Namaste, Mother F*cker

I've been an active person most of my life. I grew up in martial arts and team sports, spending years traveling around, diving in front of soccer balls or punching people in the face (not during the same events, usually). After college I gravitated to grappling and fitness, supplementing my judo and jiu jitsu with HIIT and powerlifting. As long as I could remember, my stocky frame somehow managed to be muscular and unusually flexible all at once. It was awesome.

About a month ago, I woke up one morning to discover that my previously mobile left hip was frozen in place, unable to hinge backward with ease. My heart sunk. No more squatting, no more deadlifting, no more fun stuff at all; at least not until I could get this under control. Bummer. So, after a respectable period of moping, I grit my teeth, pulled up Google and researched something I hoped I'd never need: yoga.

It's weird to go to your first ever yoga class. While they are very kind, yoga people seem to assume that your first class at their studio could not possibly be your first yoga class ever of all time because after we entered the space and received a tour from the nice man at the front desk, we were pretty much on our own to figure out what to do once we got to the room.

Inside, people who seemed to have done many yogas had formed some haphazard rows of mats, but they'd mostly arranged themselves movie theater style, such that everyone had at least enough space for another mat on either side of themselves, but there really wasn't room for two new mats together. Not wanting to stand around like an obvious novice any longer, I shrugged and told my companion that she was on her own and found my way to a spot between a girl in a Lululemon tank top and a wall.

Funny thing: no matter where I am, even in familiar places, I'm always most comfortable with my back or at least my side to the wall. Whether it be a college classroom or seat yourself restaurant, I've always instinctively positioned myself along the perimeter. Knowing there's a solid entity defining my position seems to anchor me and, in so doing, relieves a little bit of anxiety. Don't worry too much though, there are about a zillion other sources of anxiety in the yoga room, so rest assured I've not found my zen just yet.

Anyway, eventually the class begins and I do my best to follow along, my years of grappling and strength training helping to mask the fact that I don't know what the fuck a chataranga is. It was sweaty, slippery and occasionally mildly painful as I made my way from pose to pose. I'm not sure about all the spine lengthening, connecting with breath or rooting to the earth, but I do love the idea of never having to speak to anyone before, during or after in order to participate. It's really just a bonus that each session seems to end with everyone in the room doing their level best impressions of a dead body for minutes on end.

After class, it was chaotic enough in the locker room and lobby that I managed to escape un-small talked, which was almost reason enough to come back again, which I am, tomorrow. Yoga: not the best, not the worst. Namaste, mother fuckers.

Welcome Back, Welcome Back, Welcome Back

In the words of that dog from that one meme, I have no idea what I'm doing.

In 2014 I wrote a couple entries, left the prairie, moved halfway across the country, met Thomas Jefferson (sort of, not really), turned around and it was 2016. Whoa. How did that happen?

Something like two weeks ago, I suspect in the throes of madness, I deactivated my Facebook account. Whoa again. See, what my simplified retelling of my two year journey doesn't mention is the erosion of a couple of important relationships, the unplanned transition that precipitated the journey itself and the decay of my emotional foundation that had apparently accumulated slowly, dust on a shelf, while I had my back turned or maybe had my fingers in my ears. If this all sounds pretty vague, don't worry, the upshot is simple: once I'd cut my ten year-old tether to the rest of the world, my addled brain once again drifted back to this virtual blank space and convinced me that if I typed some words in it, maybe I'd suddenly feel...better?

So I'm here, sitting in my second most comfortable chair at 12:08am, listening to Sia (which is a wonderful idea if you feel that the music of Adele is no longer wrenching your beating heart from your chest like it did when you two first met) and wondering how all of this happened and, maybe more importantly, what I really could have expected to have happened.

So, I'm going to try to write some things. Again. What things? No goddamn idea.
An investigation of my superhero (villain?) origin story that slowly unpacks a clown car of hurt, awkwardness and memories of past failures both innocuous and great (like the time I didn't realize my phone had autocorrected "Tom" to "Tim" in a text to Tom or that one time I got fired)? Maybe a little, hopefully not a lot.

How about a candid account of my professional life here in the present age? Probably not really, unless I somehow become much more comfortable with the idea of being fired again.

Perhaps a laundry list of the things I want, things I don't and things I don't understand? That could be the ticket.

In any event, I hope you'll bear with me, dear reader, as I try to figure out how I came to be here and how I plan to get to what's next.