Not busy, no.

Anna told me she was being fast tracked for a promotion. I realised I’ve been doing this for just about seven years. Christ seven years and I haven’t got a promotion - I actually took it off my email signature and I let my website disappear without the renewal fee. Haven’t done a course for a really long time, haven’t wanted to, haven’t looked. And I like it. I still like it but I don’t want to talk about it, there’s literally nothing I could find more boring than you asking how my work is going. Nothing less relevant, but I see you need something from me, you need me to tell you one little thing I am doing that feels like success so that we can all relax. But instead I say, weird my classes aren’t that busy, and, I don’t have that many - and I don’t mind. But what are you going to do next? I don’t know. Seven years is a long time to keep saying inhale and exhale like I mean it. And I do, I do sort of mean it.

Seven years is sort of nothing and it was mostly my 20’s so what does it matter that I don’t have a pension or a prospect yet. But seven years is less fun in my 30’s and can it go that much further without any kind of plan? Sometimes I have won the lottery because it’s 8am and I’ve finished work and the world is mine. And sometimes I have won because I have nothing to say about work so I have all these things to say about other things. And sometimes I’m at the front of the room and people are watching me and I’m demonstrating a lunge again and honestly, if anything my hips are tighter. For seven years I’ve sat in coffee shops with other yoga teachers trying to understand why we are so tired when we only work two hours a day.

On Tuesday Spotify went down around the world in time for my evening class and I taught without music. And there were seven people in the room plus me, which isn’t ideal for a peak time class, so we’re wondering why, is it me? Is it this time? Is it you? But still seven people held a bit more presence than usual and so could I and we felt something like peace for a bit. And I thought it isn’t about the fucking lunges though is it, that’s not why we came. But sometimes we can’t bear to be here. And I get it, the same room with me in the same clothes, saying the same things I’ve been saying for years. Sometimes believing it, sometimes not. Relentlessly though, for seven years at the front of the room - and, and and and, we’re looking for something all of us. And, it’s not here and then, suddenly it is.

Wondered out loud with a friend doing laps of the marshes why the numbers have dwindled. But I’m good at what I do, and yet still? So I’m more jaded now. I can’t promise anything so I won’t say it, I wont touch you anymore because it can’t be that you come for the touch - that you’re looking for it, that I am a fake plaster over the gaping hole. Don’t worry we all have the gaping hole I’m just not going to pretend it can be another way. I’ll just tell you where to put your right hand, I’ll maintain presence, I’ll speak slowly and tell you to relax your jaw, I promise I can do that. And I can’t promise the miracles and I don’t want to make you cry at something poignant I said anymore. It can’t be like that. I can’t make up a routine every week that inspires you, I can’t teach you to do things I don’t do, I can’t say I believe it’s a good idea to work your shoulders that hard - it wasn’t for me. I can’t ask for shapes that fucked my back, I can’t tell you this is the way. What if it isn’t?

I’m just saying I realised the other day I’m the only one wearing jogging bottoms with stains on them. I’m the only one with my socks on sometimes. I’m just saying I can’t be inspirational. So the numbers dwindle and I actually don’t mind, it’s just this steady beat of getting up at 6 on Thursdays and walking somewhere even if it’s dark, even if it’s raining, even if only one other person makes the trip. What a strange strange little life. We don’t know each other and we know each other. But I can’t be the person who you imagine when you get into bed with your wife because of the way I made eye contact when you came in. I can’t be your best friend because you told me that thing at the end of the class. I can’t promise it’ll be better. It can’t be that you came every week until I declined your offer for coffee and felt bad about it, and you never came back.

Anyway I was thinking about how I used to go to that teacher and I thought we were sort of friends. Not friends exactly, just a kind of mutual respect for what we were both doing. Anyway I realised I never felt good the next day for smashing myself for 90 minutes and I realised he stopped following me on Instagram and I realised it was just about me wanting him. Or at least, his approval. And I realised without that nothing existed and I thought, that’s fucked up isn’t it? That these rooms are run by charismatic people who withhold approval to keep us coming back. And I thought, what if I kept going, what if I got to a handstand one day, what then? Neck tension? I just forgot that for a long time it was a job about what your body can do. And I forgot that for a long time it was a life of trying too fucking hard.

And now, now probably I don’t try enough. And now probably I could strive a bit. But I prefer to opt out of most conversations about it. Anyway I am sick of all the trying and I think about the tone of people’s voices in yoga studios and the desperation of having something to say and I’d rather sit on the floor and say nothing. I was thinking about the way someone can come into the class and ruin a day because I didn’t feel I did a good enough job transforming their soul in the allotted hour. And I’m thinking about the games people play and maybe the reason we’re all so tired is because they just play out in a yoga studio. And I just don’t think it’s like that with Pilates. In Pilates a dicks a dick and there isn’t the need to take it upon ourselves to transform a room in an hour.

I was thinking about all the things I’ve said and all things I’ve heard about the way someone else did it. They talked too much, the said too much shit, their music was bad, they fucked up a queue, I didn’t like them, I didn’t like the way they said things, it wasn’t creative enough, there wasn’t enough spiritual meaning, there wasn’t enough planning, they were flustered, they were annoying, they touched me too much - in the wrong way, they tried too hard, they didn’t try, they had their eyes closed too much, they were too intense. Was that good or did you just make me feel uncomfortable? I can’t tell anymore but I don’t care like I used to. I won’t let it ruin my day that it didn’t work out like I wanted it to. But is this how it should be, are other industries this weird? Is it normal to need to mute everyone for being unbearable? Am I the problem?

I was thinking about how my sister had a nemesis in her job. They didn’t know they were her nemesis but they were. Anyway, I am certain that her brain is better, I am certain she is better. Like she’d tell me I am. And I was thinking how tedious it is listening to most people talk about their jobs. And I was wondering why we think it should be different for us. Because, people are annoying. And, jobs will always be tedious and and and, there is more than this. I was thinking that you expect something from me because it’s yoga that I do. And I was thinking how in half the rooms I feel inadequate when I say what I do because I watch your face change and your eyes lose interest. And I don’t mind, I think it’s worth doing, and I sometimes lose my mind and blurt, but I write too! I am a writer! Don’t worry. And in half the rooms people think I must be more golden than I am, that I am calm and peaceful and live a blessed life. And yeah I do appreciate bird song and I do take pictures of blossom and then I want someone to say, oh I had a hard day too. ANYWAY, seven years, all these life skills along the way, hardly any money, a sore lower back, an often full heart, sometimes a struggle, the best of people, the very best of people! The option to not know what people do for their jobs, just to see them trying in their p.e. Kits, pedestals and the opposite of pedestals, freedom and struggle at another sick day, love and light and everything falling apart because no matter what you write on Instagram no one is coming to your classes. The end.