talk about it in more detail, but i always feel like i'm just never getting enough done. like i literally have to read a novel for one project, but when i spend a couple hours doing that, i feel like i'm goofing off just because i'm enjoying it, and i think it should feel harder. and then i wonder why i didn't divide up some of that time among the other things i need to be reading. or i get through almost half of this person's phd thesis, which i need to discuss with someone tonight, and i feel like i should have spent SOME of that time reading a couple other theses or at least making a list of future documents to discuss. if i get some writing done for once, i'm immediately embarrassed by all the writing i DIDN'T do ANY of, for other projects. and i mean i'm not some perfect, prissy little workaholic; i tend to work in sustained sprints until i'm exhausted, and then i'm immobilized for a certain number of days (or weeks or months), or i have some mental health episode and i just can't do shit until it runs its course. i'm not just "being hard on myself" (ugh), i definitely invite criticism of my work habits. but, i can go overboard with anything, obviously.
anyway. in a couple hours i have to go to some unfamiliar bar, to get to know a new colleague who is going to be a substantial part of my life from now until [TBD], because of a job i've been given basically on faith and out of desperation (i know this factually), for which i am hilariously underqualified except that i'm enthusiastic and responsible, and i'm just feeling very unfocused and incomplete and like i have nothing to say for myself. i'm gonna go there early, get established, tamp down my neurotic personality with a couple of drinks, read a conspicuously sleazy-looking book so people leave me alone, and pretend not to be a waste of this person's time when they show up! at least i have a plan.
