if you think you're enlightened...

Here's why blogging can be so difficult: being honest is hard. Right now all I want to do it hit my cat because he won't quit howling and jumping on the computer. It's been a long night. Lots of little irritating shit keeps happening. All my computers, both at home and the studio are going at 1995 speeds. Even though there was a lot of traffic through the studio today, we didn't come close to sales goals. Then there's the pesky cat, and a conversation with someone that made me realize that I'm angrier than I thought at an important person in my life. I realize that if you read this blog at all, you're well aware that I'm not perfect, but it's still hard to admit publicly, even if I've done it a bunch of times before. I really care what you think. Yes, you.

I didn't hit the cat. I did hit the chair near the cat, which scared him away for a few blissfully quiet seconds, but he came right back. I'm sure all he wanted was food and love, but shooing him away felt like the solution to the immediate problem, which was an annoying cat. I was in a hurry. He could wait.

So as all of this was happening, I was typing away that my amazing job as a small business owner consists mostly of being nice to people, data entry and trips to Ikea. And here's the corollary to the "being honest is hard" problem with blogging: being surface-y is boring. What's really happening is I want to kill my cat for being a cat, and I'm pounding away at the keyboard thinking that will somehow make the computer go faster. I feel knotted and weird and angry. I'd rather write about my awesome yoga practice and how great the business is going. But that is definitely not what is happening for me right this second.

There is a Buddhist saying that if you think you're enlightened, look at how you behave in relationships. To be honest, I don't know if I'm behaving well or not. Definitely not doing that great with George, the cat. I do know that there are hurt feelings and confusion and anger in a couple of my human relationships, some of which I am probably responsible for.

Part of what happened tonight was that I looked at teacher stats, and there are a handful of teachers that I have been worried about, and the stats confirm my fears. They're not retaining students. Originally, part of the concept of the Collective was that the teachers would be totally autonomous and teach however they wanted. Looking at it squarely, I think that was my way of ducking the fact that at a certain point I need to offer unsolicited feedback, which I hate and dread. In the early stages of the business, I was constantly scrambling and trying new things to keep the studio afloat, so I would just take teachers off the schedule when their classes weren't doing well. I didn't offer feedback or give them a chance to improve. There are lots of problems with that. What I know now that I didn't understand then is that the primary reason a class is successful is that the same teacher has been teaching it for a long time. That's just been my experience. So I haven't fired a teacher in a long, long time. I keep them around, but I don't say anything either, even when there are simple, clear things I see that they could do to be more effective. I want to be liked too much, so I actively avoid conflict and confrontation. This particular pattern is as old as I am. Changing it won't be easy.

One of the problems with saying nothing is that I get resentful because they don't understand something that I haven't told them yet, and the relationship suffers anyway. Then I go home and want to kill my cat.

(Note credit where due. There's a Bob Dylan line that I'm sort of poaching: "You keep expecting me to remember something you forgot to say." That's what I'm doing. Like some crazy woman Bob Dylan slept with for awhile.)

There has to be a better way. My job is more than data entry and trips to Ikea. There's toilet cleaning and screwing together the Ikea crap I buy. And I have to do a certain amount of work to make sure the quality of instruction at the studio is high, which will mean having a few difficult conversations.

 I haven't opened the Bhagavad Gita since the last time I blogged, which was like a million years ago. (I guess I'm not as spiritual as I was in early July.) But as Krishna tells Arjuna, we have to show up and do what we're supposed to do. That's yoga. So here's my plan: I'm going to take at least one class from every teacher on the schedule and offer everyone some feedback as well as a look at their stats. Most of what I have to say is actually really positive, so a lot of the conversations will be fun.

As far as my other relationships, all I can say is I don't feel particularly enlightened when I'm alone, but in certain difficult relationships, I can feel particularly un-enlightened. The Buddhists, as usual, have it right. I usually feel like most of us are just bumbling along doing the best we can, but mostly thinking of ourselves and mostly blind to how all of our old habits and fears are directing us. That's me, anyway. As I get older and work at it, I get slightly more skilled at bumbling with some direction. I know better what I want now, and I'm more apt to vocalize it than I used to be. I guess the modern psych term for that is boundaries. I've set some boundaries in my personal life that not everyone involved is comfortable with. I think I'm offering enough, but it's less than what they're used to.

But at least I got clear and said it. At work, it's time to do a better job of getting clear about what the studio and its students need and vocalizing that to my teachers. I've done it, however ungracefully, in my personal life, in really weighty, important relationships, so I should be able to do it here. One would think.

After that, I will clean the toilet. Or maybe before. I'm sure it needs it.