So far, things have gone really well. Ariel is recovering quickly and though still a little slow, we have been getting out for daily walks with Tavi and our dog Sassafrass, which has been great. He sleeps like a champ so far, which means that we have been avoiding the dreaded sleep deprivation, at least for now. He is tiny and cute and healthy as can be, which is really all you can ask for.

I’m just at the very beginning of this adventure, but my life has opened up in so many ways already. My heart feels like it opened up a huge new space for him to settle in to. It’s crazy how natural that feels. I’ve known him for all of 4 days and already I feel so connected to the little guy. I would pretty much do anything for him at this point.

There are so many thoughts swirling in my brain about being a new parenthood, about the miracle of life, and my little boy specifically that it’s hard to even know how to write about it. There is all the little logistical stuff that changes, but more than that, the shift in outlook has been huge. My hopes and desires are now tied up with this little being that is just at the cusp of his life. Not that I don’t have my own, but they all need to be inclusive of him and the support he will need.

One of the changes is just how present I feel. I try and cultivate that through yoga, meditation, and just reminding myself to be present, but I get distracted with all sorts of things during the course of a normal day. The mind veers off on tangents and it’s hard to stay in the moment as much as I would like. This past week though has been nothing but me being in the moment. I don’t want to miss any of it. All the little things that he does, all the little explorations of this new world that he has already begun. And I can only hope that I can continue to be this present after the newness of parenthood wears off.

I’m sure that I will have tons more to say in the coming months, but for now, I’m just thankful for a healthy boy, that both Ariel and I are in such a great place to welcome him into the world, for our amazing group of friends who have been supporting us, and for much more. Couldn’t have asked for a better Thanksgiving than this one.

A bit of history. I’d grown up eating meat (in Montana, Iowa, and Germany – all very meat heavy places). Even vegetarianism wasn’t much on my radar. At one point the girlfriend of my step-brother’s dad was a vegetarian and would eat tofu burgers, which my brother and I found completely baffling and would make fun of in a “can you believe what she is eating” sort of a way. Neither of us could really wrap our heads around it. The very concept was funny because it seemed so outlandish.

When I was in high school, I was pretty active in a variety of environmental causes and groups and I started to be around more vegetarians and even a few vegans, which also was a new concept. But at least I started to get it. Eating lower on the trophic pyramid means less land used to feed us means less deforestation. I could wrap my head around it and even began to contemplate it. Then one summer, some friends of the family (who were my age and vegan) from Germany came and stayed with my mom, Susan and I. So while they were with us, we made sure that the food we made was vegan and they did a fair amount of cooking as well. After the month they spent with us, I realized I had pretty much been vegan the whole time and it didn’t feel that difficult and I felt good.

Over the next couple of years, I really dove in. Reading as much as I could, experimenting with different diets and foods. And I was pretty dogmatic about things for the first several years. I was fully in it to win it and I’m sure was probably quite annoying about it at times. But I really connected with it and brought a lot of awareness and attention to what I was doing.

Now, 15 years later, I’m feeling a bit like I’m vegan by default. I don’t pay a ton of attention to my diet these days, which especially as I’ve become increasingly active is not a good thing. I know that I’m not getting enough of certain things in my diet and also don’t really have the motivation to really step up and do the nutritional research and experimentation to develop a good vegan diet for my athletic performance needs. Just to be clear, I’m fully aware that you can be very active on a vegan diet. There are vegan iron man competitors who are much, much more active than I, but it requires a level of attention that I have not had the motivation for lately.

Another thing that has been on my mind as I’ve been considering this is the idea of attachment and identity. I’ve been doing a lot of reading and studying of the yoga sutras lately. The yoga sutras say that the cause of suffering is “the association or identification of the seer with the seen”. Being vegan is one of the biggest identities that I have taken on over the years as who I am. Of course, it’s not who I am, but I’ve associated with it to a degree that I feel is a little too unquestioning at this point in time. It can make us a little bit too dogmatic when we claim an identity. And eventually it means that we have a set of rules that guide our behavior that don’t need to think about anymore. We don’t look for circumstances where those guidelines may not be the best thing for us. We can just sort of cruise by on autopilot and that’s what I feel like I’m doing right now with my veganism.

None of this means that I won’t be back to a vegan lifestyle in a couple of months, a year, or however long it lasts, but I think I need a reexamination. I’m going to have to go pretty slowly introducing dairy into the diet so my stomach doesn’t hate me. So we shall see how this experiment goes. I could hate it and come running back quickly, I could stay away forever. I’m really trying to be as receptive and attentive as possible and examine with an open heart and open mind. Here goes.

The NSCA personal training exam was damn hard. I’d been studying for the last 4 or 5 months, and felt like I had the textbook pretty well learned. I’ve done enough studying for classes to know when I feel like I have a grasp on the materials. I hadn’t taken a practice exam, but wasn’t all that worried. The week before the test, I had gotten several calls though about people who had not passed, and some recommendations on the subject areas that I really needed to know. I went in and took the test and right away they were showing video (I’d only studied the textbook) and asking to analyze technique and what not. So a completely different format that I was used to. And although multiple choice, the answers were often a+c, or b+d, so it was hard to work with a process of elimination. I flew on through, trying as much as possible not to second guess myself and just trust my first instincts, but was very unsure after I got out. I still had to get my CPR certification (not scheduled until the week after) before they would release my score also, so I had no idea how I did when I was done. I went home and did a little research and found out that only 56% of people pass the test on their first try. The CPR class was kind of fun, and honestly, I’ve always been a little embarrassed that I didn’t know how to do some basic first aid (it was even on my list of 50 things to do. Check!). I finally got my results back and passed with some room to spare! So there you go. No worrying necessary (though I seem to worry at odd times as I get older. Not sure what that’s about. I used to be so laid back, probably to a fault).

I’ve been doing very little music lately, though I’ve been thinking about it a lot and am going to try and consciously set aside some real time for it, as I seem to have plenty of time right now. The biggest bummer about being laid off was really that we had a big trip to Buenos Aires planned (we were supposed to be there right now), but the layoff happened two weeks before we were supposed to go and the timing just didn’t feel right. Alaska was really great though and refunded all of our miles and when they found out we were not going because of a layoff, even waived all of the fees, which totally reinforces my customer loyalty. I was really looking forward to that trip though, so Ariel and I are going to try and do it next year maybe.

Overall, I’m feeling like my life needed to change a bit, and the layoff was the Universe’s way of shoving me off the fence. It wasn’t quite on my planned timeline or budget goals, but whatever. I was pretty miserable at that job, and am now excited about new beginnings. I have a shitload to learn and lots of new challenges, but this is how we grow. So march forth.

*Being in Chicago on business was sort of like inhabiting an alternate reality where my all of a sudden, I’m living somebody else’s life (and you may tell yourself, this is not my beautiful house…. how did I get here?). I had a few moments of disbelief that somehow, this is now something I do. I’m still very unsure about it, and it throws me pretty regularly.

My step-mother Sallie is finally back home in Missoula after a 7 week hospital stay. My dad lived out of a hotel that whole time. Nobody was expecting it to take that long, but she seems to be doing well and is steadily improving. I’ll be seeing her in a little over a month, when I go back home for my sister’s baby shower, and apparently, an Elton John concert (Sallie is pretty much the world’s biggest Elton John fan). My sister seems to be settling into her life in Missoula incredibly well. She has taken over the family store, is having a kid, has a boyfriend that people actually like, and just seems to be maturing on a lot of levels, which makes me happy. She turned a year older yesterday

Music has been a little slow lately. I have been otherwise engaged most of my evenings and the weekends seem to go by with only a couple hours spent on it, though hopefully that will free up a bit soon. I’m trying to only make big plans one out of every four weekends of the month. I have a trip to Mt. Bachelor coming up to go snowboarding with a bunch of friends, I’ll be going to Montana for the baby-shower, and Ariel and I have a couple of other trips in the work, but for those other weekends I’m planning on making as much of a racket as possible (a beautiful racket that is).