On being a dumper, yoga, and muffin-mobiles

So, I left Ted. We spent 36 hours wasted, shit went down, I called him abusive, called my friends and told them not to let me stay even though I would want to the next day. The next day, I bought a plane ticket to Texas and now here I am. “Abusive” seemed like a pretty fucking big pink elephant to have just hanging around the room for awhile just so I could stay and enjoy all of the grand activities we had planned.

Anyways, I am doing pretty well at the moment. I am staying with my sister at her house in Texas and it is a wonderfully healing place to be spending time in. Her house is painted all kinds of beautiful colors on the inside, like purple wooden floors with avocado and melon walls, and there is all kinds of sunshine streaming in the windows everywhere and it’s an old, beautiful house with a grand yard full of trees and there are three dogs here that I love a lot more than the ones at home. 🙂 She just started school today – well, that is, she just started teaching students, she has been working her ass off all week getting everything ready and I’ve been staying up late and getting up early acting as her secretary so we’ve stayed really busy. It feels wonderful to be helping my big sister out, what a good feeling it is to be helpful.

I have sort of pinpointed some sort of long-term plans (and by long-term I mean January – April… and maybe a ways after that, hopefully). I am applying to do a work-study at a yoga community in California, actually pretty close to where I was living before. Thank God! This place feels like such a blessing… it’s exactly where I want to be, what I want to be doing, and when I want to be doing it. So I am filling out the application and praying the interview will go well and that’s where I’ll be headed for the winter. The place is called Mount Madonna Center and if you do this program you get free yoga classes, free meditation/philosophy/
spiritual teachings, and just all around an awesome community/environment. It’s located in like 300 acres of redwood forest (!!) overlooking Monterey Bay (!!) with hiking trails throughout it. You work like 27 hours a week doing simple stuff, kitchen chores, setting up for events, maybe some gardening and housekeeping, and the rest of the time is yours to spend basically how you want, well, that is, if what you want is to do yoga, meditate, study, practice, etc. It costs $975 for three months – pretty OK I think seeing as once you’re there you basically don’t have to pay for anything… I guess I’m just going to consider that rent.

I’m feeling really excited that this opportunity has sort of manifested itself out of my break-up with Ted (who I am still missing a ton and there’s a lot about him that I do love… things just were not going very well…) and I am hopeful that it will work out and that I’ll learn a ton and that it will give me some more focus and direction in my life. Maybe not, but at least I will have learned a lot and explored this spirituality business that has been tugging at me for awhile now.

Plan number two is a little scarier/more exhilarating/less responsible. My best friend’s boyfriend Alex has offered me his motor home for free. However it doesn’t exactly work… apparently needs about $500 worth of work but I don’t know how accurate that is. I would love, love, love to somehow get it working, paint it all kinds of pretty colors, get whatever kinds of business license/permits I would need, and then drive around to all the music/other festivals that happen in America in the Spring/Summer and sell CUPCAKES and MUFFINS and CHAI TEA! I would love to sell espresso but not feeling up to investing in an espresso machine right now, but I could make really, really delicious chai and other things and set up in the campgrounds of festivals, there were some people doing this in NZ and I’m sure I wouldn’t make bank but I would make enough to live/go to shit tons of festivals/travel this great nation in a motor home.

So, I guess I’m back to square one as far as figuring out how to live my life goes but it feels good, hopeful, uplifting, empowering, FREE! My parents are not happy about the yoga thing and will flip if the motor home thing goes through but you know what? I’m finally realizing that it does not matter if they approve. They aren’t going to approve of a lot of the things I do in life but they’re still going to love me and if I did what they wanted me to do I’d be married to Jorge, living in Pittsburgh being a housewife and counting all our gold coins and cackling about how rich we are. Disgusting.

Anyways. Just a brief catch-up. If you want to note me some of your favorite festivals, maybe I’ll see you next year in the muffin-mobile! 🙂

<3clea