Four weeks of being grateful! What a journey! Only two more days until my Gratefulness Challenge is complete. Crazy how you blink and a month goes by.

1. Documentation: Yesterday I started going back through some of my gratefulness posts and already I had started to forget some of the things I had written about. They serve as a wonderful record of what I have been doing for the past month as well as who I am as an individual at this moment in time. I have spoken about many of my values and beliefs in this process and though I am sure my thoughts on these topics will shift I think having a record of them to refer to is wonderful.

Our past is so vital in informing about our present. Seeing where you came from really helps you appreciate where you are today, both on a personal and more global scale. Our minds are amazing things, but they can’t do it all. Having physical documentation of the past can really help us move into the future in a more informed fashion.

Also there is something very nostalgic about going through old film footage or reading past journals. It is quite an intimate experience to be privy to that kind of information. Whenever I see pictures from before I was born or read an old news article, or watch home videos of myself, it always gives me this great sense of unity. Yes, lots has change in our society overtime, but on a rudimentary level people are still very similar. We have the same types of fears and hopes today as people did 100 or more years ago. Something in that thought is very comforting to me.

2. Yoga: Along with starting a blog and doing this personal challenge, another new thing I have added into my life this month is yoga. I have done yoga in the past, but never very regularly and I have been making an effort to make yoga a more consistent part of my practice. Leading up to this shift, I was finding that I just wasn’t feeling fully satisfied with the dance classes I was taking. The teachers were all great and I did see improvement in my craft, but something was missing.

Yoga seems to be that missing puzzle piece for me. I think it is in part the ritualistic aspects of it combined with the spirituality driving the movement. It is a very embodied experience. Embodiment is why I fell in love with dance in the first place. What is different with yoga though is that I don’t feel the same kind of pressure as I do in dance settings. Yoga embraces that this is your practice and invites you to listen to what your body needs. It encourages you to work at your own pace. Sometimes I don’t feel that kind of permission in dance settings so it is nice to have a physical practice that encourages such a mindset. I feel like I have ownership over my body and will not be questioned for how I choose to take care of it.

Yoga is a very empowering practice, while also being very humbling. Every class allows me to delve deeper into myself and I see how that connection is having a positive impact on other areas of my life. I am so looking forward to further developing my yoga practice and sharing that journey in the months to come.

3. Instability: Yes, you heard me right. Considering the career path I have chosen instability is just a given. Getting a secure job and staying in it for the rest of my life isn’t really an option. I will always be starting new projects and looking for new work in my life. This is the career of an artist. And I’m ok with that. I actually really embrace it.

The reason for that is that nothing is ever stable. Even that great government job with benefits, room to advance and a pension could disappear. And it is happening more and more often to people. They are so caught off guard when it happens though. That sense of stability made them feel at ease and therefore when they do end up having to look for work again they really don’t know what to do.

I am constantly looking ahead, trying to find the next opportunity because I have accepted that nothing is forever. Being able to swallow that has changed the idea of instability from being something terrifying to being something almost comforting. There is a stability within instability. I know it sounds crazy, but coming to the acceptance of having an unstable career path has allowed me to take full responsibility for my own well being. I have no control over the constant change around me, but I can control how I move through the storm. I become the grounding force in my life, instead of depending on a job or another person to do it for me. Instability therefore has helped empower me to keep moving forward.