Today's short temper tantrum (this blog also goes by the title: I have a bag of apples & a crisper full of greens.)

I was just in Trader Joe's, buying apples. (They have bags of apples for really cheap.) A sweet friend of mine gave me a bunch of extra greens from a local farm. This morning, I wanted to juice some of them for breakfast, but didn't have anything else to throw in the juicer with them....I learned the hard way that just greens juiced alone do not taste delicious. At all.

So, there I was in line at Trader Joe's, and all of a sudden I started getting angry at everything around me. The very handsome man and very beautiful woman in the line next to me were clearly a couple, clearly in love and clearly pleased with their grocery purchases. I was sure they were going to go home, make some delicious dinner and not be lonely. I was convinced their lives were perfect. This imagined perfection irritated me.

Then I was angry, because the guy in front of me had two overflowing shopping baskets and so many groceries in his arms that he kept dropping things. As he sat down his armful of food, he leaned back past me and picked out a bar of dark chocolate next to the counter....the dark chocolate I really wanted, but had just told myself I couldn't afford. I thought to myself, "He clearly doesn't have to worry about money. He can buy whatever he wants." I was clenching the bag of apples tighter. It seemed to be taking forever for the guy in the crazy print shirt to scan each box of frozen fish sticks from the overflowing baskets. Then I caught myself.

I was not only being impatient, and that was leading to unnecessary stress, but I was also feeling some very ugly/unflattering emotions. What was that anger about? When I scratched at it a bit, I realized it wasn't anger at all. I wasn't annoyed (well, maybe a little by the Trader Joe's Hawaiian shirts and all of the bell ringing), I was envious. I wanted to be picking out two grocery baskets full of whatever food I wanted with some handsome man who loved me....and I wanted to toss in the dark chocolate bar without having to think about how much money was in my bank account (or how much weight I was trying to lose over the next 11 weeks). There I was, a 29 year-old having an internal 2 year-old tantrum. Once I realized how ridiculous I was being, I almost laughed at myself. My pity party was getting so crowded, it was soon going to need a guest list and a bouncer with big biceps. A saying I've read more than once recently popped in my head....that happiness is not about having what you want, but wanting what you have. I'm going to try really hard the next 11 weeks to stop focusing on all of the things I don't have & start focusing on the things I do have.

Patriotic Hike

I woke up this morning in that same funk again, which isn't like me. I was lazy the first part of the day. I couldn't think of anything to go do, and I didn't have the motivation for a day of laundry and cleaning.

My property is 30 acres of forest, and next door is a 1700 acre state park. I rarely ever go hike there, which is ridiculous, so I pulled myself away from the terrible tv episodes I was watching on my computer and went for a hike.

Beaman State Park is one of Nashville's best kept secrets.

Most people in Nashville go to Radnor Lake or Percy Warner Park for their outdoor fun. I like both of them, but they can get really crowded, depending on what time of day you go.

I am always amazed at how great Beaman State Park is, and how few people I see on the trails. I only saw one other person the whole time I was hiking today. I ended up getting 3.5 miles in before it started getting dark. I'm going to set a goal for myself to go hike that trail a minimum of two times a week. That's a minimum of 4 days of yoga and 7 miles of hiking a week.

The World Which is Made of Our Love for Emptiness

Today's class was hard. Really hard. I almost threw up. I almost passed out. There is always a point in a hot yoga class when I think to myself, "This is insane. Why am I doing this?" I always walk out of the studio with a smile on my face though. The good news is that I definitely sweated the loneliness right on out of my body. I feel better. Today's class was taught by my friend, Liz Workman. She's awesome. She always has some great/interesting theme or focus or story that strings throughout her classes. This time it was whirling dervishes and Rumi. She read this poem at the end of class:


This World Which Is Made of Our Love for Emptiness

Praise to the emptiness that blanks out existence. Existence:
This place made from our love for that emptiness!

Yet somehow comes emptiness,
this existence goes.

Praise to that happening, over and over!
For years I pulled my own existence out of emptiness.

Then one swoop, one swing of the arm,
that work is over.

Free of who I was, free of presence, free of dangerous fear, hope,
free of mountainous wanting.

The here-and-now mountain is a tiny piece of a piece of straw
blown off into emptiness.

These words I'm saying so much begin to lose meaning:
Existence, emptiness, mountain, straw:

Words and what they try to say swept
out the window, down the slant of the roof.

-Rumi

On a less serious note....Liz suggested that we drink coconut water after class. She explained that we had just sweat so much that we needed to drink something more than just plain water. I went to the Turnip Truck and got a coconut water. People rave about the stuff all the time. This was my second time trying it, and I had the same reaction. I just plain don't like the taste of it. I drank it anyway, but it was not easy. Is there anything else besides coconut water that has the same health benefits?

Thirth of July Funk

This is a photo I took the morning of my 27th birthday. I had just moved back to Nashville a few weeks before, and I was struggling to find a location and the funding to open The Green Wagon. I had returned to a familiar place, but I had changed, and the city just didn't seem to fit me the same way anymore. Several close friends had moved away while I was in Arizona, so I was surrounded by locations and people I knew, but hadn't yet established a strong friendship with anyone in the general vicinity of Davidson County. I remember feeling pretty lonely that morning and pretty unsure of what my future was going to look like....a lot like this morning. Hmmmm. If I could jump into the photo, sit down at that table, there are so many things I wish I could tell this version of myself.

Last night I just sat through the uncomfortable loneliness. I thought I might wake up and feel better, but it is still there. I think I'm going to head over to a hot yoga class at Kali Yuga. The class I took on Friday was a restorative yoga class, and I loved it. I'm not the biggest fan of hot yoga, but I feel like I need to do something, and that is the class they are offering this morning, so maybe that is the class I need today. I'm okay letting myself feel sad and in a funk for part of a day. I think it is an important part of healing, but I'm not about to let this last multiple days. I'm going to go sweat it out!

Currency

I promised I would be really honest and open in this blog...there isn't much of a point in writing it if I'm not. While driving to work today, I was thinking about how there are only a few things that really hold value....honesty and forgiveness are right at the top of the list. I think love is an obvious choice, but people call a lot of different things "love," so I'm not sure it is all that hard to find or give or exchange some version or form of it. I'm almost thinking of these abstract words as concrete currencies. True honesty and forgiveness are much harder to come by & are valuable currency that can be exchanged, given and received. I've always made it a point to be a very honest person, but I've had a lot of deception pass through in my life in the past 5 years or so....in some cases in extreme forms. I'm trying to figure out what that is all about, why those patterns exist & how I might change them and start receiving more honesty without becoming distrusting or skeptical.

Of course, I'd like for every post to be only empowering, uplifting, positive, but that would only be about 9/10ths of the truth. Most days I'm really happy and positive about life. Today I got home from work, took a nap, and woke up feeling really really lonely. At the same time, I don't feel motivated to go out and spend time with people either. I think there is something to be said for not avoiding nights like this....sometimes you have to just sit through them and be uncomfortable. Maybe it is in those moments when real growth is taking place? I don't know. I'm just trying to be gentle with myself.

(Image above is a photo I took on my friend's boat about a month ago.)

Heck Yes!

Go here to see more awesome prints by this artist.

There is nothing that cannot happen....

As of January, the pace of my life drastically changed. I sold the East Nashville Green Wagon as a franchise. After a minor detour, due to an unhappy appendix in January, I started thinking about what direction I wanted to take the business in next. I have been working with several people in other states on opening their own Green Wagon locations in their communities, but I've also been feeling this pull towards a more global project. I've spent the past four years helping educate, empower, and provide opportunities for individuals to make environmentally-responsible choices in their daily lives in Tucson and then Nashville. The little decisions people make really do add up. I know that, and I don't ever want to downplay that, but guess I started feeling like I've been so focused on the micro-level....talking to people about what goes in their recycling bin, water conservation, the benefits of using an all natural laundry detergent, the benefits of buying in bulk, buying local, driving a car that runs on alternative fuels....that it had been too long since I had zoomed out and looked at the bigger picture.

I want to see more of this planet that I'm so passionate about helping preserve. I want to find out what other individuals are doing on a grassroots level in other communities all over the world & tell their stories, struggles, triumphs. I want to spend time volunteering beside them for their causes, and really learn about the environmental issues their countries are facing. I'd love to write a book and film a lot of the project/interviews as well. Maybe the film could be used for a documentary at some point? I'm actually a fairly shy person, but not when it comes to reaching towards something I want to achieve. No one is going to knock on my front door & say, "Here is a list of environmentalists to go talk to and good quality video equipment. Oh, and here is a paid plane ticket around the world and money for food. Have fun!" I think amazing opportunities definitely involve luck and grace, but it is mainly about putting yourself in the path of an opportunity.

Even though being able to take a trip around the world to work on this project sounds like the most logistically and financially impossible thing to have happen in my life right now, it definitely isn't going to happen if I don't try. So, about a week ago, I started digging online and finding websites that had links to different environmental groups around the world. I started sending out dozens of emails, asking people if they would be interested in allowing me into their lives and communities as a part of the project. I didn't know if I would hear anything back at all. Days passed & nothing. Then the emails started slowly filtering in. So far, I have some very excited new friends in the UK, South Africa & Sri Lanka who are asking how quickly can I get there to document their efforts. I have NO idea how I will come up with the money to make any of this happen, but I feel like it has at least been set in motion now. It isn't just a thought in my brain anymore. It is taking form.

(Image above is from this etsy shop. I'm kind of obsessed with several of their prints: http://www.etsy.com/listing/59974146/print-there-is-nothing-that-cannot)