Beginning to Care -- Lake Atitlan, Guatemala

The last few days have been spent trapped inside my head, occasionally escaping through my brushes.

I'm beginning to care, and that's always a dangerous thing for me. It's a dangerous thing for anyone. Caring. It takes so much courage to care. To go from having pretty much nothing at stake, to a whole heap of stakes. 

I want to stay at The Forest. I want to fit here. I want to grow here. I want to make this my home for a few months. 

And that's scary. Now things... now things matter. Now I'm invested. 

Criticism I used to be able to dismiss without taking personally, I now dwell on, dissect, agonize over. 

"Wow, I was not expecting that many people at yoga today!" I exclaimed to another volunteer after I'd finished teaching the morning vinyasa class. "Wasn't able to do the routine I'd planned because there were just too many beginners. So I had to improvise a lot." 

"Yeah, there were definitely times I could tell that you were winging it. That's why I always keep a routine for --" 

He could tell that I was winging it? Does that mean the class was no good? Does that mean I didn't appear professional? Does that mean -- 

My thoughts rapidly carried me into the toxic realm of self-deprecation and self-doubt.  

Fuck. I don't like to write down routines because I prefer to be able to go with the flow. Make up a class on the spot based off of who shows up and what they need. But... maybe I should be writing down my routines? Maybe I should be more structured? Have more of a plan A, plan B, plan et cetera? 

I felt my face twisting with worry. The heavy feeling of inadequacy settling into my stomach. 

Why this intense reaction to criticism, Bourget? Why can't you just shrug this off the way you shrug off, well, most shit that happens to you? Why can't you do what you always do? Think, "it doesn't matter. If what I do isn't appreciated here, I can go somewhere else where it is. Appreciated."

I can't say that... because I don't think I want to go somewhere else. I want to belong here. To work here. To be a part of whatever community Jonas and Michelle are making.

So the trick in all this is to be able to care AND to not take things personally. 

Good luck with that one, Bourget. You'll need it.

This isn't an easy trick for me to master.  My anxious thoughts whirl around my mind, reminding me with commendable regularity of the myriad of ways in which I fall short. 

You're not a well-rounded yoga teacher. You don't do breath work hardly at all. You don't do mantras (in part because you think they're a little pretentious. Which is probably pretentious of you). You don't even have all that much variety in your classes. It's mostly the same thing, over and over and over again. 

Also, your playlists are the worst. Because you're a hobo and can't afford to buy new music. 

Also, you're a hobo. 

...

You're not an artist. You're just a plagiarist. You could never paint anything without looking at a picture.

You can play like, five chords on Teal Cecile. And all you know are strikingly sad songs. All of which people are probably tired of hearing by now. 

You aren't even close to being a musician. 

You never got your license in massage therapy. Sure, you completed your 500 hours of Nepali Ayurvedic/Swedish and your 90 hours of Thai. But you didn't even try to take the National Exam. Were you so afraid of failure that you didn't even make an effort? 

You're twenty-eight years old, Bourget. And you're still such a consummate disaster (and a very public one). Most of the volunteers here are under twenty-four. Hell, even the manager is a year younger than you. Isn't it time for you to quit being a hobo? You can't float like this forever.

So I quiet my mutinous thoughts with my brushes, finding peace on my paper.

I never would have thought painting would be this important to me. Would be so incredibly vital to my emotional health.

This is why it takes courage for me to care. It takes determination to face these demons, these raging insecurities. To accept them, to accept myself with them, and to continue to actively invest my energy, my passion, in the here and now (that is the extent of my yoga-isms). As opposed to disengaging, forcing myself not to care, and checking out. Checking out mentally, checking out emotionally, checking out physically.

Don't let yourself check out, Bourget. There's too much to be gained here, too much to be learned, too much to be given. Accept the criticism, explore the criticism, learn from the criticism. Adopt an attitude of humility instead of... instead of insecurity. Humility is an attitude receptive to learning and growth. Insecurity just breeds defensiveness. Which is 100% unhelpful.

Whatever you do, don't let yourself stop caring.