You Only Get What You Give

Is yoga spiritual?  Sure.

So is running.

So is knitting.

So is accounting.

So is any activity, pastime, occupation, whatever.

Where "is" equals "can be."

Why are you doing it?  How are you doing it?  Are you doing it mindfully?  Does it help you engage in the most rigorous possible self-examination?  Does it make you question your every relationship with the world?  Finally, are you prepared to do it for a really, really long time, until such point where it provides the answers to everything, until it encompasses everything?

All of those questions are much more important than what the it is.  In my completely elementary view, those questions, or some more eloquent, comprehensive, and advanced statement of them, are the most important thing with which a person can concern themselves.

Those questions are everything.

So are kittens.

A Valentine for You

Having done a lot of gratitude posts lately, I was a little hesitant to go forward with the following concept for Valentine's Day.  I'm also conscious of not blowing up anyone's spot.  I guess it's ok to put people's names in these blog entries, but I do want to respect the privacy of everyone, especially the people for which I am most grateful.

But then I thought again.  The world needs nothing so much as it needs joy, equanimity, compassion, and kindness.  In that spirit, Happy Valentine's Day to everyone, but especially to the following people.  I'm keeping names out of it, but I'll be as specific as I can so you know when you're getting shouted out.

The Anthem.  Get Your Damn Hands Up

• To my family, for everything ever but especially for their support over the last year.
• To my professional colleagues who have stood by me through the last year.  I learned that the upper boundary of the best behavior from caring, dedicated professionals is much higher than I had thought.
• To my friends  who have been with me from the jump.  I could not have made it through without you.
• To my friends who I just connected with over the past year.  You've made life in North Carolina richer and more fun than I thought possible.
• To everyone who has contributed to my yoga practice ever.
• To all the students I have had the pleasure of teaching.
• To the airplanes and internet providers that keep me close with all of the above.
• To the sun, the moon, the sky, the earth, and the spirit.
• To Lindsey Andrews, whose former FB profile pick I've been looking for an excuse to steal for months.  Words to live by.

11 Things For Which I'm Grateful

1) The grammatical constructions "for which," "to which," and so on.  They make me feel smart.

2) Pitchers and catchers in eight days.

3) Lavoy Allen balling out.  If they really wanna do this thing, the Sixers need toughness and physical play.  Lavoy isn't enough, but he's been a pleasant surprise.  He battles his man on defense on every position, he rebounds, he hustles, and he makes open jumpers.

4) Recently, the Alliance for Student Activites, an organization dedicated to the promotion of the value of student activities for middle school and high school students, launched its "When X=Student Activities" campaign.  This presentation and its accompanying parts are a grassroots effort that will change the public education debate in this country, and I am proud to be a part of this effort.  Please click on the link above and "like" us.

5) The opportunity to work with Bob Tryanski on #4

6) "Postcards from Hell" by The Wood Brothers

7) The staff of the PASC Grove City Gold Workshop

8) David Uzumeri says that Frank Quitely is almost done with his issue of Grant Morrison's Multiversity, which may come out this summer.

9) A semester of leave, which allowed me to submit on Sunday the best article manuscript I have ever written and researched.

10) "This too shall pass, so raise your glass to change and chance.
And freedom is the only law.
Shall we dance?"

11) New opportunities

January in Review

Analytics?  Analytics.  This will be a recurring feature in which I hold myself accountable and review how I did the month before, all in an effort to do better in the future

Days Blogged: 31 of 31, for a 100 percent blog rate

Days Missed, January: 0

Days Missed, 2012: 0

Southern Rap Classic Earned?  Oh, indeed.

Most Viewed Post: Her and Me, January 1st

My Favorite Post: How To Change The World, January 28th

Post I Wish I Had To Do Over: The Ice Cube/Yoga post from yesterday.  I'm in the middle of finishing an article submission of my scholarly work, and I was way too fried to take on something that ambitious.

Three Things I Learned

1. Writing about magic does not go over with my initial audience.
2. TWEDP can be a way to highlight the wonderful things that my friends are doing, and those stories seem to connect with readers.
3. Writing every day is something I can manage.

Three Goals for February

1. Clean up one of my yoga pieces and submit to Elephant Journal.
2. Write about the work to which I am contributing for the Alliance for Student Activities.
3. Write every day.

Reader Ratings: Super.  Thanks for your time and your support.

How to Change the World

Anyone working in the nonprofit or foundation worlds can tell you about the emphasis on proof.  The people with the money necessary to make good things happen want to see evidence that the program they're funding makes a difference, usually in terms of measurable outcomes like higher standardized test scores for kids or rates of employment for adults.  And that's all great.  I'm a quantitative researcher, and I want to see proof of effectiveness too, especially because contemporary statistics provides us with a dizzying array of tools that allow us to measure and isolate effects of various factors.

And yet...

I just read this wonderful Washington Post article about ReWired for Life, the program started by Sonja Sohn, aka Kima from The Wire.  When Sohn started this program, she didn't have a solid research base that informed her approach.  Hell, it's not even clear that she had an approach, beyond a vague notion that the remedial class from Season 4 seemed promising.

What she does have, though, is a commitment to making a difference and the knowledge that the people she wants to help need to be equal partners in the endeavour. Educators know that the single most important step to helping anyone is getting him or her to buy in.  Once they're invested, once they care, you can get somewhere.  Incredibly difficult challenges will still arise, but if the person cares, the two of you can work through it together.  The two of you can figure out where s/he went wrong and how to avoid similar problems in the future.

The foundation of any effective program of uplift has to be a desire to engage.  Engagement is incredibly difficult because real engagement is a two-way process.  If you want to help people, you have to allow them to have a voice in how they want to be helped, and you have to be open to those times when they're going to help you.  Your program is absolutely going to change from what you intended.

I wonder if our focus on measurable impact gets in the way of engagement.  I kind of doubt whether Sohn's program will show statistically significant outcomes, at least in its first few years.  She's working with a very small sample size, and the kids in ReWired are the highest of high risk.  Maybe her biggest "obstacle" to demonstrating her program works is that, right now, she has a purposefully flexible program that changes to meet the needs of her partners, the kids she's trying to help.

Can a flexible program measure its impact in a way that will satisfy people obsessed with the bottom line?  Will enough donors recognize that ReWired for Life and programs like it represent our best chance at truly effective philanthropy and give them the chance to offer the people who need uplift a voice?

I really hope so, because, sh!t, reading about ReWired for Life gave me a great deal of hope.  Big ups, Kima Greggs.

Practice. All is coming.

What I take from the Yoga Sutras: if you do any one thing correctly for long enough, you will eventually know everything, reach nirvana, find heaven, and so forth.

But I didn't learn that from the Yoga Sutras.

I learned that from this stupid little summer camp that I attended in 1992 and, 20 years later, somehow run.

Whatever you love to do, keep doing it.  Do it when it stinks.  Do it when it hurts.  

Because you come out the other side and learn...everything worth knowing.

From one thing.

And if you're looking for that one thing, I suggest pandas.

Pain and Gratitude

One of the things I have discovered in the first couple weeks of this project is that it has allowed me to start to talk about things I have previously been uncomfortable talking about.

So.

Let's talk about pain.

If you're a reader this close to TWEDP's inception, you probably know me fairly well, so you know 2011 was an incredibly rough year.  My 2011 ended 8 days ago, as did the Really Bad and Unfair Thing (which we'll call REBUT, because it's funny).  Of course, REBUT may be over, but I have a lot of hurt, anger, frustration, helplessness, disbelief, and fear left.

In short, I have a sadness.

Because I tend to compare things maybe a little too much, I've started to think about the last time I had this big a sadness about me nine years ago.  For all the similarities, the two major differences between 2003 and now are most important.

One, the stuff that happened in 2003 was much, much worse.  At the end of the day, if the people you love are still around, you're doing ok.

Two, I am so much better equipped to deal with pain now.  Age and experience, and the growth and perspective and wisdom that come with it, are just about the most valuable things we can have.  If you're significantly younger than I am, know that it really, truly does get better, not just because tough times don't last but because you start to know that they won't last and you better understand how to bide your time and deal until they end.

Yoga also gets a shout out here.  Through yoga, I have learned to accept what I can't change.  When I was 25, the idea of being really, really sad mad me think I was somehow broken and inferior.  So, in addition to being sad, I was frantic all the time about why I was so sad.  As you can imagine, this combination of sad and frantic did not produce optimal results.

Now, though--ok, I've got a sadness, just like I did before.  That sadness is going to be around for awhile.  I will do everything I can to make sure it leaves as quickly as possible, but I'm not going to try to chase it off with a torch and pitchfork.  It'll be here until it goes, and that's ok.  In the meantime, I might as well make friends with the sadness.  We spend a lot of time reading bad Star Wars books and staring out the window at nothing in particular.  That's what the sadness wants to do, and really, it's not that bad.  I like Star Wars.

Once I accepted the sadness, I could put it into some sort of perspective, which makes it pretty easy to remember that's not all I've got.  I've got the best, best, best mom and dad on Earth.  I've finally got a crew of filthy Durhamites who make the South feel like home.  I've got a disturbingly loyal friend that calls me every day for no particular reason and with whom I share at least 50 percent of a brain.  I've got a yoga community with classes that keep me challenged and instructors who seem to sense when I could really use a compliment.  I've got an organization that trusts little ol' me to follow in the footsteps of a legend and teach 100 high school kids how to be better leaders and people.

LOVINNNNNNNNNNNNNNNN IS WHAT I GOT.

(Couldn't resist)

Yup, I got a sadness, but I got a lot of other things that make the sadness seem far less daunting and ensure the sadness isn't going to stick around.  In the meantime, sad sucks, but it's not the worst thing on Earth.

Being Chelsea Handler is.

And if it's Saturday, PANDAS

When Responsibilities Collide

I pride myself in adult behavior.

Those of you who know me are laughing, so let me be more precise: Being an adult comes so unnaturally to me that when I DO show responsible behavior, I am very proud of myself.  When I am on time for a meeting, or pay attention when a speaker is kinda boring, or avoid speeding in excess of 20 mph over the limit, I feel as if I have won a great victory over myself.

On the flip side, no part of this whole "adult" thing is more difficult to me than when what the responsible thing to do is unclear.

The Pennsylvania of Association of Student Councils has a state board meeting this weekend.  I just missed my flight to go there because I have, or am just getting over, a nasty stomach virus.

On one hand, I feel very responsible.  I am, without a doubt, sick.  Tuesday night was an epic of stomach-churning awfulness that saw me fall asleep in pain at 5 in the morning.  The last thing the board needs is me spreading the North Carolina Zombie Stomach Apocalypse Virus to all of them.

On the other hand, I feel like a complete slacker.  I'm better today.  I'm not in agony like yesterday, and I have a feeling that by tomorrow I'll be right as rain.  So what if I can't really stand up for more than 10 minutes at a time without needing to lie down for an hour afterwards?  I'M A MAN.  MEN DON'T LET SICK STOP BUSINESS.

I didn't go, which I am sure was the correct decision.  Now what I need to do is work on not feeling guilty all weekend.  As usual, I need to read up on my Yoga Sutras.  I find the practice of non-attachment to be most difficult when it involves the good things in your life.  The guilt of not living up to my highest expectations of what I should be as a teacher/person/researcher/friend/state board member weighs on me, even though I know no living person can always meet his/her loftiest goals for themselves.  Sometimes life gets in the way.

To my fellow board members: it kills me that I won't be with you this weekend, but I'll see you in March.