This is my 600th post. Which seems auspicious seeing how much I have to say. Yes, readers this will be a long one. Make yourselves a cup of tea or a gin + tonic, pull up a pew and join me!
September – I have written before about how September feels like both an ending and a beginning. The beginning of the end of the year. Full of promise. Of letting go. Of new things. The British academic system is so ingrained in me that September feels more like new year than January.
And yet, as I write this, the sun is shining, the sky is the clearest blue and the temperature is warmer than it’s been all summer. The sunflowers that I was so sure were never going to be anything but green stalks have suddenly come into bloom and the garden is full of butterflies and bees and cats lying in sunpuddles.
Indian summers feel strange to me. Like a twilight zone. The leaves are falling from the trees, it’s dark by 6.45pm but at midday it feels like July. We wait in limbo for those changes.
A good time for me to reflect on what a truly monumental year it has been. Monumental seems the right word as it has been as full of challenges and things that make me cry, as it has been with joys and successes.
Full Disclosure: I want to tell you some of the not so brilliant things that have happened. I have started to develop quite strong feelings against the whole “only blog the positive things” movement. I feel we all need to either be a bit more honest, or not blog really. There is this huge pressure to be happy and positive and joyful all the time. And the truth is nobody is. Nor should anybody feel they need to be. Sadness, negativity, unhappiness are all important and inevitable parts of life. Without darkness there can never be light. Our aim, if there is one at all, is merely to find balance in all things.
So amongst the greatness of opening my clinic, of going to Australia, of announcing our first yoga holiday (are you coming?)*, of starting Pilates Teacher Training, of getting a new car (isn’t she dinky and pretty?) and (and this is the big one) finding out I have been accepted on the first part of the training to teach yoga teachers (yes readers, all being well, this time next year will see the start of the first Suburban Yogini Foundation Training), comes a plethora of ungreatness.
I have suffered most of my life with anxiety (GAD), something I thought I’d knocked on the head during some long sessions of counselling and hypnotherapy in 2008. Well this year it came back. I came clean about that last week in this post along with some ways of dealing with it, but I have had to seek more counselling and accept that I am and always will be a work in progress.
My health has been pretty terrible. My ME has been playing up and I have had tonsillitis 3 times and a pretty much constant sore throat since March – oh and mammoth headaches. I mean mammoth. The last one was 10 days. I am seeking all the appropriate help for all of these things but evenstill, bad health means days off. When you’re self-employed there is no sick pay. Couple that with there being no holiday pay through April when I was in Australia and BOOM there’s another reason for anxiety. And so it goes….
I wouldn’t change my life now for the world (although there are days every now and then when I do daydream about that monthly paycheque). I just want you to know that it’s not all roses. And it never will be. Even in a best case scenario there will always be dinner to cook and toilets to clean and difficult conversations to be had and days when you just don’t want to go to work, no matter how much you love it!
But let’s finish on a high: OMG!!!! Pilates training!! My own business!!! Tutor training!!!! New car means no more cycling with towels strapped to my bike (thanks to Himself, the regular paycheque guy of the house for this)!!!! Yoga Holiday!!!!! *collapses in overwhelm*
Thank you universe for the good the bad and the ugly 
**
October Intentions
1. Trip to the seaside in the new car.
2. As I’m on a roll, another two novels.
3. Pilates homework done in plenty of time for the next module in two weeks (ie, not leaving it until the night before as usual).
4. Plant bulbs.
5. Clean out the pantry.
6. Write the second half term’s worth of class plans for Autumn Yoga Course.
7. Keep breathing through all the upheaval of the next month.
September in Review
1. Book a gardener to do all the hard work (digging etc) to get the garden ready for winter. DONE although considering this Indian summer it may have been a tad early.
2. Keep credit card clear. DONE although I am about to pay for the next part of Pilates Training and the Yoga Tutor Training so not holding out much hope as to whether it will stay clear!
3. Read two more novels (this is more of a challenge than you’d think seeing as Pilates teacher training starts this month!) DONE Winter Ghosts – Kate Mosse and Tales of the City – Armistead Maupin (seriously one of the most overrated books ever, full of unlikeable characters) and I also read Sophie Nicholl’s novella The Ruby Slippers (my first Kindle purchase – no I have no Kindle yet – I downloaded it onto the PC)
4. Try to find a venue for a yoga/pilates retreat in May 2012 (would you or anyone you know be interested in going on the mailing list for a 3-day retreat? It will be in the UK. If you would, let me know. Also if you have any ideas for venues let me know.) DONE DONE come on the holiday! Only 9 places left!!!
5. Write the lesson plan outlines for my Sunday Autumn yoga course. DONE up to half term
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* I have had a few queries about payment by installment for the holiday. I’m pleased to announce that I have set up an easy system and if you sign up in November you will get the early bird booking price too! Email me (rachel (at) massage-movement (dot) co (dot) uk for more!)
** Due to the overwhelm and the verbosity of this post, there is no friday five this week. Normal service will resume next week!
Keepin’ it real. I like it!
Congratulations on all of the wonderful things that are coming to fruition in your life!
fabulous post! thanks for keeping it real letting us know about the good and the challenges. congrats on all your accomplishments and i wish all the best for you.
Great post, and congratulations on everything you made happen this year, despite all obstacles.
I try to focus mainly on the good things on my blog, but that doesn’t mean denying the bad. I also suffer from GAD, low energy and bouts of depression and have found that maintaining a blog and documenting what I do and love, as well as writing about the difficult stuff, helps.
Here’s a quote by Hugh Mackay on the modern pursuit of happiness, which he thinks has led to a “fear of sadness”:
http://flowerfield.tumblr.com/post/10420377872/i-actually-attack-the-concept-of-happiness-the
P.S.: Love the car!
Ha! In case you haven’t noticed, my blog is full of posts that aren’t all happy-shiny in content
Oooh, if I was in the UK, I’d love to come on your yoga holiday. I’m loving the car and also all of the plans you’re making.
Overwhelm and anxiety are only to be expected when so much is going on. But you’re doing just amazing things, remember that!
yay new smart car!! LOVE!
also- blogging “real” things is so great! I am sharing some of my “making it through october” energy across the pond to you!
[...] the mistaken belief that everyone else is doing better than you, and, in the same week, I read this post from Rachel Hawes, in which she confides that she’s about to share some not-so-brilliant things with [...]
Rachel – plenty of people blog about bad things, and it is your blog so it is entirely up to you what you write about. My blog is dormant at present but I originally started it a year after I was widowed to write about how miserable I still felt. You seem to be a pretty positive person, keep it all up!!
It’s wonderful to read about the good things, and I’m so happy to you on every count (teaching teachers?! Surely that means you must be a super-teacher?!),but the bad things are ok too. We all have bad things, and we all have really really bad things, and I think there is some real solidarity in this blogging circle – sharing both is fine, we’ll ‘listen’ either way