Working from home is great, but I started to feel a bit stuck…
I’m not ‘into’ yoga. In fact, my meat-loving, hyper-rational, anti-spiritual, dairy-loving, milk substitute-avoiding self has always identified fairly strongly in the ‘non-yoga’ camp.
However, I just did a thing. Something I would NEVER have normally have even had the open-mindedness to try. I took a yoga-based training course over the last 4 weeks (finished today – hooray!).
Yep, very strange. Very strange indeed. The thing is, I actually found myself in desperate need of something. That something was not clear, but I knew it wasn’t getting it living my dream life working from home. Basically, yoga aside, it turned out to be – quite simply – COMMUNITY.
My job isn’t one that I can do in a co-workspace (and do I even want to do that?!), so despite loving being at home with my dogs, 4 years of isolated bliss had resulted in a large hole that needed to be filled. This particular training course was mainly awesome (ok, still skeptical about some aspects) but, most importantly, it gave me a commitment outside of the house where I had to get out and do things with a bunch of random people that I have absolutely nothing to do with. They were all lovely and I think many of them were there for different shades of the same reason (I was one of about 3 home alonists – the rest technically have ‘community’ in their offices, but it didn’t seem they were getting what they needed from their colleagues).
I hated the first session and spent much of the time thinking about what a mistake it was to even try and do something this un-‘ME’. But I stuck it out and look, there’s even a certificate.
This isn’t a conversion story…
I’m not saying I’m going to do yoga on a regular basis now that this course has ended. In fact, I’m really excited I now get my Wednesday evenings and Saturdays back , but it has made me super aware of two things:
It’s nice to feel part of something
It’s great to do something that you wouldn’t normally do
Will I be going back to yoga? I’m not sure. The benefits for me were quite clear today when we finished the class….. I felt connected to something beyond work and was bummed out that having to challenge myself in a completely random sphere of human activity was at an end. OK I guess I accidentally enjoyed it.
Oh, and we also used this book by Kate Swoboda “The Courage Habit”. Again, highly sceptical, but actually got me thinking outside my usual parameters – which turned out to be a good thing.
Well, time to plan another personal development journey I suppose!
What are your solutions to this community conundrum? Send me a message or leave a comment!
Thanks for reading! 🙂
H.A
