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(wrote this a few days ago..)

When envisioning this website, I pictured myself constantly posting all kinds of stuff like: pictures, videos, ditties, daily blabbering.  I am apparently slacking!  Well now that it’s officially the New Year, it’s time to give myself a little dose of boot camp discipline! To quote my sisters words-

“We are all waiting for you to be a man and quit being such a pussy!”

Who needs a guru when you’ve got a little sister? 

Speaking of discipline- 70 classes in 70 days!

Today will be my 70^th day of Bikram Yoga Classes. For those who don’t know me, I have been practicing this yoga regularly for 4 years now (almost to the day) and love it.  Bikram Yoga is always the same 26 beginning yoga postures and two breathing exercises practiced in a room heated to around 104 deg.  It sounds hot, sweaty and miserable, and it is!  It’s also strangely wonderful, healthy, and moderately addictive. However, recently I moved to Portland a few months ago and my knee began giving me some grief.  The knee joint became tender, and swollen from pushing it.  So, I gave up my yoga for a while, about 5 weeks.  It turned out to be a bold experiment.  I apparently can’t quit for long.

I tend to get funky and depressed during the cold gray winter months.  This year was no exception.  I don’t know if this has always been the case, or perhaps I’m just more aware of it as I get older.  Anyhow, when the yoga stopped, the funk moved in.  I became lethargic and lazy.  Not just the normal lazy, but, a complete sandbag.  I felt depressed and unmotivated.  I didn’t feel like booking or playing shows, learning or writing songs, or taking ANY chances at all.  I shut down for a while.  The shows I did play, I felt uneasy about.  I know it’s normal to have ups and downs when you’re an artist.  This is just the way of it.  Nobody does this without playing to empty rooms, or having off nights, for whatever the reason.  It’s those times that “suck” that send us dreamers back into the comfort zone of day jobs and steady paychecks.  What happened to “living the dream?”

I felt “stuck.”  I know that ‘I’ wasn’t stuck, but my ‘thinking’ was stuck.  I felt like I was at a crossroads and instead of making a decision (right or left) and going with it, I simply sat there with my wheels spinning.  I wasn’t gaining any yardage in this football game called life.  So after 5 weeks of no yoga and a sore knee, I took one look at myself in the mirror and had enough.  My mind felt blocked and my body felt stiff and flabby.  I HAD to get back in there and go every day. 

The next step-

According to Bikram, there are five aspects to bring balance and equanimity to the mind: faith, self discipline, determination, concentration, and patience.  Life, like yoga, is just ongoing practice.  There is no “arrival.”  If you fall out of a posture, you get back in. Now that I got my body back into shape, (my knee is much, much better) it’s time to take this same focus and attention into other areas of my life. 

Life and the music business for that matter, is a twisty, bumpy, unpredictable road.  I have carefully witnessed my thoughts and behavior patterns lately and can testify that I am guilty of several things.  These two come to mind: procrastination and lack of confidence.  The good news is (realization), I now know what I’m dealing with. 

*FEAR!

If procrastination were an Olympic sport, I would have several gold medals hanging on my wall.  (bantam weight couch potato, first place!)  This mechanism must serve me somehow or else I wouldn’t be doing it.  Procrastination keeps me from doing things I “don’t want to do” because of FEAR.  There is that wise adage that says, “The only thing to be afraid of is your own success.”   Maybe there is something to that, eh? 

I guess what I’m getting to is-- it’s time to redouble my efforts and get back in this game!  I know there is something waiting for me out there.  I have this dream.  I’ve been chipping away at it.  It keeps egging me on.  It tugs on me.  It’s a rock in my shoe.  I sleep on it every night. 

So here I sit at a coffee shop here in Portland, tapping away on the laptop.  I am here because the internet connection at the house is unpredictable and weak at best.  We use the neighbor’s wi-fi (they gave us the password).  So I came here to write, to get this out of my head.  I think it’s good for me.  I got some things I’d like to change.  I feel like my world is turning upside down. 

• In yogi BKS Iyengars’ book Light On Yoga he talks about fear when one begins learning sirasana  (headstand).  He says,

It takes time for the beginner to become oriented to his surroundings while he is balancing on his head. Everything will seem at first to be completely unfamiliar. The directions and instructions will appear confusing and he will find it an effort to think clearly or to act logically.  This is due to fear of a fall. The best way to overcome fear is to face with equanimity the situation of which one is afraid.  Then one gets the correct perspective. And one is not frightened any more.

“You block your dream when you allow your fear to grow bigger than your faith.”—Mary Mannin Morrissey

“You may say that I’m a dreamer, but I’m not the only one.”—John Lennon

“Upside down, boy you turn me, inside out, and round and round.”—Diana Ross

(More later…)  Fred Van Vactor

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