Homo goes to Yoga...

A few significant things that happened this week.

In no particular order:

1) I changed my phone number. I now have a Newfoundland phone number.

Even though I've been here for a few months, it took changing my number to make me admit that I actually live on the Isle of Slush and Sealskin.

2) I quit my job. 

I'm not a quitter, and there was a lot of soul-searching/self-flagellation involved in this decision.

But, before you label me a lazy leech on society, I had valid reasons. Overall, the job sucked. 12 hour shifts. Paid no money. 12 hour shifts. Emotionally taxing. 12 hour shifts. The company was whack. 12 hour shifts. My union dues were ridiculous. 12 hour shifts. I had to walk five kms each way, clambering over the piled-up walls of frozen snow that pass for sidewalks in St. John's.

Did I mention the 12. HOUr. Loooooong. SHIFts?

You want me to work for how many hours???

End Rant.

Long story short, I am (f)unemployed once again. Back to pounding the pavement and not getting hired at coffee shops because I am overeducated/ too old!, and nobody wants to hire employees who might get uppity in their dotage.

Maybe I can talk about Hobbes while I bag groceries. Perhaps I can spout Chaucer while I clean toilets. The opportunities in St. John's are endless...

3) Because I now have spare time again, and because I bought a Groupon months ago and it expires in a week, I went to yoga last night.

I felt like I was in a low budget reproduction of the Salvador Dali Museum in Spain.

Utterly surreal experience.

The instructor was lovely, and spoke in a very zen whisper. Her voice was the only zen part.

Yoga, St. John's Style:

• I couldn't find the studio, and wandered around lost in the dark and snow for twenty minutes. I shake my fist at Google maps.

• When I finally became un-lost, the house/studio was also an art gallery/someone's private dwelling.

• The studio? was an art storage room on the third floor, and there were no signs to indicate whether this was indeed a yoga studio or I was breaking and entering into someone's home. I crept up the stairs, tentatively whispering "heeellooo?".

• Beige carpet. Wall to wall. 

Yup.

• We had to arrange our mats in two rows, facing each other, with the instructor in the middle. This meant that in cobra pose my face was less than thirty centimetres from the sweaty man on the opposite mat. How intimate.

• The slowed-down Bollywood-style soundtrack our practice was set to. I almost lost it when one song repeated "And then you will find your guru, and it will be great!" or something along those lines.

• I couldn't stop sneezing.

• A gigantic painting of an owl was staring me down in a sinister way. I kept one eye open during final Savasana.

•  I am now incapable of turning my gaydar off...and I couldn't help myself. I spent a large portion of the class trying to study another woman (not even a particularly attractive one) nonchalantly-sneakily-outofthecornerofmyeyewithoutmovingmyhead, to determine whether she was a homo (and also to determine who could hold boat pose longer). I still don't know, (and she can) and apparently I'm not that subtle, because the instructor kept reminding us to focus on our own practice. 

Dang. 

Sometimes Groupons end up being really expensive. Like when the six class pass becomes a single 1.5 hour long class, because now I can't go back because I'm the creepy lesbian and I'm afraid of the owl painting and allergic to dust mites. Like when that happens. 

And all of these factors together prevented me from reaching my transcendant/enlightened/lalaland yoga place.

Also, I was taking notes for a blog post in my head the entire time.

Insert gratuitous cat photo here. 

Sometimes I suspect I am missing the point of the whole yogic experience.