When I started high school I remember thinking that my whole life was going to change because….I would be falling asleep at night with the image of a different set of surroundings in my head (that is, the knowledge that I would be spending most of my hours in a different building than I had for my five years of middle school was a minimal but constant presence).
I was thinking about that today because the yoga teacher who gave the quote about anxiety/depression/mindfulness (see here) also talked about how she had, before becoming a yoga teacher and thus having a more variable and peripatetic schedule, worked in an office setting, and although she didn’t like the job itself she did find calm in knowing that eight hours of her day would be in a constant setting.
Because I usually–though less frequently with the growing preference for Skype–see students in their homes, there’s no one place that I go Monday through Friday. Obviously, both the yoga teacher and I know where we’re going (I assume…but when I get a last-minute call, there isn’t any time for anticipation, and I’m already out of the house, so that actually has less of an effect); it’s the holding-in-your-mind of so many different places that feels more tiring than having a fixed destination.
(Not that I’m complaining. I like going to different places every day. But it’s a different background state of mind.)
