mariana, vince and their extremely fun crew of loved ones

happy friday! the weather is lovely outside.  it's one of those days that i want to savor to the max before things get too hot in dc.  but alas, i am inside finishing up bits of work from my week (such as the photographs of mariana and vince's wedding. i love this one i posted!)

ah, it feels like so much! adam and i are apartment hunting (let me know if you hear about anything awesome in between bloomingdale and mt. pleasant), i'm teaching and photographing up a storm, getting ready for two awesome yoga retreats and i'm still getting my systems back in place after the robbery.  whew! it's so much right? yet i know i am not alone in that dang pesky feeling that somehow it's not enough.  i always want to be doing more than i am currently doing.

this morning i had to miss my favorite friday yoga class to see an apartment.  i had an hour and a half before i had to leave my house yet instead of laying out my yoga mat right away for a home practice, i kept clicking away at my keyboard.  then i started that brain talk about how if i can't do a full practice than it's not worth it and how i didn't even feel like doing yoga anyway.

i finally snapped myself out of it, rolled out my green mat that is coming apart at the edges and set my timer for 30 minutes.  it started really slow with lots of down dog and a few funny attempts at a handstand, but soon i picked up some steam and got into it.  i figured out a few fun new twisty transitions and even got in a 3 minute savasana.  it definitely wasn't the best yoga practice of my life but it was something special, especially because i broke through the procrastination and just did it.

then when i couldn't get myself to post something here, i remembered that a few words on the page is just fine.  fancy, amazing, well-planned is great but a lot of the time i just have to be where i am and hope that offering is enough.  what inspires me is that in my accepting it for myself that i'm doing enough you guys will get even more jazzed to let yourself be ok with what you can do today.  because you all are amazing and i don't judge you even a little on what you can do/can't do in a 24 hour period.  when you want to take a break and drink lemonade on your porch, i say "hell yeah, you deserve it sweets!" if you don't believe me, ask a calming manatee.  they never lie.

bermuda shots

as i promised a while back, here are a few photographs of bermuda. as you can see, i had so much fun there with my hipstamatic app!  i may be getting just a little tired of everything looking old and weathered but it does produce some nice surprises and it really fits the timeless quality of the island.

i'm posting these photographs because i had a wonderful time in bermuda (thanks dean) and thought every part of it was photo worthy.  i'm also posting them because some recent events in my life have made me remember that i need to take time to honor my work.

last week, our house was broken into and lot of my most important objects were stolen, as were my roommate's precious things.  for me, it included my bicycle, my computer, all of camera equipment (except my iphone), and my external hard drive, which had about a years worth of work on it.  when i walked in and saw that everything was gone, i was shocked yet felt this lightness about it.  it's just stuff, right?

well i am learning that my stuff is tied to a lot of other things.  it's brought up feelings of safety.  having my home broken into and drawers looked through feels so violating in a space where i have felt nothing but safe.  it's also made me look at my responsibility to myself, my work and my clients.  the sad answer to the question that everyone keeps asking is no, i did not have any kind of insurance or backup system.  despite thinking about it many times, i never set up any of those safe guards. i have all that stuff in place now and i urge you to also do that if you haven't because shit happens.

it's also brought up anger at the people who did this to us specifically and also at the system we live in that allows certain people to be much more advantaged than others.  it's a system i benefit from on a daily basis and i'm not quite sure how much responsibility i can/should take in the unfairness of the status quo that runs our city, country, world. 

it's such an up and down process. i feel myself hardening and really afraid in some moments and in others, swimming in a heart that has gotten even bigger and more compassionate.  i am lucky that i had money saved up so that i could buy myself the things i need to survive.  i have skills that desirable and a belief that i will recover.  i also have clients who were beyond understanding about what happened.  i have friends and family who have reached out to offer incredible support.

just before this happened, i wrote an article for GOOD on how to take the reigns of your karma by looking at the patterns in your life and taking responsibility for them.  i felt like i had gotten fairly good at doing that for the people around me, but this situation feels more random and unfair.  i want to chalk it all up to back luck, but do i get to pick and choose like that?

i have clean answers right now, just a feeling of ickness and the vague sensation of something big opening up.  i'm hoping clarity will come with them. for now, what is keeping me afloat is just letting myself feel however i feel in the moment (which changes about 20 times a day), teaching yoga, reading the hunger games triology (i really dug the first two books.  i'm also done with the third and honestly haven't been loving it but i'm hoping for a great ending to it all), and this song specifically.  it's a reminder to me that they can get a lot of things from me, but they can't take the diamonds of the soles of my shoes.