So I bought Rodney Yee's "Moving Toward Balance: 8 Weeks of Yoga", and I bought some new yoga clothes and props (a strap, two blocks, a bolster and blankets) that I probably should have gotten years ago. I did not get a new mat, in a weird and probably purely nominal demonstration of frugality. This is how I do--I get all psyched for a big project, and then I buy stuff, and then I PLAN. That's my favorite part, the planning. In this case, 1.) choosing the spot where I'll practice, 2.) deciding to get up early to fit the practice in, 3.) digging out my old yoga books, and of course, in a post-millennial addition to the decades-long planning habit, 4.) setting up a blog to capture my every thought about this new project.
Back in November, I did NaNoWriMo and churned out a (bad) novel in 25 days. This was planning heaven--the point of NaNoWriMo is to write 50,000 words between 12:01 AM on November 1 and midnight on November 30. So I whipped out the calculator, looked at my schedule to see when I'd be likely to have the most time to write, and set myself a word count for each day in November. Because I know myself pretty well, and I've seen me do this kind of thing before, I was actually really, really pleased when it was easy, delightful, GREAT to stick to this plan and actually write all the words. Like I said, the novel wasn't particularly good, but I wrote it, and I did the thing I had set out to do, even when there were lots of excuses to not make my word count on a particular day.
So now I'm turning my determination to a physical goal. I hate exercise, I always have. You know those magazine articles that say "Just find an activity you like!"? I hate that. I don't want to run, or swim, or bicycle, or, y'know, do anything physical. I like sitting and reading. But I have recently begrudgingly admitted that I do, in fact, like yoga. I have found a local teacher I really like, and now it seems like the next thing to do is have a home practice.
I've got the gear. I've got the blog. Stay tuned.
