loose change

starting this ninth monday piece from brian head utah! where i’m staying w/ maddog and madmax and niki for a weekend of friendship and skiing and beers and unpredicted circumstances! it’s sunday again (i’m writing ahead) and we spent all day hopping from blue to blue to green to blue and our bodies are tiredddddd and our minds are very satiated! and faces very sun/wind burnt and hearts very happy.

i’ve got no idea what i’ll write about this week but i know this trip is a good feature! these were my first days off of work since taking over first grade and i was kind of nervous to leave the kids. i’ve not heard anything from school and i’m operating under the no-news-is-good-news basis!

we planned this trip not too long ago and i remember feeling like it was kind of far-fetched, like we couldn’t actually make it happen–it feels like i blinked and we made it! i have been laughing for what feels like 24 hours straight and at present am writing very distractedly while the lads play go fish. despite a double-booked airbnb, a broken off car-key stuck in niki’s trunk, and a bout of altitude sickness, morale is high! i am beyond impressed w the composure that these women bring in situations of slight distress! and i am so thrilled to have begun what ideally becomes an annual tradition of skiing with my mates.

and now it is tuesday–i didn’t write at all yesterday for lack of something, maybe energy or inspiration, sense and color etc.–and i’m sitting at bar 12 at little dom’s. it’s crowded tonight because of TNS (tuesday night supper) and i’m happy to have snuck in to write! i’ve been missing cafe roma tremendously. so much of my writing relies on third places and i’ve found not a single one that compares to that yellow-walled-open-every-day-until-6-free-coffee-for-ryder-after-2 cafe. i can’t wait until i have my own apartment so i can hang the painting of tio and pretend i’m back in the window table of roma on a rainy eugene day again.

today was both good and hard. i keep remembering to give myself grace too late–i’m on my period and i think my hormones are stirring up heavier thoughts this month. it was easy to ignore the Dark Times (the dreaded week-before-period mind melt) this cycle because there was so much celebratory happiness in the mix! and it’s caught up to me now that i’m back to normal. i’ve just been super cerebral–it started last night and continued into this morning. the thoughts are non-stop and they’ve been really self-centered; i’m hyper-critical of everything i do and kind of worried that i’m a fraud or a terrible person or bad friend.

it’s fascinating how quickly you spiral into a thought once you break the seal on it. when i surface from it it feels like i’ve just done a deep dive into conspiracy theories about myself. and these are like, vulgar thoughts, and i’m sitting there thinking them so casually, like it’s easy. it’s insane to me that so many people i love and adore probably experience these same kinds of thoughts.

i was so worried after school today. i was worried i wasn’t going to finish this piece, worried i wasn’t going to go swim, worried i was just going to waste the entire afternoon. i told sam exactly that and i didn’t even have to wait for him to reply before i was in the car on my way to the ymca–sometimes all it takes is vocalizing a feeling in order to act upon it–and i told myself that i would drive there and not push myself too hard, just have a nice and easy swim. i felt like that was the most i could do, like if i just got myself to the pool then it would be okay if i didn’t finish this monday piece, it would be okay if i finished it tomorrow even though it’s already tuesday. it felt like kind of a sacrifice to accept that but i did, and i got in the pool.

today i swam for fifty minutes, and 25 of them were entirely non-stop front crawl. i was writing in my head, thinking everything and nothing at once. it was really intense. the repetition was allowing my thoughts to pass fluidly in and out of my head while also allowing me to escape them by constantly moving forward and away, into a new thought. i didn’t know i was capable of swimming crawl for that long, and i wouldn’t have pushed myself to go that far if i weren’t so desperately trying to evade my mind! and so it worked out in my favor.

i had all of these revelations about swimming and running. s went for a run today and sent me a voice note afterward with a little thought about how running relies on lung capacity: how long can you maintain your breath? which made perfect sense. running to me is largely about rhythm. hitting stride usually conflates with settling into the perfect breathing pattern, which for me is one breath in and three breaths out. running is not meditative to me until i hit stride–if i can’t find my breath then i don’t get the release, which defeats the point of running.

i remember piecing the rhythm together in 2020 during quarantine. i was running my regular 3-4 miles almost daily at that point, and claire had mentioned during one of our calls the idea of long, slow running. i remember the exact day i decided to try it. run at about a third of my regular pace–which i normally had to push myself to meet–and see how long i could go. i ran six with ease and have considered myself a slow runner ever since!

i’ve never thought of pranayama outside of meditation and yoga. it feels so aligned with those two things that i’ve never associated it with anything else. i thought that running felt so good because i was moving, and running away from shit, and feeling strong, and now i’m thinking a large part of the release comes from the breath work.

i hit stride today while swimming. i’m not sure what the swimmer’s term for stride is. front crawl for me is one breath for every four strokes, because i only like to breathe on my left side. to do that for 25 consecutive minutes unlocked a patience for swimming i’ve never had. even when my body was getting tired my brain wanted to keep going, and so i did. i had to focus on pacing, which i don’t normally do in swimming, but i realized it’s like running: you’re allowed to move slowly and still feel like you’re doing well. even if i slow my pace my breath keeps the same rhythm. i reached a point where i wasn’t thinking about swimming at all, wasn’t thinking about the strokes or speed, i was only thinking about the breathing. just doing and not thinking.

which brings me to another concept i’ve been thinking about this week! doing instead of thinking! it came up on sunday while skiing and i reached the point of doing without thought. it felt incredible. the i can do this feeling. my friend chloe recently became a floor manager at little dom’s and i asked her tonight how it’s going so far–i asked because i caught her out of the corner of my eye tonight and she was crushing it, it seemed like a natural role for her to step into–and she said that this was the first night she’s felt like she was just moving through it with no hiccups, and i said you’re just doing it! and she said exactly! and we had a cool moment of tiny victory.

all of this to say that learning things builds confidence, and that doing things takes time and patience, and thinking sometimes does more harm than good. thought in moderation! action in abundance! or something like that.

one other thing i’d noted to write about tonight: i was so surprisingly content to be back with the kids today, bantering with them and observing them and supporting them. at lunch recess i watched one of them run across the field, deciding to play soccer instead of basketball, and he was beaming. imagine a three and a half foot tall kid running by himself with this toothy grin. i tried to put myself inside of his brain as he slowed from a jog into a walk toward his buddies and the older kids on the soccer field and all i could imagine was freedom. i tried to remember how it felt to be a kid at recess. sometimes it feels like my students genuinely believe the world around them exists for them, and i mean that in a beautiful way.

i thought about raf as he ran over the grass that grew over winter break; i thought about how green and lush the grass was without the kids running all over it every day. and i wondered if he thinks about the grass at all! when you’re a kid, especially in this part of the country, you’re allowed to be carefree because you’ve not had the exposure otherwise. my students show up every day thinking that my life revolves around teaching them, and in a way it does! i learn so much from doing it! and i’m on the verge of tears at least five times a day because of my job. i teared up watching this little boy decide on a whim that he was going to play soccer for the last ten minutes of recess.

i’ve got one last thought i’d wanted to get out before wrapping this one up. i’m in a phase of life that’s kind of hard to navigate. living at home is a complex privilege. it feels isolating in a way i’d rather not explain to anyone. there are certain things that i struggle with that i don’t even discuss with myself, i just try and struggle through them. it’s hard not to get sucked in. there is a constant effort to keep a grateful and positive mindset, and when i cannot maintain it, i berate myself. i was thinking about strength in the car on the way to the pool.

it felt like it had required strength to get myself off of the couch and into the car and onto the freeway and to the pool, so i gave it to myself: i was strong today, even though i feel feeble. it seems that we feel weakest within our strongest moments. but strength can be defined by perseverance at our most fragile. when i think about times that i’ve felt strong, i do not consider weakness. i think about running races, or career successes, or climbing mountains. but when i consider strength outside of myself, i see it in perseverance. i see it in my friends when they encounter adversity. i see it in my students when they struggle to learn a concept at the same rate as their classmates but they try anyway. today, i saw it in myself on my drive to the y–the strength wasn’t really found in the drive itself, but in considering the Hard Things we’re all inevitably faced with, and the ways we choose to push through them.

it will always be difficult to give ourselves the same benefit of the doubt we give to others. this week and this month and this year, i want to be better at taking a deep breath before following a thought. i want to remember that my feeling weak does not automatically make everyone else strong. and i want to remember that it’s okay to feel weak, as long as you aren’t mean to yourself about it.

i’ve been writing for two hours and change! i was telling chloe earlier that little dom’s is a phenomenal place to come write but it’s not because of the space, it’s because of the people. i love seeing my coworkers and my friends, i love getting a little rub on the shoulder when one of them passes by the bar, i love chatting with them and catching up in little moments of free time, i love seeing the restaurant operate from my little wall-seat at the bar.

i sat down earlier next to two of my favorite regulars: jenn, who used to live just around the corner and would always stop by for a chat on her walks around the block, and mark, our headiest regular who’s always down to talk about travels or dead. i’d been in the zone for a while when mark snapped me out of it: what are you writing, nerd?! and i told him VERY meekly oh my monday piece! on my blog! and i got the same reaction that i’ve gotten from everybody else who finds out i write and publish these things weekly, which is kind of a subdued surprise and then a slightly piqued interest.

i think that the act of Writing In Public and Subjecting Yourself to people who will ask what you’re writing has been really beneficial for me. it’s extremely surreal to have people express interest in what you think, and extremely flattering. i’ll wrap this piece up as per usual with gratitude to anybody who reads it! i’ve spent some good time on this one–more than usual–and i’m, as usual, shocked that i’ve written it, and thrilled to have a ninth monday on the board.

nine weeks! time moves swiftly! it’s 9:10 and the straunt is closing and i’m so happy to have this piece done. woody just stopped by with two loaves of stecca bread as a little treat and i couldn’t imagine a better way to finish the evening. until next week! hopefully i’m on time! xxo R