When I Grow Up, I Want to Give the Best Years of My Life to My Employer

When I was a child, I didn’t fully understand how much of your life you spend at work, getting ready for work, commuting to work, and thinking about work. What is the point? I feel like I haven’t discovered my life’s purpose. Each week that passes me by, I wonder what it is I’m supposed to be doing. Shouldn’t we be doing something more meaningful than going to work 40+ hours a week? I guess for some folks, their work brings them meaning and purpose. Lucky bastards.

I enjoy my job. I feel like I am making a difference in people’s lives; however, I don’t feel like it brings any great depth to my life. I can’t tell if I’m just being whiny or if I should be doing something different.

That brings me to something completely different (but maybe related): meditation. I can’t remember if I mentioned this, but I’m going back and listening to Dreamland from the earliest archives available. Almost every other episode, someone will mention meditation in once context or another. Meditation has so many benefits (also) both psychologically and physically. I should meditate. I know I should meditate and I’ve told myself that I should start meditating. And I have… occasionally. More like very rarely. Actually, it really doesn’t count when it only happens about once every 3 months.

I have become much better at journaling on a more regular basis to help me manage stress but also to just write. My (very limited) practice of yoga has been rather on and off. And then there’s my non-existent meditation practice. So there is clearly room for improvement. My problem is I never know what the best time is to meditate – if I try it right when I wake up, I promptly fall back asleep and if I try it right before bed, I promptly fall asleep. When I practice yoga, I find mediation to be a terrific way to finish up, but again, my yoga practice is rather irregular.

I’m making this harder than it needs to be, aren’t I?

That was one of the many things I loved about Tae Kwon Do – we would meditate at the start and at the end of class. Sometimes it was pretty short, but it’s amazing what even 5 minutes can do.

I need to make time.

Playing Catch Up

I had started writing my post about The Key a year ago and never finished. I want to say life got in the way, but let’s be honest, I got in my way. That’s ok. I’m back and that’s what counts. So let’s catch up, shall we?

In October of last year, we took an Ashtanga yoga workshop at Hegel Yoga. It was pretty informative; however, I felt like I needed to take a class on a regular basis to get the most out of yoga, especially since I was a beginner. I had to put that on hold since we spent the first three weeks of November in India.

I haven’t been back to India in 17 years. I haven’t seen most of my family and friends for so very long. It was so good to see these people from my past again. It was also strange and wonderful to be back in my homeland again. But it was also exceptionally clear why I left in the first place and why I can’t ever immigrate back. But that’s not important here.

Unfortunately, we didn’t get to see the Taj Mahal as planned because I feel ill in Delhi. It was disappointing, but sometimes you just can’t travel when you’re ill. However, we did get to go down to Kerala and stay at Spice Village, spend a night on the Spice Coast Cruise, and finish our stay at Coconut Lagoon. Kerala was so beautiful and we hope we can go back again someday. There’s still so much more to see in India and I felt like we only had a small taste. I have travelled quite extensively in India, but there are places I haven’t been to either, so I really hope we can go back again soon.

It rained the first day we got to Spice Village. This was the view from our bungalow:

For New Years my brother-in-law came to visit with our niece and nephew. I hadn’t seen them in four years! So it was really wonderful to catch up with them, especially since I hadn’t met my nephew yet. Unfortunately, the little dude must have been carrying some kind of bug, because I got terribly ill after they left. My doctor thinks it was the flu, but I call bullshit considering my symptoms. They didn’t even run any tests to verify that it was the flu, so I go to suffer miserably for a week and then some. It was the worst start to a new year in recent history.

In January I was closer to my goal weight than I have ever been! I was really happy especially since I’d been worried about packing on the pounds from our vacation to India. But then I slowly started gaining weight again. And now I’m 8lbs over where I was in January. To say I’m frustrated with myself would be a huge understatement. But I figured out the root cause: for a couple of weeks, I stopped caring about my health and about what I put in my body. To not care about my health, is the single most destructive thing I could possibly do to myself. So now, I go back to eating paleo and doing yoga every morning, because being healthy feels so much better than eating junk.