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I have been having meaningful conversations lately and haven’t had to need to post here. Maybe I’ll be back when I don’t have an outlet.

Live content has been topical, humorous, or philosophical. I only lack in writing to myself.

I am surprised at the resilience. I still miss things, but I feel bolstered by the relationships I am building. Set the boundaries. Do it right. It’s the way things should have been if we had done things correctly.

Cryptic.

I know 10 years from now, I’ll look back at these posts and wonder wtf I meant by it all. I suppose we interpret things the way we want or need them to be.

I thought I had more to say but lately I find myself empty.

I tried to be something I was not. I tried to talk to too many people and peanut buttered myself across friendships.

But I do best when I am a confidante and not the speaker. I do best with friendships formed organically and not forced out of desperation. I would not have survived modern online dating. I cannot put myself out there like that.

I find myself empty because I don’t want to share my thoughts with everyone. Just the select few who can help play ping pong with my thoughts. The few that I cherish. The slow burn.

The mind naturally wipes the memories that define you until nothing remains. Don’t need Lacuna to do it for you.

Sometimes, soon after a precious moment, I hold tight to it because I don’t want to forget. But after some time and space I look back and cringe at the naive things I felt and believed in. After some time, I consciously and subconsciously purge it from my history. Set the bits to 0. Inaccessible memories. Irretrievable.

Right now I don’t want to lose them. I’m sad that they are fading. In a few months they won’t exist anymore.

After subbing another yoga class today, someone came up to me and said she really enjoyed my class and that it was very good. I said thanks and smiled. After a few minutes she came back and said that she wanted to explain why it was good since “good” doesn’t mean much – she really liked my cues because she knew exactly where to go and where to place her hands and feet. She also felt like I built up the class with purpose (someone requested half moon pose and we really did everything leading up to it.) My sequence was meaningful.

Sometimes there is a high that comes from a compliment from a stranger or someone new – as if there is a fresh reassurance to my ego on my qualities as a teacher. Sometimes so much weight is put into their words. I almost thought about teaching regularly for a moment. Almost.

Not enough credit is given to my regular students when I taught weekly. They may not have said “Great class!” every time accompanied by a detailed description of what they enjoyed. But they showed up every week. Some even drove an hour in traffic just to take my class. In retrospect, I took for granted the steadiness of their practice and dedication to showing up for me (presumably – maybe it was just convenient.)

This isn’t to say that the one-offs won’t eventually become a constant presence in my future yoga classes. A spark sometimes leads to the steadiness of a candle.

But there is something about the regulars who show up week over week for many years. It may not be immediately obvious why they showed up.

Oook. Gave it some more thought on my poor Grand Canyon simile below. It can still be that a friendship starts with a slab of granite. In time you can build something on top – your dream house, your garden, your forest. But the water can still seep into the rocks wearing it out underneath until one day a sink hole forms and everything collapses.

Was that better?

There is the concept of bids in relationships (romantic, parent/child, friends). They’re attempts, big or small to make a connection and show up as a question, a “hey look at this” or sharing something interesting to them (a sentence, a picture, a thought.)

They manifest at sent IG Reels, asking to do something together, sharing a small observation. Your job, as the receiver, is to reciprocate. An acknowledgement, a returned question, showing concern, a laugh.

Relationships slowly die when the bids become ignored. Relationships rapidly die when the bids are treated with hostility.

You can drift apart without bids from either side. It starts off slowly like a small rift made by raindrops. But it slowly carves away at the delicate surface. You lose track of the drift until one day you wake up the Grand Canyon has formed and you don’t know how to connect with the other person. You try to fill the gaps with sand but after so long of space and distance, the connection becomes harder to build, but not impossible.

Actually, I’m not sure if that is the right analogy. All friendships start with a clean slate. A fresh slab of granite. Then how do they build or can it really only go downhill with the etchings of rejection? I didn’t think this through.

I thought about the bids when I think about past relationships. I forgot about this but he would do swing dancing at our college campus because I was interested and we had a good laugh at how mismatched we were. He was game to go on small adventures with me. I was game to watch horror movies with him, which I despised. Books were shared. Music was introduced. A never ending journey to learn more about each other and build a world together.

In that sense, the returned bids for togetherness built a positive relationship where you never stop having fun together. (It didn’t pan out because I was emotional labile like a toddler despite being college aged.) You invite them into your world, and they are willing to be immersed. But they don’t lose themself – they invite you to their hobbies and you are excited to experience it with them.

Even now, you have to spend time sharing each others’ loves and interests. Invite them into your world and they should show some willingness to partake. If not, then are they worth it? (Mostly to lovers and friends – for kids you kinda have no choice. Gotta work on your knowledge of dinosaurs or princess tiaras. Unconditional love.)

I subbed a yoga class yesterday and it was the first one in awhile where it felt right. I don’t know if it was the group of students, the weather, my mood, or what but I walked away feeling like all was right in the world.

It was only today that I realized that I taught a class that I would have wanted to take and that resonated with others.

Over the years, I’ve taught a variety of ways – music/no music, hot classes, faster/power classes, yin. I subbed many classes and tried to replicate the vibes of the teacher I was subbing – some with energy levels and pacing far above my baseline. I was trying to be something I was not in an effort to appeal to everyone.

The thing is, you can never make everyone happy. I have, in the same class, had someone walk out, but also have someone ask if I could come and teach regularly.

In the end, I realize I need a medium slow class. Lots of grounding, focus on the present, slow down the mind. Yoke the mind with the body.

Now that I’m in my 40s, I’m reaching a point (not totally there yet) where it matters less and less what other think of me. This isn’t to say that I will become some sociopath all of a sudden. But to be unburdened by trying to put up a mask is liberating. I look at my older son who is the same person in public and at home. Energy unbounded by the constraints of trying to be something he is not.

I have realized that who I am, underneath it all, can still find kindred spirits. It may not be everyone in the world, but we all find each other.

One of my favorite types of friends are the ones that you can always pick up right where you have left off, even if it’s been months or even years. You don’t skip a beat.

The conservations go far. They remember the details. The help make the darkest moments seem funny. You walk away from the conversation feeling unburdened because you were able to share a piece of you without judgement. The advice is so sharp and it replaces your anxious ruminations with new brighter thoughts. Enough raw material to survive the dullness that comes from living a life of repetition.

I was going to write something else today but had a dense conversation with a friend where they were able to read everything about me instantaneously, and the advice given was so on point that I feel derailed from the circles I had been running on. It’s not a bad thing for me at all as I have been in a dark place recently.

We laughed so hard that people at the cafe kept turning their heads.

There’s no appointment for the next hang out. It’ll happen when it does. There is no expectation for more or reciprocity.

I think I’m also struggling to write something insightful today because everything he said stirred so many new threads and I haven’t had time to sort through any of it.

There’s a scene in the movie Ratatouille where Anton Ego, the food critic, takes a bite of the titular dish and is immediately transported to his childhood, being comforted by his mother.

This past weekend I took my son to see “The Sound of Music.” While I was teary eyed for many scenes, the one that transported me the most was when the dad played and sung “Edelweiss.”

Immediately I remembered my childhood with my dad playing the guitar. The photo of my paternal grandparent holding a guitar. The memory my dad shared of his dad playing in some sort of old school garage band. I remembered watching the movie with Julie Andrews. My dad playing the song Edelweiss on the guitar. My dad teaching me my first guitar song.

I don’t know how much of music is really encoded in my genes or if it was the exposure to music in my youth. It wasn’t an intense exposure either – more like a sporadic, passing hobby from my dad.

But even now, while I’m not a die hard guitarist, I find myself regularly tinkering with some old songs. My favorites to play are “Blackbird” by the Beatles, and even the first song my dad taught me because it’s a cool sounding Japanese song.

I’m not sure if my kids will pick up my music hobby. I’m not inclined or creative enough to write my own songs but I enjoy putting small twists on the songs I already know.

I feel like many of the hobbies I have now are adult versions of childhood interests – many of which were shaped by my parents. Though many children deviate from the paths of their parents, some of us follow in their footsteps. I have friends who became dentists because their parents were dentists. I also have friends who are UX designers even though their parents own a restaurant.

But my grandfather worked at a railway station as the stationmaster until he passed. My dad grew up next to the train station. My dad had a lot of model trains in the house when I grew up. My oldest has wooden tracks looping around the house. (I know trains are a common favorite for kids, but the hobby for my son is persisting.) Even now every house we have owned is next to the rumbling tracks.

Is it coded into who I am to have an affinity to trains and music? To books? To being a daydreamer?

How much of who we are is defined by epigenetics, by nature, and how much by our environment?