grateful

Hello everyone!! I wanted to pop in and share a little wrap up post for August 2022. This weekend had me feeling so grateful for everything that has happened over the past 4 months with many changes in my life. I was reflecting on this after a special get together with my Portugal yogis. The leaders planned a little reunion for us and we met up on Saturday. We caught up with everyone, did a little meditation together and shared what we are grateful for and an update on life. While there are always highs and lows in life, there have been many highs for me lately. These highs have not come without their own challenges, but I am very grateful for so many things right now.

yoga group — lunch Portugal reunion -photo credit to group

When asked what I was grateful for, my list could go on and on. The first thing that came to mind was my new job. The job certainly has challenges, doing things I have not done before and learning so much. There are times when I wonder am I doing this correctly because I have little experience with the company’s process, but there are many changes within the company right now as well. This also has its own challenges. We are all in a learning phase, but we are also behind when it comes to deadlines and for my usually type A self, it’s hard to gauge when I should have certain pieces together. However, I can say that 3 months into the job, I can see all that I am learning. While I feel there are still so many questions I can not answer, there are now some that I can confidently answer and I’m happy to see that progress with what I have done over the past 3 months. I feel like I can really grow in my career and by learning new things, it keeps things more exciting for me. If there is one thing I have learned over my 10 years of work experience, it’s that I like to help others as best as I can and I like to learn new things. These go hand in hand as I learn more, I can help others more.

Next, I’m grateful for my apartment because the location really can’t be beat. When I first looked at the apartment, I thought it was so small, but really it’s perfect for one. Brian visits when he can, but with a studio apartment, if we were to fully live together, we would drive each other crazy unless we had the same schedule. Think about how you turn on one light and that pretty much lights up the whole apartment. I still like our plan with this studio apartment for the year and hopefully getting a house next summer.

I love my gym, especially the outdoor 50m pool. I don’t think I have swam regularly like this ever! Back in 2012/2013, I used to swim 2x a week, but now I’m swimming 2-3x a week and farther distance than ever before. Sunday I swam 3500m, my longest swim yet!

There are very little breaks with this swimming. I may stop 2-3 times for like 10 seconds for a sip of my water or to clear my goggles as they fog, but that’s about it. My goal is swim 3x a week, weights 2x a week and then yoga classes when I get to them. If I don’t go to a yoga class, I’ll do stretching, foam rolling and some sort of light yoga at home. I’ve also been taking more yoga photos outside again, which is fun.

I think back and it may sound dramatic but my life was changed the moment I left for the yoga retreat in April.

There were decisions to be made and it was hard, but I was surrounded by such a lovely group of people and felt so welcomed immediately. I thank them for helping me move, as I stayed with one of the wonderful ladies before getting an apartment. I join some of them for yoga classes or just to pick some wild flowers and then buy a matching sweater (a story of its own).

In all the changes, I feel like I am where I’m meant to be. It wasn’t a smooth road to get here. There was a lot of frustration and tough days searching for a job over the course of 12+ months. Then once I accepted, there were so many questions, but we have made this transition work for us.

Occasionally I have to remind myself to slow down. There is so much activity here and I love to move my body whether it be 4 mile walks, 2 mile swims, Pure Barre class, yoga class, weight lifting….I can get ahead of myself. I noticed my left eye twitch coming back and I have learned that’s a sign of stress. We often forget that exercising is a stress on our bodies and too much of it, isn’t good. I had to learn to eat more to fuel my swimming and also know when to slow down and take a full rest day. I have to listen to my body. Sometimes the stress can’t be helped because life is stressful. Nearly my whole last semester of my MBA, I had that eye twitch because school was stressful and there were certain items at work that were stressful. I tried to do more yoga, change up my workouts and take a relaxing bath. We can’t always control things in our lives, but we can always change our perspective on things and think about what you are grateful for. There is always something to be grateful for.

Just the other day, I was working from home and my building shut my water off. It was inconvenient for sure, but I did have my giant water bottle and water pitcher filled up. I was happy when I tried the faucet a few hours later and water flowed out and I could wash my dishes from lunch. It’s little things you don’t often think about, but not every person across the world has running water.

I challenge you today, think about what you are grateful for.

If you’re my friend on Facebook or even follow me on Twitter or Instagram, I mentioned my frustrating commute to the office the last couple days. The commute that left me standing on a train platform for 45 minutes Tuesday morning as I discovered the trains were running on a special modified schedule after pulling 1/3 of their train cars out of service to be inspected. The way I have heard the story is someone noticed one of the railcars leaning, looked at it and noticed cracks on some beam. This basically meant had the train reached a certain mph, there could have been a deadly derailment.

The interesting thing is the issue is on the newest railcars, which thankfully are under warranty but it still could take a while to fix or replace these railcars. I think the most frustrating thing is that you never know when your train will come and you never know how crowded it will be. After about an hour of my morning was wasted on Tuesday, I rushed out for the train after work. The train was only about 10 minutes late, so we would have been fine…until we discovered we were switched to the wrong track and heading the wrong way…so we waited for a couple trains to pass before backing up almost all the way to the city to switch to the correct track. An hour and a half on the train for usually a 30 minute ride, you can imagine I was quite frustrated. I also had to get to yoga to teach. I had just under an hour to eat, get ready and do everything I needed for the evening before heading out again.

In this time it’s very hard to stay positive. Over 2 hours of my day, gone. Not only that but then you have to make up the time at work for being late, so no lunch breaks for me recently.

In light of all this though, you have to think about the situation. As I mentioned, they removed the cars because there could have been a possible derailment. When that Amtrak train derailed last year, it was scary! Even scarier was that it was on the track I ride! My train doesn’t usually go the speed of the Amtrak trains, so I wasn’t as worried, but it is scary. I have taken a few rides on Amtraks from Chicago to Buffalo, Buffalo to Chicago and Chicago to Syracuse. You want to feel safe on a train. I mean, I hope to feel safer on a train than in a car (there are some crazy drivers out there).

On most days, I am grateful for my commute by train. I look out the window and see the highway at a dead stop and know this is definitely the way I prefer. Plus I get to read blogs, write or do something that makes me commute time seem a bit more productive.

So here is what I am trying to remind myself while I face all this frustration. I am grateful…

For my life (as my job enforces: safety, safety, safety)
That I have a job(s)
The ability to work at home (worked an hour and took a later train yesterday, worked out well)
That I can afford to make healthy food choices
For my co workers who tolerate me even when I have no idea what I am saying (this was Tuesday…so off)
5am workouts, because even with all this workouts > work (my priorities for my own sanity)
Yoga teaching, because at the end of the day to come back to yoga and just see how much it benefits myself and others in class makes me smile
Green smoothies (slightly random but made my night better Tuesday, aka quick tasty dinner)
Arriving home 40 minutes earlier yesterday and enjoying a quiet evening
My apartment community, walking and saying hi

From the big things, like my life to little things, like saying hi to someone. I have to remember to be grateful for everything. To flip this whole situation around to a positive. It is easy to write this list and then still be caught up in the moment, thinking I could be doing 5 other things instead of standing on this train platform. I think it’s hardest when you know you work 8 hours, but if your commute suddenly takes 2 hours instead of 1, where do you make up that other hour? Each day will be different and we will see how it goes, but I am going to try to keep positive and use whatever waiting around time to be as productive as possible from writing to reading. Another thing to be grateful for, as frustrating as they can be, are smartphones. I love Google Docs on my phone to write up ideas.

I wasn’t even planning to post today, but then this came to my mind as I was reading all the different #PHLCommute on Twitter. Sometimes you just have to write when it hits you.

I hope everyone has a great day and remember to check back tomorrow for another Yoga Workshop Friday post. In case you missed my intro post, here is the link to last Friday.

Gratitude

Being Grateful when Nothing Goes Right: TOL #52