A Temporary Austinite

The Colorado River on my morning run

It's been a week since I've arrived in Austin and I've basically hit the ground running. Week one of Yoga Teacher Training is complete, my body hates me, but my mind wants more: "Moooaaaar!" That's a good thing right? My shoulders disagree.

So to fill up all of my non-yoga time and believe me, there's a lot of it, I've been trying to explore the city. It's large and slightly overwhelming. I am definitely not a city girl though the potential to become one is very, very good. I knew I would like Austin when I got here, but I didn't think I'd like it this much. To be honest, it just feels kind of normal to be here. Like Cinderella's foot in her slipper, I slipped right in. 

I'm a lover not a loner, though, and there's something to be said about the ease and comfort of good old friends you already know. While I've met so many amazing people so far, there's still the whole process of 'getting to know you, do I like you, will you like me, will we mesh or are we just different levels of weird that we'll never figure out a common ground?' and it's onerous. I'm not going to lie. Plus, I think that "re-joining" the hearing world has sent me for a loop. I feel somewhat spoiled that I've created a huge friend-family of deaf people and people who know ASL that when I go back to lip-reading and trying really hard to keep up with conversations in loud acoustically-unfriendly rooms, I'm lost. I don't know how I've managed to do this for so long before I discovered the deaf community and really, I can't remember how I did it.

I have faith though. Practically everyone is a transplant to Austin so they all have this general accepting vibe and willingness to help the newbies. It's pretty awesome because coming from a place where everyone knew each other for ages, I felt like I could start over. Try on different versions of myself and see what I like. No one's here to judge or to say, "That's not who you are." I'm making myself who I am and I like it so far. Plus, the rate of normalcy that people treat doing things alone is astounding. It's nice to not be gawked at so much.

I just keep telling myself, "Look, you got into a car with nothing but a bag to drive 22 hours all by yourself to go take Yoga Teacher Training at a school you've never even been to in a new city full of strangers. If you got this far, you have no choice but to go further."

"To be alive is the biggest fear humans have. Death is not the biggest fear we have; our biggest fear is taking the risk to be alive - the risk to be alive and express what we really are."
-The Four Agreements; Don Miguel Ruiz