Well Hello :) It seems that I did have a lot to say for a short period of time there, thus my previous two blogs. Shortly after that time, the crazy train of life took yet another completely unexpected turn and drove me into a more internal quiet space. It was a time of me coming home early, reading my book, thinking and falling asleep to getting up, sitting outside the small Ashland apartment on my black chair with my blanket meditating, or staring out at magical old Bear Creek Mountain. I remember trying to describe how I felt at that time and thinking, "it is like I am climbing a mountain and I have no idea where the top is. It is the biggest challenge of my life. And I am just tired." During that time my life seemed to be crashing down and I was trying my best to reconfigure it. I was just about to throw in the towel of my Oregon life; call my previous partner that I moved away from 8 months ago to start this new life and tell him I couldn't talk or see him anymore, it was too difficult. I started to fantasize about the long train ride home. The soothing sway of the Empire Builder as it moved past green hills of windmills in Washington, through Iowa, the mountains of Montana and finally the slow open heart of North Dakota. I thought about the birch and maple trees of  Minnesota and lake superior, my friendships there and my past love, all with fervent intensity. I had to do something different and fast.

But...I am not fast about anything. I am more of a slow moving prairie chicken at the core. Slow like the landscape of the Midwest I grew up in. Where the sun seems to rise and set for an extra long time because of all the space it has to stretch out in. I had a small window of time to get on that train. To go back to where I came from before Oregon, not at all having any idea what I would do there. Then a series of events lead to something different. My pregnancy. An inception of a new life to join me in this one. A universal expression of energy with a uniqueness of its own, a blueprint, a pattern, a string that connects to everything else, a part of the web of energy in this immense unfathomable place.

This transition is not an easy one, and I didn't know how to continue my writing or any other direction I was going in after learning of this news. My partner and I discussed it and decided that I would move back in with him in a beautiful coastal town I hadn't lived in before just a little ways away from where we had lived. Being back in the relationship in a new town, new house and with roommates made moving back more appealing. I am 8 months pregnant now, and have been away from my independent "new life" and in this unexpected switchback for 3 months. I am slowly gathering my bearings.

I am hoping a new set of goals and aspirations in alignment with this new new life will become starkly clear as the days pass on. Now this life is no longer just my own, but is shared with two others. That is the biggest difference.

The best way I can end this first new blog in my new new life is with this beautiful piece of writing one of my dearest friends sent to us in an email:

Peace Lives in Me

I shelter it

All I can do is be myself

And that is enough for this world

I am strong 

and brave 

and bold

I'm confident

Empowered

I can do this

Live this dream

Engage in this life

I am giving

and growing 

and learning

I am free from the

Expectations of others

-Kerry Costello

Here is to everything, 

Blog 3 Complete.

Ariel

Oh-My-God-I'm-Going-To-Throw-Up;
The Waxing and Waning of this Crazy Roller Coaster Ride

Blog 2. Lets go.

Those Who Wander Are Not Lost. I think about this saying as I enter into my rented bedroom after a day of work, in this new town, where I am piecing together a new life and trying to remember to smile at myself more often then not. I walk in and leave the door ajar; my window open, allowing a nice breeze to buzz in and remind me of my connection to it all. I take a few very deep breaths and remember where I am.

I was nervous that after blogging once I wouldn't be able to regain my courage and blog a second time; but here I am, blogging away. This white blank screen telling me it has all the answers if only I would just write them. Who am I now? I think at this very moment. How has it changed in the last few days, hours? How has it changed since this morning?

It has been a very difficult couple of days. An extreme steamroller ride of unexpected pain and joy. My emotions seem to be as changing as the moon phases and other celestial bodies (does Mars break down crying?). I feel like lately each morning I wake up thinking, "Phew! I made it! I did it! I survived another night!" It seems like I can be ok, even joyful for a couple of days and then its like the sky comes crashing down again and I fall a part. Unable to understand what it is I am supposed to do to stabilize myself.

Someone at work mentioned this saying to me. But for some reason I interpreted it as Those Who Wander Are Lost and said out loud immediately, "Oh I hate that saying!" before realizing that my brain had taken it as an excuse to be hard on myself for not having a stable place, and had tweaked the wording just a bit. My co-worker was surprised. And then I quickly remembered what the actual saying was and what he in reality said and thought, "Oh right...I'm not lost."

I think now about all this newness in my life. How challenging this transition has been. How once again life as taken a turn that I had no way of being prepared for; and as the Moon grows large and incredibly close to the Earth and then moves slowly away again, I am left with a feeling of strangeness; an awkward awareness of something I don't understand but what desperately to get closer to. It's like an itch that moves me through these heavens everyday.

And I realized right before writing this that these challenges I am experiencing now, they are all opportunities for me to step into who I am. It is like each day something is saying to me, "Here you go. Just do it." Each day I am being asked to be me, to let go of what is holding me back and "just do it". "It" being everything I could ever dream of doing and experiencing.  To use every bit of confidence and potential I have. To step up. To fulfill my path, my essence, my true being. Even though I feel like I have no idea what that is or who that is and can easily get caught up on that sentiment. How am I supposed to get there if I don't have any idea where I am going? It's like I am being asked to drive to a certain destination without having any directions. And then I realize, this is how I live each day. This is how everyone lives. We are mostly a series of unpredictable impromptu decisions and moments, fluidly moving in and out from one moment to the next. I usually function by just going. That is my compass. And that is usually where my most meaningful experiences come from.

I do know that this is exhausting. Each moment saying to me, Go. Do it. Be. Live. Shine. It's like being constantly pushed onto an impromptu stage by the Universe. I get those same butterfly crazy feelings when trying to navigate my life that I do right before I speak up in front of a crowd or play music and sing in front of people or write a blog! It is a lot of pressure! But so much love comes from it, and so much beauty pours forth from this impromptu life.

I guess it is just a matter of feeling comfortable with not knowing the destination, or even understanding the ride. Just trying to answer the day and do it. Allowing myself to spin along with everyone else and all of the stars and planets. Waxing and waning, getting close to something and then farther away. And to just accept the ride and love it. I am grateful for these challenges that are demanding me to be myself. For example, currently I am being asked to Write more and Improve My Writing. And lately I am being asked to Play Music. Just Play. I have had so many unexpected opportunities, tumbling one after another like old saxophones falling out of a closet that has been locked for a very long time, to play music. All I have to do is jump on them; and trust that out there, among the mist are so many other opportunities that will make themselves present, that align with other things I long to do, like teach yoga and be in a relationship that surprises me by its unbound growth and beauty everyday (both things I want so badly!).

There is so much about life that makes you feel like you are going to throw up. Like right before you preform a piece of music or go on stage. You feel so sick and nervous. "Will I do all I came here to do?" And then you take the leap. And it is the most amazing blissful joyful rush you ever experience. We can do that all the time. We just have to get over the oh-my-god-i'm-going-to-throw-up part. 

Patience. Patience and Acceptance. And exercises that join me with my true self and remind me that I am a beautiful amazing woman, fluid with this life, and that I AM STRONG AND CAN DO ANYTHING. GO ME. And If I want to throw up, I can throw up! That's fine! This is hard stuff, but then I have to just keep on trying to get back on that stage...because that is what I want.

And really what else am I supposed to do.

Blog 2, Complete.
Love love love love LOVE (even when you are throwing up),
Ariel

Heelllooo Internet and interesting intricacies of Bloggers and Blogging. I am actually doing it. I decided about oh, two hours and forty five minutes ago (3am, it is now 5:45...) that I would start a blog. Greatly inspired by my best friend Samantha Veldhouse's Blog, the book I am reading, literature and writing in general, and whatever it is that happens to human brains at three am in the morning. I don't know much about the latter except that it has to do with reconstruction and reconfiguration of some kind. This is not the blog that I have intended to write about including the topics of Yoga and Health. That will come later. I spent approximately forty five minutes trying to navigate this blogging site and am surprised at my own determination and still confused about many of its aspects and how to edit my profile smoothly. I feel like I am walking on a different planet, with shaky legs, trying to get used to this virtual gravity and ethereal like, nearly allusive atmosphere.

I decided to blog for one main simple reason: to feel more connected with a couple of my dear friends who also blog. I live very far away from them now and somehow feel like this new planet is a place where we can all hang. After rolling around the idea of blogging for another five seconds, I realized with dumbfoundness that it is something I need to do. I have probably needed to do it for a long time. It struck me (at three am this morning when I was completely exhausted and unable to sleep) that it is an essential part of my journey of self discovery and re-identifiship.

Reasons why I like Blogging so far and why it is better then Journalling:
1. It is much faster.
2. Being on the Internet and exposing details about yourself is very weird but lovely and feels...nice.
3. I am currently finding that I have a lot to say.
4. Having an audience opens a whole other door in the world of writing. Your writing style changes, and I am curious about what new exciting adventures and perspectives my writing will take. I feel like I have just been seated on a new fair ride.
5. I like writing and would like to expand my writing capabilities and think this is great practice.

Reasons why I am tentative about this:
1. I haven't had a good English Class in over five years. I feel like I should have my blogs proofread before I post them. I am nervous about my grammar, spelling, tense and vocabulary. Again, I think blogging will help me improve in this area. Note to Reader: Because of my determination and new found courage to blog, I will not be proofreading this blog.
2. The navigating a new site and this technology business is time consuming and frustrating at times. I am already poky in real life, i am just as much if not more poky in internet world.

Things you should know if you are going to be my Blog Reader/ On Aesthetics and Grammar:
1. Regardless of grammatical rules I like to capitalize whatever I want whenever I want to.
2. Like my dear inspirational friend Sam, I LOVE lists.
3. I enjoy making up words and probably will all the time. 
4. I like exclamation points and other punctuation marks that I tend to overuse, which I will try to curve in this blog. 
5. I Love (!) parenthesis (they are like stories within a story!). I will probably use them a lot (get used to it).
6. I know that because of some new grammatical rule that was made up probably by someone ridiculous, you no longer have to use a comma before conjunctions when listing things in a sentence. However, I really like to sometimes and find it appropriate. So I will.
7. I understand that the rules of english and grammar really like consistency, parallelism blah blahbiddy blah, as do many readers. Sometimes I can be consistent, but other times I despise it and prefer chaos and randomness to silly ridiculous, no-it all consistency. Mainly because I am much more familiar with the former. So for example sometimes I may write out 'three o'clock in the morning' and then a few lines down (yes, in the very same blog) might just write '3am'; or I might have a lovely combination of the two such as 'three am'. That's just how it's gonna be.

Ok. Here I Go.

Somewhere along my life, some part of me derailed. I don't know exactly when. I think it was sometime Senior year of College when I found that I was out of good ideas, had been completely delusional for most of my life, and started having difficulty going to class and writing papers. It's funny to say 'I found'. Yes, I found myself in a state of being that was different from the previous 20 years of my life, but what I was feeling at the beginning of this derailment was a loss. A perceived loss of good ideas, a loss of stamina, a loss of emotional tolerance for the craziness of the world, and a loss of identity. When I graduated  I was completely wet behind the ears. I had no idea what it was I was doing or going to do. I was consumed by a bad relationship, I seemed to be losing my old set of college friends, I was completely depressed about the state of our planet (having just majored in Environmental Studies with a focus on how fucked everything is), I was having a very difficult relationship with my Mother as I was making baby steps outside her realms of control, and had just begun having a relationship with my Father; who by the way showed up at my Graduation with his wife Kari, both of which I hadn't seen in years, which made the day even more awkward and surreal. I feel like my Graduation had nothing to to with new skill sets I had learned, nor did it reflect grand accomplishments and success I had made, or encompass some incredible feat I had done (I mean really the show they put on is as if you climbed Mt. Everest or discovered a new continent somewhere). I felt like I had Graduated out of a world that had a few shreds of what I knew and understand left in it into a big huge murky pond of insurmountable doubt and confusion. Completely Unknown. Completely Surreal. Completely Terrifying. Hello World.

All semblance of the safe shores of the educational system I had indulged in for 16 out of the 21 years in my life suddenly just started dissolving away. The saccharine taste of High School was in the distant past, and with how difficult it was for me to finish my Senior Year there was no way I was off to Grad School. Its been the biggest sugar crash ever.

I am still dusting myself off and tightening my bootstrings from the said catastrophic event. Re-identifying myself and the world around me time and time again; sort of like a goldfish that swims around, forgets itself, remembers for a moment, then forgets again. And that is why I am blogging. To try and figure out the nature of the derailment. Like I said, it is only a part of me suffering from this affliction. The other part is as golden as the stars, she's out there. It's like I have been searching for my soul sister, and this is part of the journey to find her. Hello Courage.

Thank you to all my soul sisters who have been with me along this journey and have inspired me to be the person I am right now and to start this blog :) Samantha Veldhouse, Trisha Grover, Carly Swenson, Kerry Costello, Getta Dahal and Tovah Wolf, and so many others who have loved me and encouraged me and been an oasis of beauty and peace on this crazy train ride :)

Blog 1 Complete.
Sincerely,
Ariel C. Wolf 5/2/2012