I Have A Plan!

For Wednesday, anyway. I am going to attend "Intro to Yoga" class at a Yoga studio near work. I've done Yoga before at the Y, but I really need to start over. My husband said "Hey, I'd like to take Yoga too." FREAK OUT! My husband is 6'2", 220, a big hunky guy, and I just CANNOT see him in Yoga class. (Is that a negative statement?)

For Thursday, I plan to attend a meditation session at the same place.

Reading: I currently have the following self-help books read in various states of completeness:

The Artist's Way At Work by Mark Bryan with Julia Cameron and Catherine Allen

Kind of a zen book. I misplaced it a few months back and didn't even think about it until I found it again in my attempt to become more organized. Any book associated with Julia Cameron is going to be very enlightening.

Having had "issues" at work all my working life, I have also read Working for an Idiot: Survive and Thrive Without Killing Your Boss by John Hoover (finished). My boss is by no means an idiot, but she switches moods like, hmmmmmm, me! It's a Job, Not a Jail: How to Break Your Shackles When You Cant Afford to Quit, by Robert Hochheiser (almost finished this one but it was astonishingly similar to the Idiot one (i.e. Kiss the Boss's A--).

This Time I Dance by Tama Kieves (finished)

Great inspiration for finding work that you love. But I gotta say there must have been substantial parental funding involved.

Passionate Marriage by David Schnarch, Ph.D. (about 1/3rd read)

I bought this book, frankly, to see how to get true "It's Our Honeymoon!" passion back into my marriage. WORKS!!! (Well, sort of.) The author's main focus is "differentiation" or being content with who you are w/o looking to your partner to affirm your desireability or worth, and expecting your partner to make you complete. It's a hard concept to understand, much less to explain. But I get it and my marriage has sored on the passion scale!

The Seven Principles for Making Marriage Work by John M. Gottman, Ph.D. (about 1/4 read)

My new psychologist recommended this book to me. So I'm reading it. I have to say that I like Passionate Marriage a lot more because it involves sex. But this book promises sex later. I WANT IT NOW!

(drum roll, please) And finally, The Relaxation & Stress Reduction Workbook by too many people to list here. (Just begun)

All of these are workbooks in which you are asked to WRITE responses to exercises. Well, I love books. I love owning books (mostly softcover, never a mass market paperback -- those you use to light fires) and actually WRITING in a book is forbidden in my world! I don't even dogear books that I own (and don't you dare if I loan one to you!). So in this Relaxation & Stress Reduction work book I had to actually WRITE on the first page "This is MY book and I give myself permission to write in it w/ INK and even when my writing is very shaky -- like now."

Then to round things out I'm reading a novel about the Holocaust! OMG, what was I thinking?

Actually, I will tell you what I was thinking when I bought that book. I wanted to read about people who truly suffered through a war or because of a war so that I could try to make myself feel better in comparison.