Introspection/naughtiness

All right, that's it for me and yoga for this semester! It's absolutely pointless! There hasn't been a single class this semester where I didn't spend more than half of the time wishing I was (were!) elsewhere. I'm stopping, and I'll make another stab at it next semester...

This afternoon my thoughts were distinctly and particularly elsewhere, mostly I was musing about what it is I'm not liking about yoga, with the result that my poses were comically half-hearted and pitiful. Finally the substitute teacher called me on it & reasonably affectionately but pointedly scolded me, pointing out that though when one is really quite ill it is not a good idea to do yoga, if one is just tired or out of sorts it should be restorative and invigorating. I can't remember the exact words she described, but it crystallized what I've already been feeling: the thing I do that makes me feel really vivid and focused and energetic even when I'm ruinously tired is swimming!

An hour and a half of yoga is an hour and a half I could have used for a swim today, and it is idiotic for me to waste the time this way, especially if I'm being so half-assed. I really love all the other stuff I do, this is pointless if I'm not going to pay attention and throw myself into it...

And the part of the brain that has sometimes been very engaged with yoga is all needed right now for learning butterfly properly!

So that's it. (Not as dramatic as it sounds, probably only three or four more classes this semester anyway.) I felt extraordinarily cheerful the moment I decided this, very smiley, it was a kind of productive naughtiness that I feel I do not have often enough--I often feel guilty, I rarely feel naughty, the latter is on the whole to be encouraged if one is fairly rule-abiding most of the time. Of course I could not actually walk out on the spot, that would just be rude, but I had the satisfaction of a mischievous decision and a reclaiming of energy and a useful time slot for more important purposes...

(Ironically I had been considering skipping class today because of work-related pressures, only I sort of have a hard-and-fast rule that while sometimes an exercise plan needs to get canceled because of a specific work obligation, and while certainly work should be taken into account when making season-type plans--I partly didn't train for my first marathon this fall because I needed my wits about me for work...--exercise should not be canceled out of a general sense of vast amounts of work to be done. The work will get done, probably at the expense of sleep, and I have many more years under my belt of doing excessive amounts of work than of exercising regularly...)