Jump in and learn how to swim

Wow, the new year is starting off with a bang. I got BOTH of the teaching positions I mentioned in my last post, and they are both starting next week - yowza! The first one, which starts next Tuesday, is teaching preschoolers, ages 2-4.5, at a preschool here in SF. Awwwwww :-) I am really excited about it! Nervous, too, though, because it's my first class teaching kids, but how bad could it be? They're preschoolers, not thugs. My training at It's Yoga Kids was wonderful and I feel like I'm prepared on one level, but on the other hand, I'm just going to have to give it a shot and pray for the best! But really ~ I mean, they're preschoolers. How cute is that?? Hee hee.

The other job is teaching at the new, corporate gym at Amgen down in Fremont. Amgen is the world's largest biotech company - though their campus in Fremont is pretty small compared to what I imagine their Thousand Oaks campus is like (they have something like 40K employees down there). It was really interesting and surreal to visit the gym there, and to walk around campus, because it reminded me so much of Google. Which is how this all happened in the first place. See, I'd started thinking about my years at Google, and how having yoga at the gym there saved my life. Really. During my last couple of years there, when I was burned-out the core, working so hard for somebody else's dream, crying on my commute home, completely unable to de-stress without three glasses of wine and a brick to the head - the saving grace that I had was yoga classes. Not having to worry about rushing back up to the city to make it to class at Yoga Tree made my life so much better. I truly cannot imagine those last couple of years there without yoga. So, I started thinking about this a few weeks ago, and the thought of being able to give that back to the corporate world seemed like something I had to do. It was like a calling - an inspiration, in spiritu, literally meaning the Divine breath that is breathed into you (oh! I love etymology and I love Rilke's Sonnets to Orpheus!). And I'm not kidding, just a day or two later, an ad came up on Craigslist for yoga teachers for Plus One, the staffing company for Amgen (and other huge corporations in the US). And now, a few weeks later, I'm hired! It's pretty amazing how it's worked out. I'm so grateful for this opportunity. The class is Friday mornings - at 6AM! And really, that's fine with me. I'll be doing something I love, and I'll get to enjoy some Friday morning sunrises (on my way home from class, that is, hahaha).

I'm also starting a magazine writing class through Mediabistro next week, so it will be interesting to see where all of this leads. Everything new starts next week! Happy new year on steroids!