I'm hot.

The weather in Vancouver is uncharacteristically hot at the moment. I took a nap this afternoon and woke up drenched in sweat. Ugh. All I do is sweat!

Well, today I officially signed up for the challenge, but I consider this to be Day 3 because this is my third consecutive day in a row and I made this decision on Friday, so Friday is when I consider myself to have started. (But officially, today is Day 1. Ugh. Never mind that.) This is my first challenge in over a year, and I'm going for 60 days instead of 30. That's right, 60 days in a row. Sixty.

Just think in four days, I'll be 1/6th of the way through this challenge! Wow. I'll be done on Monday, October 13th, what a day that will be. I'll be on Day 43 on my birthday, which is September 26th...I thought about it yesterday and what I thought was, what a wonderful place to be on your birthday, completely devoted to your yoga practice. That's what I thought! Actually, I plan on taking my entire birthday week off, which will be a nice break for me. I'll probably need it. I like to take a lot of time off throughout the year because I put a lot of energy into my job and I get super tired if I don't take time off. (I'm an ESL teacher.) Other people just work and work and work but I simply cannot. I NEED time off every once in a while. I also believe that I should be paid just for living on this earth but that's another matter!

I can't believe I'm doing a 60 day challenge that is going to take me all the way to early Fall. Am I crazy? I actually had three potential weeks of vacation this September and I was going to go on a big trip, somewhere balmy, beautiful, a place where you could actually swim in the ocean rather than look at it from a distance and wonder why it looks so brown and cold. I had a couple of places in mind - California, Caribbean or Central America. I was going to visit friends or family, or maybe just backpack around a little by myself. However, ever since that seminar with Ren (which I will talk about a little bit later, once I'm settled into my challenge) I've been dreading taking this vacation because I knew it would be a big disruption to my yoga practice and my health. (As you can see, I can dread just about anything - I've already told you I dread yoga and now I'm telling you I dread dream vacations.) I'm just not the type of person that stays healthy and active during vacations; I drink too much, fail to exercise, eat basically anything I can get my hands on, etc...I always feel like crap when I come back and have to spend days or weeks getting back into a healthy routine. Therefore, it's honestly a relief to me that I've canceled my trip and have nothing to focus on for the next two months besides yoga. (I AM still going to take a trip, but it won't be until later on this year or early next year.)

I've also got other things I'd like to accomplish. I went to the library and took out four books I've been meaning to read for years: They are: Postman by Charles Bukowski, Shantaram by Gregory David Roberts, Jitterbug Perfume by Tom Robbins, and Fear of Flying by Erica Jong. I couldn't believe I found them all! Actually there are many more books in this world besides these four that I want to read but these four have just been on my 'must read' list for so long, and I never have - I never even see them anywhere for some reason. So, I hadn't been to the library for a really long time because I racked up tons of fees on both my Vancouver and Burnaby library cards, but I realized I have my mom's Burnaby card so I decided to have a look today and see what I could find. I found everything! The library is awesome! That also saved me about $70.00 if I were to buy the books new...something to think about. I buy a lot of books, but many times I buy them secondhand or steal them straight off peoples' bookcases and say "Hey I'm borrowing this!" just as I'm leaving their house.

Anyway, I also want to stop wasting time doing stupid things like flipping through random peoples' photo albums on facebook, reading celebrity blogs, and watching dumb clips on youtube. What a waste of time, God. I mean if it were for five minutes here and there it would be fine but I can waste hours on the Internet every day if I'm not careful. So, I want to spend this kind of spare time reading these wonderful works of literature and also working on my own writing, which has been severely neglected lately. So far I'm doing well; I'm already 70 pages into Jitterbug Perfume, which has come highly recommended to my by about 10 people, and last night I read Veronika Decides to Die by Paulo Coelho (in its entirety!!) while engaged in deep belly breathing. It took me like, five hours, and by the time I was finished I swear I was in a trance-like state. It was a moving experience. I'M WEIRD!

In addition to this, I want to cut back on my alcohol intake almost completely (I'm going to try to limit it to organic red wine like they say in "Skinny Bitch", we'll see how that goes, hehe). I'm supposed to be this healthy, aware, spiritual-type person, but actually I'm still a total party girl, same as always. I'm also trying to monitor what I eat, as per usual - Bikram teachers say that if you practice a lot but you're not losing weight you have to take what you normally eat every day and cut it in half. I think I've mentioned this before. Um...I don't know if that is going to be entirely possible but I went to Safeway after class today and bought lots of produce and tofu and nuts and other healthy stuff, so uh, yeah, I'll give that my best shot...!

I want to take some of the money I was going to use for my trip and spend it on my new health-conscious lifestyle. I want to buy a juicer, (I had to throw my last one out because I left the fruit pulp in it for about two weeks after using it one day and when I found it was covered, and I mean covered, in flies - I dropped it into a big black garbage bag and ran screaming to the back of the house), start drinking wheatgrass, and get some other stuff from Capers and places like that, like Oil of Oregano and epsom salts and organic skin and haircare products. I also need a new stainless steel water bottle because I left mine at my studio and now it's gone! I actually saw someone using it but it was during class, and then I never saw him again. However, it was missing the lid and I dented that one, so I kind of wanted a new one anyway. Also, if someone's using it now then I don't want their icky germs. They can just have it. Hmm, what else? Not sure - oh yeah, I am in desperate need of some new yoga clothes! That usually motivates me to go to class, and JC knows I need all the motivation I can get. I'm sorry to invoke the name of Jesus while we're talking about yoga here but that's the West for you.

Yes, so that's what I'm gonna spend my trip money on, along with paying off my credit card. That's my plan. As for what I'm hoping to accomplish by doing this 60 day challenge, I really just want to improve my postures to what I feel they should be - for ME - after practicing for 2 and a half years. For instance, what a disaster I am in Standing-Head-to-Knee, I mean really. I'm going to talk about all this stuff down the road, but I just want to increase my strength and flexibility to a level that I can be proud of. I don't mean to sound competitive or self-deprecating, but I'm just being honest when I say that sometimes you do feel like you've reached a point in your practice that you can't get past, and I've been there for a long time so I'm ready to make that progression. Updates to come.

Gosh I'm boring! But writing this is very therapeutic.