Mornings and Nights

Here's something crazy: in a couple weeks from now, probably right around the time that the Fall teacher training starts, I will have taught my first 100 classes.  Phew!  That's an interesting number for me to wrap my brain around...

I've been teaching genuinely full time for the past month, pretty much ever since I visited Massachusetts.  (Full-time meaning 8 or more classes a week.  Usually more.  Like last week, when I had 12.)  I kept waiting to settle into a routine and wondering why I wasn't.  I couldn't seem to figure out the rhythm of my days.  I moved into a new place since the last time I wrote (an awesome new place less than two blocks from the yoga studio), so that's made me feel much more settled, but there still is something weird.

But I think I've figured it out.  Yoga teachers just keep a weird-ass schedule.  No getting around it.  I thought that I was prepared for this after a couple years of service industry.  When I was waiting tables full time, I got used to being on an opposite schedule from the rest of the world, always going to work when everyone else was finishing their day.  I thought it would be pretty similar.

I totally did not take the early mornings into account.  Late nights are pretty normal and easy for me.  But the combination of late nights and early mornings is totally confusing!  I do half of my work before 11am (sometimes starting at like 5:45am) and the other half of my work after 5pm.  (Also weekends.)  This means that my "down time" has shifted, pretty consistently, to the middle of the afternoon.

Unfortunately, there is NOTHING good on TV in the middle of the afternoon!  I need DVR.

Ha, ha.  

So now I'm starting to figure it out.  All those things that I habitually do in the evening - cooking, paying bills, making phone calls, blogging, etc etc - need to get shifted to the middle of the day, and then everything works.  And actually, it can be quite lovely!  I broke in my new kitchen this week with a big pot of corn chowder, made from scratch (even the stock!) with veggies from the weekend farmer's market.  It was a nice day!  I woke up, took class, taught a class, came back home, cleaned the kitchen, started the soup, went back up the street to the studio, taught another class, then came back and finished making the soup for dinner.  SO domestic.  I definitely need to get back to cooking.  But with my house so close to the studio, there are so many possibilities!  I could make bread, let it rise all day, and run back to my house in between classes to punch it down!!  I foresee a lot of baked goods in my future.

Also, I have a question for the other full-time teachers.  Important question.  When do YOU usually practice??  I strongly suspect that I need to start practicing in the mornings.  Like at 6am, because I teach most of the 9:30 classes.  This sucks, because I hate mornings.  But I think that I teach way better when I've practiced first, and then I don't have to worry about missing out on my practice later in the day (which has been happening more often than I'd like, and I feel like my practice is getting kinda shitty).  Thoughts??