A ray of sunlight....

As much goodness and growth I experienced last week through my yoga studies, it was also an extremely difficult week for me personally. I've been struggling with the job situation for 6 months now, longer actually. It's been 6 months that I've been in Connecticut looking for a job, but I've been pondering what I want to do and how to go about doing it since I left for my hike in August 2008. I know very much how I want to feel in my work--happy, fulfilled, passionate, creative, positive, valuable-- but have been floundering in what exactly it is that can provide me with such gratification. Last week I felt as though I hit a low point, feeling entirely defeated and discouraged by my situation. Some wonderful yoga, a special talk with a friend, the continuous unfaltering support of my fella, and a new perspective sent me into the beginning of this week with renewed optimism, ready to make efforts anew to find a job. I felt strongly that things will be ok, and something was going to give. Ironically, this change of energy bore fruit quickly and unexpectedly.

After practice teaching with a woman from the training, she casually inquired about the subbing I've been doing. She asked me if I liked it, to which I replied emphatically "I hate it." With that she offered me a job. Not just any job, but a job aligning with what I have been looking for. She owns a vegan restaurant in town and offered to train me as the assistant pastry chef. I could hardly believe it. I admire this woman and her business for so many reasons, the chance to learn from her is invaluable.

I worked for a couple hours Tuesday morning, and loved it. I came home feeling really wonderful, and that night yoga class was celebratory for me in contrast to all the classes I've done looking for solace and healing. I genuinely feel that it was the energy I was exuding-- that things were going to turn around and I could make it happen-- that opened this opportunity for me. As Linda tells us in class, "The universe rarely offers up what we are not open to receive."

What is perhaps the strangest thing is that though I wasn't really listening at the time, my intuition told me this would happen. I DREAMED I should be baking the night before. Part of the yoga teacher training is about intuition and we have a reading assignment in Judith Orloff's Guide to Intuitive Healing. In the book she talks about using your dreams to access your intuition, and details an exercise where before you go to bed to ask yourself a question you are looking for the answer to, and in the morning before you hop out of bed to recollect your dreams to find an answer. Sunday night, after talking with Low, as I was going to sleep I lay in bed and I focused on asking what I am meant to be doing for work. It is a question I've wrestled with for awhile. That night I dreamed of teaching yoga...and I dreamed of baking cupcakes. In the morning, as I recalled my dreams I figured that I dreamt such things because that is what I've been pursuing recently. I'd recently spent a large chunk of time writing a cover letter to Whole Foods explaining why even though I had no experience that I am the person to be their new cake decorator. For the last week I'd been trying to build the courage to walk into Fusion bakery downtown and see if they'd hire me. I had been googling bakeries in the area to see if any said anything about hiring. I figured the dream was more a result of what was bouncing around my brain than my intuition telling me what was to come. And yet, here it is...training to bake.