The slumps are BORING.

It's so boring to be melancholy! I know I'm worn down, but I'm not worn down so much that I'm approaching a breaking point, and I'm almost disappointed - it seems like, for many people, the breaking down is a sacrament of some kind, a doorway to something else. I suppose I could intentionally drive myself into the ground, but that doesn't seem like the right thing to do.

I wonder if the training of the movie industry and my "previous life" has given me tools for managing chaos. I'm good at ignoring madness and doing as much as I can, even pushing myself for excellence, without beating myself up for not dotting all the i's and lower case j's... but then again, perhaps I am beating myself up for it.

Two noteworthy things happened today. First of all, I instinctively used my friend Kris's mocking theory of reassurance on a friend who was struggling, and it totally worked. I was so thrilled. One of my new yoga friends was sitting on the floor outside in the lobby, looking a bit vacant and shattered, crying very lightly. I watched a bunch of people go over to tell her she'd be okay, and she responded and nodded, but still looked a bit distant. As I was leaving, I walked past her and gave her a hug and said, something along the lines of, "Yeah, you're a total broke-dick. You're so broken. You should probably give up, clearly you're not made for this... soooo retarded". My tone was caring, but with that loving mockery that Kris has taught me. And she laughed and shook it off and hugged me back. I think Kris should have mockery teacher training. And make a reality show out of it.

The second thing that was interesting was a dialog delivery by one of our dialog superstars. We have a girl in our group who's a television personality in the UK, sorta a VJ on a music show on the BBC, as it was explained to me (I'm probably getting that wrong). Anyway, she got up and delivered Standing Head to Knee pretty much flawlessly, as usual. Because it seemed to be effortless for her, the advice she got from the instructors was that she needed to get out of her comfort zone, to fuck up a little bit. So, when we transitioned to the next dialog, Standing Bow Pulling Pose, she got right up in the front of the line, announced that she did not have the pose memorized, but was going to "fuck up", as instructed. She proceeded to deliver the best dialog I've heard so far. Amazingly, she managed to get about 75% of the dialog correct, but more importantly, she taught. She gave individual corrections, she spoke quickly, she was enthusiastic and excited and pulled them into the depths of the pose. I was so inspired! I feel like this is a lesson I want to learn. I don't feel like I'm teaching. I'm somewhere in between performing and trying to remember. I don't feel like I'm doing badly, but I'm still very conscious. I want to feel like the instruction is just flowing out of me.

I almost cried in savasana today. Almost - still working on it - the teacher had mentioned that she was humbled and giving respect for the fact that we had given up money and time and our loved ones so that we can make this commitment to learning to help people. She said that in a few weeks (my first class is in like 6 weeks! Holy shit!) we'll be in front of a room of people who are looking to us to HELP them. Not just teach, or explain, but HELP. This got me for some reason. I felt shocked by it. I know that my reasons for coming here were not really principally about helping others. They were about helping me, really pretty selfishly, to superficially look better, discover some new tricks, and hopefully find a way to like myself more (that theme is getting so boring!). Still, I'm here, and the prospect of not only helping people, but voluntarily choosing to make a life change so I can help people, and myself... that's really a big deal! I've never thought about doing something like that before, and have been in a small amount of awe of people like Clodagh who specifically chose their life path so they could help people.

I'm going to see if I can get a bit extra sleep tonight, as an attempt to find some passion for doing this, instead of this meandering dread about having to struggle. I also must note - I feel a little bit of pressure now to be interesting in my blog entries, knowing that people are reading them! It's so weird!!!