Lisa Moves

The Slow Smooth Slope of Covid-19 Depression

I’ve been having trouble sleeping for the past two nights. When the Pause began, I was sleeping solidly and restfully for days. Even plunging back into a deep, blissful sleep for a couple of hours after waking at my normal time. It was the kind of sleep that you wake from with a smile on your face. Truth, I was truly enjoying the rest that this break from work afforded me.

In the first few weeks of the furlough, I was mostly happy. Happy to be home with my son and husband. Happy to have time to cook. Happy to maybe be able to tackle recreational activities that I haven’t done in over a decade because they fell by the wayside when I opted to be a studio director rather than simply an instructor. The thought of knitting, sewing, FINALLY decorating my home, and making all of our food from scratch pleased me to no end.

I have cooked SO MUCH, and loved every minute of it. My husband started picking apart the wood siding on our back porch that has been rotting away and ended up tearing off the whole side of the porch. I haven’t gotten around to any crafts, but I have rocked out most of my Mona Lisa jigsaw puzzle. I’ve also blogged, written workshop outlines, read some research, and made lists of objectives and game plans to implement when I get back to the club.

Up until this week, I would say that there has easily been at least one day a week that I’ve slipped into a funk, but it was a minor one and seemed natural.

This week, however, I went under. I sunk deep, and the unnerving thing is I didn’t see it coming and didn’t feel it happening. My motivation just wandered off and left me wanting to do nothing more than sit, scroll through my phone, go back to bed, and let the day pass. My heart wasn’t in anything that my son wanted to do. I was all of a sudden numb.

When I was a kid, we hiked a lot. My dad loved to go west and Yellowstone was an annual trip for us. I never minded climbs that were steep. I knew it would be hard because I could see the incline. What I minded were those low grade climbs. The ones that you couldn’t see with your eyes, but that just challenged you enough and made you feel angrily tired after about 30 minutes. Our time at home is like this, only inverted. It seems like everything is smooth sailing. Those of us that run on all cylinders most of the time are grateful for the idleness. In my case, I was so grateful that I didn’t see that the idleness about about to take me into a void.

There is a moment in (mild) depression when you become sentient. * You awaken in the depth of your mind and think, “How did I get here? What am I doing here?” You think, “I have to start moving. ” However, your inertia is almost like anti-inertia. Is there such a thing as negative inertia? Your mind has to perform the Herculean task of rewiring motivation into your body. With my clients, I talk about motivation relative to inertia like this:

If you are still, it takes more energy to move than it does if you have momentum.

I spent all day yesterday in my deep, depressed funk. On a conference call with my boss to consult on some equipment choices for a new space, I was wearing my work self like a costume, eager to take it off and descend to the bottom again. All day my mind fighting to muster up movement from within. I felt like Uma Thurman in Kill Bill as she tries to will her big toe into movement.

Around dinner time, I shook off the funk while I was making dinner. I realized that action was the cure for what ailed me. This truth is one that I have known all along. I had simply forgotten it and become a lotus eater. (Read the Odyssey if you have no idea what I’m talking about. You have time.)

So, for now, I realize that I can and still have to keep some plates spinning and take a little bit of action each day.

*I inserted the (mild) in this because I am lucky enough to be wired for depression that I can find my way out of. There are many who cannot. Don’t forget to check in on your people who may not have the ability to switch back up from a downgrade in energy. A short zoom, text, or phone call could really help them. One of our friends who lives by herself has dropped by our backyard for what we call a social distancing beer. She sits on one corner of the yard and we sit on another and we yell a conversation for a few minutes over a beer. We’re lucky to have each other in our house. Not everyone had te same fortune.

We Should All Dance

The very first day that I was home after the club shut down, I was devising a plan for home school with my son who is in PreK. I asked him what they normally do in school on Wednesdays, and he gave me the daily run down.

“Well, Mama, first we have some choice time, then we read a story, then we have a snack, then we go to recess, oh, and today! Today, mama, we have a dance party.”

A dance party? A dance party! We never had dance parties when I was a kid. My heart is singing inside my chest. Does this kid have any idea how very much I LOVE DANCING?

He actually doesn’t, I realize. He’s only known me for a little over five years and for those years, there has been very little dancing. There is fun. There are shenanigans with toys and puppets, but there has been little to no dancing in my life AT ALL for several years now.

Honestly, this is a shame. I’ve been dancing around for as long as I can remember. When other kids were learning sports and getting into trouble, I was most frequently found on my front porch or driveway dancing around to whatever cassette was my favorite. In the winter, I had a patch of floor in the basement where I would rock out on for an hour after dinner. First, it was Flashdance. (Yes, my parents never sheltered me from adult topics. I saw Flashdance when I was 8, strippers and all.) Followed by Footloose. I legitimately thought that everyone danced out their feelings alone like Alex Owens and Ren McCormack. I mean, didn’t they? Didn’t you?

When I was young, I loved dancing alone. It felt great. My mother didn’t enroll me in dance classes. She thought the local studio was overpriced. She had signed me up for ice skating when I was five and I loved the hell out of that. I also think the skating moms were more her speed. So, even my childhood sport was really dance-y. On the ice, my favorite event was music interp, where the object was to improvise your skate to a song that you only got to listen to 3 times before you had to perform to it.

When I was in junior high, developing curves threw off my center of gravity. My skating career stalled out, so I set my sights on the pom pom squad. They got to dance at halftime. I never made the squad. By my third failed audition for poms my freshman year, I gave up my dreams of halftime shows and pleated skirts. Years later, someone on the squad would tell me that I was never picked because I never smiled. (I just couldn’t ditch my angry hip hop face.) By this stage of life, dancing had become a regular part of my daily routine. The Fly Girls were all the rage, and I had plans to become one. I also had girlfriends who would indulge me in making up and practicing routines to Rob Base and DZ EZ Rock. I have fond memories of an exquisite piece of art we made up one summer to Prince’s Batdance.

At age 15, my outlet for dance expression would change when my older girlfriend got her driver’s license, and we had the freedom to go to an under 21 night club in Peoria called Stage 2. For the next three years, we would go there religiously on Saturday nights (Sunday nights in the summertime.) We would vie for prime real estate in the front of the stage on the dance floor and dance our asses off until 10:30pm. My curfew was 11, I think. It was way cooler than being on the pom pom squad. There were kids from all walks of life and they played EVERYTHING (I identified with the alternative grunge set, but don’t think my heart didn’t skip a beat for Motown Philly. It was the best time you could have while being an angsty teenager.

In college, I would go to Theatre School and have some of the best times of my life. I never considered studying dance, because I had discovered a talent for acting and was planning on becoming a serious stage actress. Oh, geez, wasn’t college just the place to be ultra pretentious? I would dance at parties. I took a couple of semesters of dance classes, but alongside the dance majors, I again felt like I wasn’t good enough. This time the feedback was this: you’re emotional life is clear, you’ve got great musicality and creativity, but your technique is a mess and there’s no way we have time to get you up to speed. Okay, then.

It still felt great to sneak off into an open studio or apartment basement and privately dance it out. My senior year, I played a ridiculously underaged Anna in a student produced performance of Lanford Wilson’s Burn This and was given the gift of a “dance it out” moment added to the performance. Phil Ruvelas, I will love you forever for that.

During my professional acting career, I would find myself being the mover or the dancer in shows. I even choreographed a couple of numbers in plays because word got around that I was good at putting together dances for non dancers. Years passed and I got practical, became a Pilates teacher, and my movement practice would take place of actually dancing. Evolving into management, my movement practice has diminished every year. The amount of time I spent enjoying movement up until “The Great Pause” was minimal.

One excuse is busyness, and the confrontation I am currently having with that excuse is coming in an entirely different blog.

The other excuse: unworthiness. I’ve been surrounded for over 15 years by professional dancers. Their gamine figures, their innate coordination and ability to create beautiful shapes in space, and their je ne sais quois garners admiration from all who witness them. I have never danced for anything other than pure recreation. As I have been surrounded by these exquisite creatures over the years, I have devolved into a patron of their art, a fan, a mere mortal whose tools of physical expression feel inferior. With this feeling, I dance less and less. Now, I’m rusty and insecure and a monitor my movements from the outside with a critical eye.

But on Wednesday, March 18th, I danced with my 5 year old son. I made a playlist, we turned it up. I danced and he played and danced. In our first dance party, he mostly wiggled and drove a remote control car into my feet, but I danced. At first, it didn’t feel good. I felt awkward, and I couldn’t figure out what to do with any part of my body. With every song, I loosened up more and more. I began to let myself go, and just as I lept up playfully and dramatically on the sofa, my husband came upstairs.

He said, “Really, Lisa?”

I let myself feel shame for a moment and then I said, “Yes, really.”

I thought to myself, this is the woman that I want my son to know: expressive, fearless, free, and fun.

The next day, when my son and I were planning our schedule for the day, he insisted that we include dance party. He loves this time together. He doesn’t really dance. He’ll wiggle around a little and then engage me in a chase around the dining room table, or we will throw foam rockets at each other, but the whole thing has evolved into something that works for both of us, and it has found a place in our daily routine. Most days our evening schedule goes dinner, digestion rest, dance party, shower, a little bit of nintendo (Daddy is responsible for introducing him to that) and books then sleep. Daddy even joins us for dance party now, and we’ve agreed that this will continue to be our nightly ritual when I return to work.

You see, I have no one to blame but myself for dancing less. I also don’t aspire to do it for others’ entertainment. I am giving myself permission to crank it up and unleash the drama on my living room with reckless abandon.

Everyone should give themselves this permission. There’s a kind of therapy that comes with dancing that you can’t get from talking about what ails you or moving in any other way. There is a reason why people have been doing it since time immemorial. You deserve this kind for connection to yourself and freedom to express yourself as much as anyone else.

SURVEY SAYS

When I first posed this question into the social media ether over two weeks ago, I was in a state of shock. For all of us, life as we knew it had changed rapidly in a way we could not process. Among my friends there were three responses:

Panic and anxiety
Hibernation
Determination

I worked through all three of these responses in the first days we were home, but I’m most grounded and centered when I’m getting things done, so my first impulse was to figure this all out. Most of us could see right away that the fitness and wellness industry was about to go fully virtual, and fast. Under normal circumstances, I would do a comparative analysis by looking at what was published on websites and by tapping in with colleagues personally on rates and what people were paying, but there really wasn’t going to be time enough to get the information in order to help anyone. So, I tried the only thing I could think of that would give me quick results, I turned to social media.

I posted the question on my personal and professional Instagram, Facebook, and Linked In. The immediate responses were unanimous: I charge the same thing that I charge for an in person session. After allowing a few days for responses and receiving nothing that contradicted that notion, I was going to post here that everyone that was going virtual was charging the same pricing they do for a regular session. When I drilled deeper for why they were choosing to do so, many said it just simplified things to allow their students to continue to use established packages. They also contended that during these circumstances, their clients understood and were happy to support the studio.

However, with every passing day this extremely liquid situation was constantly changing. Our initial recommendation to stay home as much as possible turned into a statewide shelter in place order. My own staff went from being paid in full by our club during what we hoped would be a two week sacrifice for the greater good of our nation to being completely furloughed for an indefinite amount of time. At this point, this cursory sweep for information was fast becoming obsolete and more and more people were coming into the virtual space with a spectrum of business models.

So before publishing anything, I explored them all the models so that I might be able to provide you some solid insight on what you should consider when it comes down to setting a price for your virtual work. Here are the three primary models people are using:

BUSINESS VIRTUALLY AS USUAL

For the reasons mentioned above, it can work to simply offer these sessions online, but continue to use your billing set up for processing payments and payroll. Many people are still working, albeit from home, and they are grateful to help out someone who plays such a valuable role in their lives.

LOWER PRICING BECAUSE IT’S VIRTUAL/NO EQUIPMENT/PEOPLE ARE OUT OF WORK

Many group studios have pared down their pricing to a gentle $10-15 drop in rate and offer a limited schedule of group classes mat and small prop classes. Some private instructors are also taking less for virtual sessions out of sensitivity for their client’s financial situations or due to lack of available equipment. I personally don’t agree with this assertion that the value is diminished due to the absence of the reformer. Yoga instructors don’t have any magical machines, and they are usually paid $80-$150 for a session. Couple that with the fact that most of the Pilates Instructors I know happen to be extremely inventive and thrive at problem solving. In my mind, you are paying for the expertise. Still, it is the customer that dictates the value so you may have to bend a little or lose the client. If you are charging less than a regular studio fee for a session, I feel it is justifiable to charge a little more than your usual percentage of that fee.

DONATIONS

While this definitely shouldn’t be your expectation, a number of my instructors have fared extremely well offering free classes on Instagram and Facebook and listing their Paypal and Venmo in case anyone would like to donate. Before the pandemic, they made between $50-60 per class and online they are making $100-200 every time they teach. Who knows how long this will go on? The longer we are sheltered in place, this may wane, and people may continue to take the class for free but be less generous with their donations. I also have people reporting that they are definitely doing their free classes for free. So, there is a spectrum, but you may be surprised how generous some people will be. Keep in mind that you most likely are not registered as a charitable organization so that money is not likely to be tax free. You’re in some really grey area there. I never recommend trying to fly under the radar as a professional.

Think it through with your head. What do you need to sustain yourself for an indefinite amount of time? What can you realistically accomplish during your day?

Then, think it through with your heart. What feels right to charge your clients? Will it serve your emotional well being to offer something charitable for the public at large?

With some careful thought, you will find a solution that suits you.

Need to bounce your ideas off someone? Consider me a resource. Give send me a PM or an email and we can Zoom it out.

Stay safe. Stay sane.

With love,

Lisa

Work Out That Workshop

This is a confusing time. In generations past, efforts for the greater good of humanity were synonymous with hard work, sacrifice, and struggle. In these early days of our Corona crisis, we are being told to stay in our homes, Netflix and chill. This is hardly struggle, work, or sacrifice. It’s confusingly comfortable. I would feel better about all of this if I were pushing up my sleeves and wearing my bandanna on my head to go work in the factory with Rosie the Riveter. Instead, I’m pulling it over my face as I strangely enjoy the solo visits to the grocery store without my 5 year old.

Our industry is fraught with uncertainty. Many within our field have pioneered solutions before others of us could work through the emotional onslaught of what is happening. Big praise to them. I was inline with the former, quickly checking out online apps to make sure that I knew the technology. I’m fully situated to offer online sessions. However, I have also found myself completely on board with the latter, feeling like some days I would just like to sleep for the entire day.

This will end.

Who do you want to be when it does? This pause in the daily grind could be a blessing for you. Especially if you, like me, have great big picture ideas that never leave your brain because you’re also inundated with the responsibilities that come with running the studio or having a large book of clients. It’s the curse of being good at the work. Now is a great time to step back, get your ducks in a row, and take the time to do the big picture thinking that is necessary to bring your big ideas into the open air. I believe that there are thousands of instructors out there who have a wealth of insight to offer who just can’t get it out there because they are actually so busy doing the damn thing that they don’t have time to explain it to anyone else.

So, now is your time, Pilates bosses, to create the workshop that will add value to our industry. You can help others that haven’t the good fortune to have your learning experiences. To save some time, let me give you my process as a framework to write your own workshop.

RECIPE FOR A SOLID WORKSHOP

Brain Dump: Before I set forth writing an outline, I do a good brain dump. On a single piece of paper or voice to texting into your notes app on your cell phone unleash all of your ideas, judgement free, onto the paper. None of it has to make sense. There are two kinds of dumps you can do to get started.
- General: Don’t know what you even want to present? Write down all the things that you wish instructors knew. Write down all the things that you think you know a lot about. Are there common mythologies that you hear your clients, staff or coworkers saying that you just wish you could educate out of them? What business mistakes do your colleagues make over and over? What major mistakes have you made and learned from?
- Specific: Make a document with every good, bad, or useless thought you have on the topic you would like to present. Go down every rabbit hole. Explore every possibility. Why is this idea unique or different? Or why does this idea strongly reinforce common knowledge?
Organize Into an Outline
- Structure-There are a lot of structures in which you can organize your information. The most popular format in the Pilates Industry seems to be 1/3 of your time educate about the area in question usually largely anatomy and 2/3 of your time working through exercises that attend to that area. Karen Clippinger and Elizabeth Larkham usually teach this way. I’ve also been to a great workshops that lead with learning the exercise or activity from the first moment and pepper in the information when it is necessary to reinforce the why of choosing the exercise. Trent McEntire is very good at this. What kind of teacher are you? You don’t need to reinvent yourself to be a presenter. You will do your best if you put forth the most authentic version of yourself. Your teaching style will help you design the structure of your outline. Inform clearly and illuminate actively or move first, then explain. Your choice.
- Hierarchy of Learning- My sophomore year of high school I took Public Speaking with Douglas Springer, a legend in Speech and Debate circuit in Central Illinois. We thought he knew everything. I still to this day have the page where I wrote “Hierarchy of Learning” and the note “people only remember 2-3 things at a time.” In that class, we learned to write speeches from an outline and to pack no more than three major points into a speech. To this day, I can’t bring myself to break those rules. When writing an outline, I always try to stick to 2-3 major points, and to only subdivide these points into three or fewer categories. If I wind up with more than three subcategories, I question each one for it’s relevance or consider that maybe the tier above is too general and could be broken down into more specific points. This exercise helps me trim the fat from a presentation so that I don’t overwhelm. You don’t have to put everything you know into one workshop.
Back Yourself Up-If you plan to apply to provide CEC’s, you are going to need sources for a bibliography. I know that you might think that you, like Joe, created your genius work out of thin air *, but most likely, you were influenced by something that you learned from somewhere. Don’t be worried that you will look like you are stealing from these sources. Almost every intellectual invention was built on the back of another. Unless, of course, you ARE just copying information and exercises straight out of other people’s materials, anything that backs up what you have to say will make you look better. I also look at my bibliography items as a recommended reading list. I can only say so much in the time frame I am with these people. I look for source material that will further support my message so that people who are excited about what I have to say will have somewhere else to go to geek out on the information.

In most cases, this is all you need to submit your idea to for approval for CEC’s. You will need to be able to nutshell some objectives and provide a brief description. You will also most likely need to upload a current resume or CV. One final step in the process remains and I recommend you complete this before you publish presentation dates. The temptation to give yourself time to develop your materials is too great. Complete your handout early, but give yourself permission to revise it.

FINAL STEP: Make Your Materials-I start with a written list of what I want my participants to walk away with and give them the printed tools to reinforce that. Visuals of exercises with clear descriptions and space to take notes always go over well. In my business workshops, if I want them to think about their own situations, I often add in questionnaires or worksheets to work through their own business with their own vision.

And voila! It’s not easy, but dive in and give it a try. I find writing a workshop to be exhilarating and exciting. It also really reinforces my knowledge to try and work through the information I’ve collected and turn it into something clear and digestible.

Need a sounding board for your ideas, let me know. Comment or shoot me an email.

She’s Ba-ack

(Thanks, Corona Virus)

Hi! I’ll bet you thought I burnt out on this already. I haven’t. I’ve got at least three blogs that I voiced into my phone notes during rush hour traffic stored in my iPhone waiting to be edited and posted. It was truly something that I planned to get back to this week because a break in my work/play/life schedule was just coming up over the horizon.

BUT THIS IS NOT A STORY ABOUT TIME MANAGEMENT OR PROCRASTINATION.

THIS IS THE STORY OF WHAT IT’S LIKE TO CLOSE YOUR BUSINESS TO FLATTEN THE CURVE.

Last weekend, I taught an Anatomy Course to the students in the Yoga Instructor Training at our club. The week before, I had a quarterly staff meeting for my program and my son came down with a fever, just as we are all started to be really worried about COVID-19. The weekend before that, I had the graduation for my own instructor training program. Work, in general, since the beginning of the year has been…full.

All last weekend, I was thinking, I can’t wait to get back to my blog and get some of these thoughts out there. This week was supposed to be the time for me to coast a little during my work day so that I can invest some of my time after the kid goes to bed in this endeavor, which is purely a labor of love and a hobby.

However, last week, people started to cancel from their spots in our group classes. Then, all the schools closed. On Friday afternoon, the club hosted an emergency meeting expressing that we intended to stay open. People needed us at this time for their sanity and their immunity. While I was leading my workshop on Sunday, our Governor shut down the restaurants. I battened the hatches in my soul, knowing that I may soon be caught between what I thought was right and doing my best to serve in a situation that I didn’t wholeheartedly believe in.

From Sunday into Monday, I received many pleas from members and staff to cancel classes and close up shop. I assured them that I stood alongside them in my beliefs and sent their pleas along to those in the club who do decide those things. I waited. I managed every aspect of keeping people safe, distanced, and clean in my studio. I made social distancing sticks. I organized a better plan for constantly washing our handles. I designed a new layout in the group studio to keep everyone 6 feet apart at all times even with a full class. Thank god I couldn’t find anyone to help me move everything. I bought a REALLY cheap plane ticket to Seattle for the PMA, which means all of my arrangements are made for that well in advance. It feels a little weird. On Monday afternoon, we were called into a second emergency management meeting. I was nervous all afternoon because I really had no idea if the club would shut down.

Our executive director began the meeting with the big announcement at 2pm. We are going to close at 8pm on March 17th and reopen on April 1st.

In truth, I was relieved. Staying in our homes and trying to flatten the curve is the right thing to do. Even better, the club has devised a way to pay our employees very close to what they would make if they were working for the next two weeks.

I don’t know what we will be able to support after two weeks so for the LOVE OF MY STAFF STAY IN YOUR HOUSE PEOPLE!!!

With my mind spinning, I headed back to my office to devise a plan for closing down, with the best service we can give to our members. It’s just our way. In these circumstances, it means clear communication and issuing lots and lots of credits. As I tried to sort it all out at my desk, I watched all of Tuesday fall apart. I spent the rest of the afternoon making sure that everyone in the Tuesday classes knew exactly what to expect and that all of my instructors understood how we plan to move forward. I left an hour later than I had promised my husband and son….I do that way more than I would like.

Today, the club was already a ghost town in the studio. Much of the day was surreal. I was alone, in my office, overlooking a veritable ghost town. It’s usually so chatty that I have to shut my door to get anything done. I spent 8 hours entering credits for our 200+ group students individually because there was no way to batch everyone at once. We allow students to move around the schedule once they sign up for an 8 week session, so some had two classes and some had three that they needed to be refunded. Some people had already dropped so I had to research everyone to get their credits right.

My emotions faded from excitement, to worry, to fatigue, to sadness. As I typed each name, I took a moment inside to honor each of our students. Each of their unique personalities entertained my imagination. I have at least 8 years of history with most of them. Thank God for that because all of that data entry was tedious and effing boring.

I managed to get out by five. I still have a few more things to clean up in the system, but I was toast, and I can do those things from home.

I don’t know what the future will be like. I’m actually looking a little forward to the freedom from the grind. I still have some things to figure out. For instance, if those goes on past March 31st, can I find a way to have my instructors work from a digital platform? Can I motivate my instructors to make use of their time off by collaborating on some programming development and getting them to update their client notes? Will I be able to get anything done with a bored 5 year old on hand?

I’ll keep you posted. Stay safe and stay sane, friends. Thanks for giving me a read.

Please feel free to tell me all about your day. Don’t be lonely. I’m here for you.

Reason enough to attend the PMA.

I had intended to go the the Annual Meeting of the the Pilates Method Alliance for several years. In the beginning of my career, it was completely out of reach for me because, financially, I was working to keep a roof over my head and nothing more. I had to spend the rest of my time “actressing” as my husband calls it. When I began running a studio, I could have afforded it, but I was so intent on growing the business I refused to take a vacation. In fact, my first vacation was when I realized that I was not in love with that particular situation as a studio director and decided to move on. Once I got into my current role, it took me 6 years to get my ducks in a row and attend.

I truly wish I had gotten it together sooner.

I’m a people collector, and I found the BEST people at the PMA, people from all over the world. It’s thrilling. I also get to play with lots of toys. I really like to connect with the different equipment manufacturers and ask them face to face for solutions to problems in my studio. I’m lucky, I have a lot of spending power so I am also treated very kindly once vendors know me. I have people I consider close friends in the industry that I rarely get to see. I love that we are captive for one weekend in one location. Pilates Anytime always puts together great parties. These are all of my reasons.

Last year, I was presenting, and I was lucky enough to have 3 of my staff members also at the conference. I was so proud that these women were participating in the PMA community and representing the club. One of them, Eileen Harris, was recently featured in Pilates Style Magazine, speaking about her experience as a first timer at the conference. Her words put it better than I ever could. She said, “It’s not just another conference. It’s someone’s best work, presented in it’s most authentic way.”

She is 100% on the mark. Think about it. Where else are people presenting workshops under such high stakes? You have to apply a year in advance with a thoughtful, well researched, and necessary topic. You are going in front of some of the most educated and opinionated and confident people in the realm of fitness who traveled from all over the world to listen to you. Your material has to literally be for the participants and is not allowed to promote a specific training program or equipment manufacturer. It literally is 2 hours to share what you know. Personally, I obsessed about my presentation the entire year and rehearsed and edited and rehearsed some more. I even spent the “self care” day I talked about in my last blog, running through my presentation multiple times because for me at the stage in my game as a presenter, being uber prepared was self care….in between shopping the farmer’s market, walking by the ocean, and having some delicious meals.

Registration for the conference opens this weekend. Some of the great things fill up pretty fast. Of course, I would LOVE to see you in my presentation, but more importantly, I would love for more people to learn more, and most importantly, I would love to see more people CONNECT.

Okay, this one’s really personal.

I write this from my iPhone whilst in the bath tub. I’m researching Tacoma, Washington because I’m slated to present a workshop at the annual conference for the Pilates Method Alliance. This is my third year attending, second presenting, and I plan to do what I have done in past years: go at least a day early in order to have a room entirely to myself. No instructors. No husband. No kid. Just me, alone to do whatever I feel like at my whim and fancy. In previous years it has not been ANYTHING exciting. I usually watch bad tv, eat a meal, sleep, and enter the conference with a clean slate.

I’m embarrassed to say that I’m researching hotels and Tacoma culture because I need an escape at this very minute. Sometimes, I get overwhelmed by all of my obligations. Being the captain of a giant Mind Body ship is enough to make anyone crazy, but I’m also the main source of income for my family and constantly sensitive to the fact that I need to make up for all of the missed dinners and time that I am distracted by work. My desire to be an amazing wife and mother means that I do my damnedest to give every minute and ounce of extra energy to my son and husband. Today, my husband thought I wanted to spend time with him when our son napped. I didn’t. I wanted to meal prep for the week. I was in guilt city all afternoon. As a result of said nap, my son would not go to sleep. As is frequently the case with a woman in my situation, I rarely make time for myself. I guilt myself into thinking I can do without.

So I spend the time that I should be sitting in silence with a wash cloth over my face fantasizing about that one single day I give myself, once a year….and writing a blog about it….because the fantasy brings me peace.

The thing is, I am terrible at establishing space for myself. Whenever given the chance to look out for myself or be the hero for someone else, I almost always choose to help someone else. I have enough self awareness to know this is not a good thing. Self care is a very popular in America 2020. I haven’t quite mastered my self care process. I can be good at it… sometimes. My timing is all off. I run myself ragged until almost the point of no return, but when I try to stake a claim on some “me time”, I 100% sound like the not nice word that rhymes with witch. I am also terribly inconsistent.

Is this too personal?

I’m going to go out on a limb here and say no. I’m sharing this with all of you to set the tone for how I am going to be here on the blog. Authenticity is also a really “popular” notion these days. I don’t think I can really function being anything but authentic. I’ve learned that trying to be impressive, slick, or professional to make others comfortable is just garbage behavior.

Truth, I need to stop speculating about having time for myself. Which means like anything else, I have to put it in my outlook calendar. Like a boss. Stay tuned to see if I follow through.

In the meantime, what’s fun to do in Tacoma in November?

Is clutter boxing you in?

Anyone who has known me personally knows that in my home life I’m not good at putting things away. I’m also a hoarder. I get it from my parents. I don’t know where they got it from because my grandparents always had very tidy homes.

Let me introduce you to when I think I justified this behavior. For most of my 20s, I lived by myself. I was also focusing all of my energy on working in theater. Having a gift for crafting and sewing and a willful need to be poor, I often took on costume design gigs for storefront theaters in Chicago. At the time $200 was that going for you to design and build a show. I hear that nowadays it’s only about $300 which is a GD travesty and something maybe I’ll talk about more in another blog. When I was designing a show, my studio apartment was often my workshop, and since I was only making $200 and usually rehearsing and performing in another show and working some sort of waitressing or office job to pay the rent, I would forgo picking up after myself and my apartment would often look like a tornado passed over it. My floor was covered in piles of clothes and sewing projects with hardly anywhere to walk.

This came to be what I thought to be a trademark for my creativity. I had this notion that if I were tidy and organized I would also suddenly somehow become a linear, rule following thinker. This frame of mind was also challenging to my roommate when I had one. I tried to contain my mess, but her biggest pet peeve is that my shoes would be wherever I felt like taking them off. I would come home from work and find piles of my shoes on my bed about once a week when she got fed up. I was the bad roommate. Thankfully, it didn’t destroy our friendship, but as an adult I look back and see that I was trying her patience. In that way, I was a total jerk.

I did something recently that challenged my perception that I had to be messy to be creative. Yesterday, fed up with how much time I waste trying to find documents and facing an entire workday with only one meeting on my schedule, I set forth to organize my desktop. I have always relied on the search feature to find anything I need. I try to label things with names that are easily searchable. For example, I have a list of questions that I ask almost every potential instructor in a phone interview. I practically have the list memorized, but I still like to print a copy of the question so I can make notes during the call. I have no idea where this document lives on my hard drive. I simply go to the search bar, type the word “phone,” hit enter and it’s usually in the list that comes up. The system is served me pretty well.

But after eight years of working in the same place, it’s overwhelming to look through my files. I have 16 files labeled resume on my Desktop, only six of them are mine. Every workshop I’ve ever presented has multiple copies of the outline, the bibliography, and the PowerPoint. I have a doc that I used as a brain dump and several docs journaling to sort through issues. There are files on people who haven’t worked for me for years. The list goes on.

But yesterday, when I took the time to begin organizing, I became a little addicted. Two things happened. One, I gave gentle contemplation to a lot of my practices as I opened files, decided if I still needed them, and decided what folder they should fall into. Two, I discovered that there is a low grade stress constantly in my work life (and probably in my personal life) that originates from the din of the mess around me. It was almost like there was a constant buzzing from a fluorescent light that suddenly went away, and I didn’t realize that the buzzing bothered me until I felt the peace of silence.

When I think of how much time and energy I’m going to save by being able to go straight to a document or a file to work on it, I realize this newfound efficiency frees up time to express some creativity. Last night, I started my blog instead of catching up on work from the day. Today, I did a GYROTONIC workout. A studious one where I took time with my foundations manual to see if I were missing any details.

Ah, creativity. The precious commodity that I thought could only come out of mild chaos. Clearing out some clutter gave me the space in my schedule to do all the things that I’m always saying that I will do you as soon as I have some time.

So I guess in this case, the messy artist just grew up a little. I’ve become the mature creative, and found a way to carve out space for the real meat of my work.

If you’re one of these people who has brilliant ideas, but never seems to have the time, maybe you should try to cut some of the clutter. Here’s what I plan to do: I’m going to commit one hour each week to organizing my work. I’m gonna put it on my work calendar as a meeting with myself where the agenda is to hunt out clutter in my office, in my hard drive, and my inbox. Feel free to hop on this journey with me. Let’s see where this goes.

Have any thoughts about this blog? Any tips you’d like to share from your own life?

I would love to hear them. Feel free to comment below.