Overcoming inertia

I've been trying to be more active lately. I've accepted the fact that I'm not going to go to the "gym" at my condo complex. There's nothing wrong with it, in fact, it's small but nice, there's two treadmills, a bike, an ellipitical machine, and a weightlifting all-in-one kind of machine. But it's small and if there's anyone else in there, I feel like they're all up in my stuff. I'm not a small woman and getting all that me moving takes some work and I don't need to add to my self-consciousness by having some well-muscled neighbor effortlessly loping along on the ellipitical machine while I huff and puff on the treadmill. You know?

Clearly, I have issues, but hell, who doesn't?

Anyway, my point here is that I joined a gym. The community center here was having a special $90 for a 90 day membership. This place is neat. It has a lap pool, a "recreation" pool, a hydrotherapy pool, a giant ice rink, a gymnasium with a suspended track over it. Lots of cardio equipment, spaced out so you can work out without someone else in your aura, tons of weightlifting machines, and big bright windows with lovely views of the mountains. So, it's ideal, really.

I plunked down my $90 and committed for 90 days. Nice.

I realize that simply joining the gym isn't the same as actually going, though. So, I came up with the idea to bribe myself. So I started my 90 Day iPod Fitness Challenge! I'm paying myself $5 per visit to go to the gym and I have 90 days to accummulate enough money to buy an iPod. The iPod Nano is $149 which equals 30 gym visits or an average of 2.5 times per week. The iPod Touch is $229 which equals 46 gym visits or an average of 3.8 times per week. If I don't have enough money in the account for the Nano by December 18 then all the money gets donated to the Food Depot in addition to my usual holiday-time donation. I am one week in to the challenge and I have $20 in my account. So far so good!

I figure its win-win-win all the way around and maybe, just maybe, I can change my entire life in 90 days! I am optimistic!

On the Path

I love living in Santa Fe.

The city is beautiful. Surrounded by mountains, drenched in sun and wildflowers; you can't imagine a more idyllic place to live. I feel blessed and lucky every day that I walk out of the front door of my condo.

I've met some fabulous people here too. Deeply spiritual people, who love nature and all sentient beings. BUT. heh. But, sometimes it's a little much for a Jersey girl to swallow. Now, don't get me wrong, I'm as woo-woo as they come. I count my guides and angels among my closest friends, I meditate every day, and the sign on my office door says "Vibrational Healing."

A little while ago, a friend mentioned something in passing as being relevant for those of us "On the Path" and yes, the word Path was capitalized. I didn't think much of it at the time, just kind of shrugged it off as a weird linguistic tic. But then I heard it again. And again. From different people.

The Path? Like the Ninefold path? Is this some Buddhist thing? The primrose path? Just a generalized way of referring to a spiritual path? Hmmmm.

I asked my partner, the lovely and incomparable B, if she had heard of such a thing as "The Path." She had heard similar mentions from people around town but was as much in the dark as me. She says, "I just figured that they were talking about the bike path, because no one who has said it owns a car..."

We started to make a list of things that were "On the Path"
1. Brown rice
2. Vegetarianism
3. Organic/Local foods/the farmer's market
4. Riding your bike/not having a car/telling everyone about this constantly
5. Shopping/flirting over the samples at Whole Foods
6. Disdaining Wal-Mart
7. Not having a visible means of support
8. Yoga
9. Opposing local development
10. Complaining about how commercial things have gotten

I could go on, and I probably will at some later date, but you get the point.

Now, these things are all good things, I guess. I'll save my stump speech about "green consumerism" for another time, but what B and I decided was the unifying factor was a humorlessness and absolute conviction that "the path" way was the right way and that everyone else was doing it wrong. This attitude will never sit right with me. I am a mouth-frothing believer in the individual's right to choose. I don't care if you ride your bike everywhere, but don't expect me to applaud you because of it or get self-righteous with me because I choose to drive a car.

That said, now, whenever I walk somewhere instead of driving, I'm On the Path. If I go to the local ayurvedic restaurant, I'm Eating On the Path. It's wonderful fun!

Tap Tap... Is this thing on?

Hi Internets!

Welcome to my little corner of the universe.

A little about me just to start us off.

I'm a 34-year-old woman living in Santa Fe, NM. I have a day job, that I'm not going to talk about much here except to say that the work is boring but the people are cool. With the rest of my time, I'm a healer, a psychic, and a bleeding-heart liberal.

I think too much, I talk to myself and my invisible guides, and I can't just watch tv without noticing all the plot holes and things that don't really make sense.

I have diverse interests: reading, making up conversations for my goldfish, reality television, obsessively reading stuff online, meditation, playing with rocks, and did I say thinking too much?

Thank you for joining me on this little trip into my psyche. You might love me, you might hate me, but I promise you that you will never be bored.