Sometimes it takes a little while to figure it out. A dog that is not feeling so well to help you realize you are actually not taking the best care of yourself. The realization that you are spending way to much time with this guy that you like and not making friends of your own. You actually have a lot going for you and a great support system too. I actually made some friends when I first moved here. I have people that I can hang out with. There is more to this place! Just not any swimming holes... But there is so much that I haven't totally dived into yet, and I have a ways to go before I am allowed to be actually sad again. Less sad Anna is a way better Anna! Wahoo!

Sadness

Sadness is incredible. It can take over your entire body. My mind, my soul. It grips me so hard and I feel as if I have no control over any of it. The tears, the heartache, almost a true depression. It ebbs and flows, receding for lengths of time where I know it is gone, and then it will come back to get me. It is not one continuous sadness, I am not carrying things from my past with me to continue what I have flowing through me now. But I am most certainly sad at the moment. Holding things in, bottling them up, until the only way for them to escape is through tears and wails. Then anger comes and scares me beyond all anything. I don't want to be angry, I don't want to be sad. How long have I been sad like this. I can remember a time in college, in high school. Early on I battled this sadness and now it is back. What have I done to make it better in the past? Yoga, run, bike, play with small children. But even then takes from my heart. Wears me down. I need to do the yoga. To follow through. Clear my head. Was I really happiest when I was going all the time? Maybe I was. Maybe I need to find that again. Find my place and my space and make some friends again. Find the inner Anna who I love and adore so much. Maybe it is my current loss of my yoga practice. Is that what I am missing. The alone time in my head. The need to cry in the silence behind my eyes. Let it leave my body there and be able to take on the rest of my day? Is this it? It must be. I need to go try. I need to try something, because here I am in this funk and I need to get out somehow.

Help Me Achieve My Dream ->>>

Let me begin by giving you a little back story.

I honestly have had NO IDEA what my actual goals are for a long time. What do I want to do when I grow up?
I thought to myself my senior year in high school "I like math, I'm going to be a math major in college. Teaching runs in my family, I'll teach math." So I got a math degree, a high school teaching degree, I added on middle school, and then threw in special ed for good measure. I realized how much I loved ASL and made a big leap to getting a masters degree to teach deaf children math.
I studied education, I lived it, I wore it on my skin, and then I taught.
Turns out that perhaps teaching is not for me.  During each of my four internships I was miserable. For six months in the classroom I was worse than miserable. And this was because of something within me, not the people I was surrounded with. So I ran away from teaching. I actually ran away and hid.

 

Two years ago this week I quit my teaching job. The first and only thing I have ever quit, because I grew up in a house where quitting was not an answer (especially with a little brother who always wanted to beat me).

 

Two years has gone by and that inner feeling that deep down inside I am a teacher hasn't left. I go back to babysitting, to educating while I am on a kayak tour, to feeling the need to educate my friends...
I am an educator. 
And then it finally came to me.
My true calling is in becoming a yoga teacher. 

I have been sitting on this feeling for well over a year. It was two years ago that I seriously started practicing yoga and became committed to becoming a better, more grounded, deeper, more appreciative, intuitive, spiritual, giving, and loving individual.
I realized today, while discussing life with my sister Mary, that I finally need to go after my dream. Think of the possibilities! I will be certified in multi-style yoga which means I will be able to teach many different classes of yoga including Vinyasa, or even SUP yoga out on paddle boards on Folly Creek. It includes yoga therapy and yoga dance as well.

Can you imagine...

                                me opening up my very own studio someday that includes classes specifically offered for deaf people? Because you better believe that I am going to learn all of the signs for the different asanas. I am going to learn as much Sanskrit as I can possibly wrap my mind around, and I will be able to pass on the actual names of poses to people to help them better understand yoga someday.

This is my dream. Can you help me achieve it? The tuition for the 9 week program is $3200. Even $5 will help. Each and every person will receive a hand written letter from me.

And if you have a dream, go get it. You only live once.

Life has taken me back to Hawaii

I made it back here... In fact, when the Island finally came in to view from the plane window I started crying.

 I may have run out of good Karma for the remainder of the summer. Yesterday was unbelievable. I mean that in many ways. Allow me to highlight a few.

One of my best friends, Rob, came to Saugerties to pick me up on Sunday and drove me back down to his apartment that night. He lives about half an hour from JFK, has plenty of space for Jackson, and great roommates. I woke up at 4am Monday and took Jackson for a nice walk to the park before our big adventure began. It was a balmy 14 degrees outside with wind speeds up to 20 mph... I was leaving NY with one last reminder of the cold. Rob woke up at 4:45 and we got to the airport by 5:15am. Who does that for a friend? I couldn't say thank you enough.

Somehow in the security line multiple people were cutting the line. I guess there was a flight at 6am for LA and those people took precedence over everyone else? So the line didn't move for what felt like eternity, but was actually half and hour, and in flying terms that is a lot. After an added 5 minutes because Jackson refused to use the escalator, I made it to my gate minutes before it closed. The plane had not one empty seat. Some how the universe sent me the nicest man in the WORLD to sit next to (the guy in the aisle seat was not so accepting). Fred, as I came to know him, helped me get my bag up top and let Jackson sleep on his feet the entire 6 hours to Phoenix. He talked to me about teaching and how I should get back into it, we talked about yoga, I learned about his family, and I now know a lot more about casinos then ever before. Every time Jackson would get restless he'd lean down and pet his head. It was fantastic. Then as we were getting off the plane, he boxed out the other passengers so Jackson and I could get out without being to squished. I shook his hand and wished him amazing good fortunes on his future.

In Phoenix the nicest flight attendant in all existence helped me make sure all of Jackson's paperwork was in order, and got my bag on the plane in an overhead compartment so I could get on last. Again, this plane was packed. After an hour layover Jackson made it a second 7 hour flight sleeping by my feet and only getting restless a few more times. We arrived in Hawaii and after holding his bowels for 16 hours Jackson got to pee on the wonderfully plush Hawaiian grass outside the airport. I had both my suitcases, my dog, and my yoga mat, and I had made it back safely to Hawaii.

I'm sitting at Mary and Keysa's favorite cafe currently and have a job interview at 1pm today. I'm going to have to start thoroughly investing back into my karma bank as I must have used it all up during my travels.

It's a 5 hour time difference between here and NY. Everyone please text me your address :)

A changing moment in my life.

Jackson is never angry or spiteful.

Change. That is what it is all about. Not dwelling on things. Letting them go. If I were to dwell on all of the things that have happened in my life, even the worst, then I would be going nowhere. I would be stuck in some terrible, claustrophobic life, unhappy and mad at the way things are. The only one who can make those things better is you. Hammering past occurrences that upset you are not going to suddenly make it better. They make you feel regret, one of the worst feelings. They make you feel angry and spiteful towards others.
I don't want any of that. I want sunrises. Long hikes to the tops of mountains. I want to smile with the warmth of the sun on my skin. I want to be happy when I'm alone. And I can be.

I want this

I wanted to write about this so called changing moment in my life when I first started typing this. But not even I know when that moment was or is. A changing phase of my life that is quickly and surely leading me to answers. I'm watching many people right now live solemnly and quietly in their life. Admitting to a select few about their real passions, purpose, and goals. They keep it hidden from most and remain sad, lonely, or content. I refuse to do that anymore. I have been scared lately to go out and do things on my own. I have felt trapped in Charleston, trapped in my house, my body, my thinking, my job, and my decisions. I let myself get hurt this summer by things that shouldn't have hurt me. I let irrational thinking take over other more irrational happenings that I was watching right before my eyes. I'll take it as a lesson. Lesson learned. Time to move on. Narrow down what you look at online, and broaden what you look at right in front of you, all around, in the present and in the future. Time to take charge of what is now, and let go what is past.



I'm trying to decide what I actually want to do in life. Who I want to be. What I want to be.  What do I want to spend my time doing? How can I  make the most of the time that I have here, and enjoy it. Enjoy every drop of it. Smile when it rains. Walk in it anyway. Don't watch your life go by with out enjoying the small things. Laugh at them, drink them up, dance all around them. And then look at yourself in the mirror and smile, because everything is working out exactly as it should be.

The Right One

 When I was in Saugerties after leaving Charleston, and on my way to Boston, I said to myself and to others "This is the last time I am doing this.  The last time I am moving somewhere temporarily and uprooting myself, my things, and my happiness." I promised myself continuously as I sat solemnly in my childhood bedroom that the next place I would move, after Boston, would be somewhere more permanent. I had also promised myself over a month before that I would be moving on and pursuing something. I didn't and still don't know what that something is, but I would be pursuing it.
Well, it has been over a month now that I have been home, and since moved to Boston.  I like it here, sorta.  Its freezing and I hate being cold, so that doesn't help. And the traffic is insane. I bet if it was warmer out then I would probably like it a bit more, but its not warm and wont be for a few months.
November though March here, and then back to Charleston to finish what I started at COA. I don't want to keep moving. I don't. Maybe Charleston will be my last, but who knows. There are bigger problems stewing that are hurting my soul. Hurting it so bad that I feel like I don't live in this body.

"Do you really want to be with someone that is living a lie?  You are better than that." 
- James K.


How do I allow myself to be sucked back into this trap time after time again? It seems so repetitive and silly, yet here I am. It makes me take a harder look on the way that I judge people. People who overeat, or do drugs, or drink to much. I am constantly judging them, but here I am doing the same thing, I just don't wear it on the outside. I keep it very hidden and can often times put it on the back burner while hiding inside.
Do I push through and continue on to the next perfect one or do I try to fix myself, learn from my mistakes and do something better with my choices. I am looking at these life lessons over and over and not learning from them, making the same mistakes. Yet I am looking in all the wrong places at all the wrong men. I need to find the 'right one' not the perfect one. But before that I need to look at myself and my choices.  Learn to love myself, and then perhaps it will all come together. Boston is my time to step back and take a look at myself. I have 3 full months before my return to Charleston. 3 months of finding me, who I am, and who the right one really is.

Take a step back

Let me take a step back for a second.  So I was working my butt off in Charleston all summer, knowing that I was moving to Boston the beginning of November. I packed up my stuff to put into a Uhaul when I moved from my sweet bedroom upstairs to the dining room downstairs for a month so that the new girl could move in early.  The dining room wasn't really so bad. For the most part I had the whole downstairs to myself since everyone spent a lot of time in their rooms upstairs.  I spent a lot of time taking Jackson on walks and sitting on our dock.  I took him to the beach early in the morning so we could watch the sun come up.

This recent Saturday I had a total meltdown.  I had a few smaller ones leading up to it over the course of two weeks, but this was a big one.

My last evenings on the boat.

 I've been so sad and have been having such a hard time letting things from my past go.  I hold them all inside of me and let them weigh me down, so frustrating.  Then I get mad, angry, frustrated, and upset with myself because I am sad, which of course makes things worse.
Starting my journey now on being truly happy. Or finding what it really is that I am looking for.  Make myself happy, and then I can let someone else into my life. For now it is just Jackson and I. I kind of like it. He certainly does.




I want to be brave. I miss my sunrises. I miss the warmth on my skin. I love the way the sky changes colors when the sun moves through it. It sends so many amazing messages about change, continual growth, and not settling for the small things.