it's ok for things to just be weird sometimes

I just got back into town after a 3 week trip less than a week ago. I have been feeling sort of off ever since coming home and for some reason I feel really guilty about it. I keep telling myself it is because I was gone for a long time and now I am home, that reality is trying to set in and I am trying to stop it, because the seasons are changing, or because I'm hormonal, or because mercury is retrograde… I keep trying to explain why I feel not quite myself. Really though, when I think about it, sometimes life is just weird. Yes it could be any combination of these things or all of them that make me feel unsettled, but honestly I need to focus less on what "explains" it and just sit with the uncomfortable-ness of it. I have to remember that it is ok for everything to be up in the air sometimes, because that is just how life goes. The more I struggle to label and control what is happening, the more it will just upset me.

My time in Montana was once again magical. I had the great pleasure of teaching a lovely group of yogis restorative yoga in the evenings at our retreat. We really were so blessed, the smoke from all of the fires in and around Glacier had become so dense that it was difficult to see and breathe the week before and especially the day before the retreat, but somehow, as if all our prayers and magic and juju were heard, the morning of the retreat the smoke parted and we could see the mountains and clear blue sky! I was able to spend my 27th birthday taking class from my best friend and amazing teacher in the morning, saw an adorable young black bear while horseback riding in beautiful weather, had dinner which included birthday cake and pie and surprise presents and balloons and singing from all the sweet yogis and cooks at the cabins, taught a gentle sleepy restorative yoga class on a gorgeous pavilion while the sun set over the mountain range behind me, and sipped hot chocolate and bourbon with my close girlfriends giggling until our eyes wouldn't stay open any longer. Only thing missing was my boy back home, but we had a sweet phone conversation too. The whole retreat was so lovely and made my heart so very full.

After the retreat my friend and I started the long drive back to Atlanta, stopping plenty of times along the way to make the drive a trip of its own. We stayed in a haunted hot springs in Montana, explored the wonders of Yellowstone, backpacked 2 nights in the Grand Tetons (where some highlights include seeing gorgeous foliage turning fall colors and seeing mama bear with 2 adorable cubs and much much more), stayed in 2 more awesome hot springs in Colorado, stopped in Santa Fe for green chilies and Jackalope shopping, and stayed a night in Oklahoma with my mama. The trip was full of adventure and beauty and emotion. After writing all of this out, I can see more clearly that it is only natural being back less than a week that I would feel a little let down from the trip being over, and knowing that life is back to work for awhile. I am so happy to be home with my sweet man in our cute little house and with my friends again, but I also have to let it be ok to feel weird and a little let down and off as I re-adjust to life in Atlanta.

coming full circle...

This time last year I was heading to Glacier National Park with some of my closest friends. I was excited, of course, to see a new place and have a new experience, but I had no idea just how inspiring and magical the trip would be. While I was there, I hiked through amazingly gorgeous terrifyingly difficult awe-inspiring landscape. I walked in sun, rain, snow, horse poop, and bear scat. I did yoga on top of rocky mountain passes and next to ancient glaciers and shockingly blue/green glacial lakes, and stared in awe at grizzly and black bears, mountain goats, longhorn sheep, and a whole plethora of other little critters. I turned 26. I felt the magic of the big sky over my head, turning cotton candy pinkpurpleblue during sunrise, and saw the stars shining down on me in the nighttime during bundled up porch chats with my friends. Something shifted for me then, and I decided that 26 was going to be a transformational year, or less decided and more realized. This was out of my hands, but then I knew it and stopped trying to control what would or should happen.

 When I got back to Atlanta I started to think about what would make me happy and help me grow as a person. I started planning a summer in Europe, and completed my yoga teacher training. I quit my job as a nanny and focus on my career as a dancer and yoga teacher. I performed in an amazing show with staibdance "attic" and got to work with Flux Projects and T. Lang and Nick Cave at Ponce City Market. I then somehow planned a year that included little time in Atlanta because I had the wanderlust bad. Then I met the man of my dreams and wanted nothing more than to spend all of the time with him IN ATLANTA! All of a sudden my gypsy plans and dreams turned into fear of messing up this good thing I had going. Luckily he was super supportive of me chasing dreams and traveling. We somehow survived the summer apart with lots of broken phone calls and postcards, then I settled my gypsy ass down into a house with him when I got home. But, now I am taking off again, luckily only for a short time, and it is brining me full circle. I am heading back to Montana tomorrow, almost exactly one year later, and I cannot wait to see what this adventure brings. I know that as I spend my 27th birthday in Glacier surrounded by friends and teaching yoga, frolicking and dreaming and missing my sweetie back home, I will reminisce about last years adventure that started all of this. Onward and upward.

time is weird, right?

Im sitting at work this morning, thinking of how strange it is that today is April 12th, 2015. How can it be that we are already this far into the year? You know when you make plans and look forward to a thing and then wait and wait and it seems forever away, and then its like you blink and the thing has come and past? I feel like that is what this year has been so far. I have been MIA from posting in this blog because there have been so many moments that I was looking forward to and wanted to write about and share then quickly they started whizzing by without me even fully realizing that they were here. Staibdance premiered Attic in January and it was one of the most amazingly powerful performance experiences I have had.

Staibdance "Attic" photo by Jacobs Creative

We had wonderful reviews and were able to present excerpts of it at UGA and at American College Dance Association.

I began teaching yoga more consistently and have really grown to love it. It was terrifying teaching at my home studio the first few times, I had all this anxiety because I wanted to do so well, but then quickly realized that this studio of all the places I should feel the least nervous because all of our staff and students are like my family. It felt amazing to be surrounded and supported and encouraged as a new teacher.
Just this past week, I took a big leap of faith into the full path of yoga and dance by quitting my nanny job. I really had to take a long look at my finances and plan and think, but at the end of the day I have to remember that space needs to be opened for something else to come in.
Tomorrow I start a new project with T Lang, and I couldn't be more excited. I will be in rehearsal every day for the next 2 weeks and get to focus fully on dancing and teaching yoga and practicing. The life I envisioned when I moved to Atlanta almost 3 years ago. I know it won't be forever - and the struggles will continue, but I feel all the things shifting and moving in the right direction.
 I am planning my big European trip this summer and I am filled with joy and anticipation as I look over travel guides and make lesson plans for my yoga classes I will teach while there. It's funny though, I started planning this whole trip last year while feeling lonely and filled with wanderlust knowing I could drop most things for a little while and put my life on hold, then the exact moment the year turned to 2015 and I made peace with being a lone gypsy all year, I met someone who is wonderfully amazing and making me already miss Atlanta before I have left. But I am a full believer that things happen when they should and all will work out beautifully. All good things are worth waiting for, and then the work is to be present in the moment after all the waiting to enjoy and experience and live.