Graham Stewart

Writing to discover what I think and believe in increasingly fractured times

yoga with adriene

I stuck to my resolutions – that’s a first

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My photo — Corfu 2016

Here’s a brief report for January:
17600 words of the novel written (at a minimum of 500 words every day)
30 days of yoga
30 days of posts to this site
Books finished (from the list of 10):
• The Case for a Job Guarantee — Tcherneva
• Knife of Dreams — Jordan

That’s an unusually fallow month of reading for me but, because it’s a result of more writing and setting time aside for yoga, I’m prepared to accept it. It’s not the only reading I have been doing but it feels slightly disappointing nevertheless.

And here’s the plan for February:
Inspired by Anne Lamott’s story about the writing of her second novel (Rosie) which she retells in Bird by Bird, I’m using the next month to write a full treatment of the book I’m working on. Part of the problem is that I have been working on it a long time and I have taken breaks and attacked it at different places at different times. It is a bit of a mess and is getting harder and harder to hold complete in my head. Time, therefore, to get the story down and the way the characters change, who they are, why they act like they do, and what happens to them. More or less. I’m aiming for a full forty or fifty pages of treatment in the next 28 days.

I’ve joined the Seth Godin Akimbo Podcast Workshop, which starts tomorrow. I’m looking forward to learning some useful stuff from people also keen to ship a podcast. I joined the workshop rather than some normal hands-off course because a hands-off course would be my first choice. The Akimbo workshop stresses the necessity of joining in, of sharing knowledge, of engaging. I’m not someone who naturally plays well with others. So already I have the chance to learn something over and above whatever technical details I may glean about podcasting.

I want to complete more books from the list of ten. (I had thought I was going to add Olivia Manning’s The Great Fortune as a replacement for the Tcherneva but my wife has convinced me to start Elena Ferrante’s My Brilliant Friend and, after 90 pages, I’m hooked. Sorry, Olivia.)

I’m going to continue with yoga. This month, though, I’m going to watch and follow a session for complete beginners every day until the moves and poses and flows become second nature — and I can feel myself improving. Still with Adriene, though. Given that the month of ‘lessons’ I just did with her is free, I thought it was only fair to download her FWFG app and subscribe to her channel. It still comes in at a ridiculously reasonable price — far cheaper than a class a week at a local yoga studio, were such things still open.

I’m also going to add some weight training this month. The combination of yoga and refraining from sugar in all the most obvious forms has had some impact on my weight and my BMI but I want to add a bit of additional strength and tone where yoga may take a bit of time getting there.

So, that’s the month ahead. I’m looking forward to it.

Just show up

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Time does the rest, if you let it

This is purely aspirational, you understand — Photo by Benn McGuinness on Unsplash

I’ve carried the thought that I would like to try yoga for at least twenty years. And, like many of the things I know that I think would be good for me, I have never carried the thought forward into action.

I’m not really one for resolutions — experience has taught me that they are both a waste of time and serve only to make me feel disappointed in myself — but this year I am finally determined to make some changes. One of those changes is to recapture some flexibility, balance, tone, and self-respect. Yoga may or may not offer all that but I suspect it does, so I decided that I would start on January 1st using one of Yoga with Adriene’s monthly journeys.

I signed up at the end of December and on January 1st I showed up. And continued to show up.

It is now the 16th and I’m mightily pleased with myself that I have showed up every day and done the ‘class’ to the best of my ability. And I don’t mean I’ve sat and watched the video and wiggled my toes from time to time. I have given what I could. And I am rewarded.

Showing up is more than simply being there. It has to include a certain commitment to take part. Don’t be the churlish date that tags along to a party and grunts and moans and lets everyone know you’re counting the time until you can head home. The same goes for writing and the same goes for yoga. Be there in heart, mind, and spirit, or don’t bother at all.

This has coincided with me picking up and starting Bird by Bird by Anne Lamott again. She understands showing up.

“All I know is that the process is pretty much the same for almost everyone I know. The good news is that some days it feels like you just have to keep getting out of your own way….” p8

And that’s how it works. Trick resistance into taking your weaker self out for a coffee and sneak to the desk — or the mat — and just start.

And I have become superstitious about it, too. I know that habits are usually supposed to take about thirty days to get baked in but I think if you combine new habits there is a reinforcing element at play. So I’ve done sixteen days in a row on a book. I’ve done sixteen days in row writing posts on Medium. And I’ve done sixteen days of yoga practice. If I miss one now I’m scared I’ll miss the other parts of the triumvirate that is championing my self-esteem at the moment.

There’s a theory that by talking about this I will jinx it and tomorrow all my resolution — and resolutions — will crumble and I’ll be sitting watching TV instead of showing up. There’s another theory that by making yourself accountable any lapse in the process brings shame — or at least embarrassment. I’m going with the second option.

Come the end of January, I’ll commit to an honest appraisal of how I got on for the second half of the month. I’ll even talk word count on the book.