Can living our dream be good for our health?

On first glance the answer is yes, it must be.

Right? If I am in the sweet spot of doing what I love and making a living doing it, I would imagine that my anxiety and worry would decrease, my skin and hair would glow, and my relationships would improve in direct response to the calm feeling of contentment I would have from making a positive difference in my community while putting my skills to use.

So why does it sound so stressful? I listened to a conversation of three journalists today who are each doing exactly the work they were cut out to do. They talked about the junk food they eat while rushing to finish a story, or the fact that they drop whatever they are doing to cover an important story, and how they are often rushing from place to place. It sounded horrible, and exactly like the kind of thing that would destroy a person’s day-to-day health, lower their quality of life, and shorten the length of it to boot.

The thing is, these people are glowing. I’m sure they could all integrate healthier practices into their lives, just like we all could, but I’m not sure they would be healthier with a more predictable schedule. We were each made to thrive in a specific milieu, and it’s up to us to find it.

…and then be as vibrant as we can be.

travel

I am on the craziest adventure I can think of: move out of a beautiful home we couldn't afford in Los Angeles into my husband's parents' house for free rent in a city I had never heard of before I met them. Nothing but a possibly impossible plan about where we'll be next, and when, and how we will finance our lives once we get there.

I am very nervous. Very excited. Looking to share my stories as I go and also worried about being too much of an online Diarist who shares too much of the intimate. Fear and worry are powerful things. I can be brave. I can be kind. I am strong.

more to come?

I begin

I just confirmed it with my business partner: I am opening a studio in Oakland!  Now all the classes and working at the spas and the meditation and study and healing I've done in my own body will be put to the test, and Oh, how I've been longing for a test.

I have loved, absolutely adored, these last two years of prayer and contemplation.  I feel I have been given a gift: I learned how to live as simply as I could and work as little as I could and spend all the rest of my time simply Listening.  Well, getting still took the longest part, and then listening.  I could stretch all afternoon in my room, or garden all day in my backyard, start a job and quit it, or leave town for as long as I wanted.  Take any class, make any friends, and eat all the best food thanks to my amazing farmer friends (bless you!).  As long as I was working enough to pay my bills, or enough to pay off the credit card debt that would often creep and then subside, I have been doing fine.

Now through all that joyful resting, I learned that there is something organically occurring in ME that desires to work, with passion and with a purpose.  I had to sift past all the societal expectations (they sounded something like, "Go wear a button-down shirt and push buttons on a computer and get some points on your scoreboard called money!") and sit and sometimes mope, but always keep resting until I finally found the voice that sounds like authentically me and is ready to move forward.  I understand that to move forward I will have to work hard and maybe wake up really early or even try harder than is comfortable for a while.  I can do this for two reasons: I have learned that I want it, and I have learned how to rest and replenish myself.

So WHAT do I want?  I want to sustain my life financially by working with clients to help them achieve the most health they can in their body.  I am a massage therapist, now I want to earn my living doing it.  And I will still pursue all of the rest of it: gardening and prayer and meditation and proper eating and sustainable relationships and yoga and movement; all these things join together to create life and wholeness in me, and maybe the more I learn the more I can pass on to someone else some day.  Today, though, I will learn and study and practice massage, and maybe help a few people live in to more fullness.  Maybe one of those people will be me.