Daydreamer.

Ah savasana.

Ask anyone who does yoga if they would agree with me that savasana wasn’t one of the best poses ever.

Also known as “corpse pose”, it’s the relaxation posture that often takes place at the end of a yoga session. The final posture between being awake and asleep, one essentially lays there and lets the practice soak into the body as the session ends with focus on the breath.

Though I’ve been religiously attending yoga classes the past few months, I haven’t quite mastered the art of focusing solely on the breath, because during practice the other evening, I was lying in a cocoon of silk during savasana and my mind began to wander.

Where did it wander to? Well it wasn’t chores. Or work, or even house hunting. It had to do with men; specifically, one man.

See, I’ve always had this tendency to daydream. Time and place never mattered, I just sometimes have the inclination to be in my head and let my imagination go.

And the thing I fantasize and daydream about the most?

Men.

One could say it’s out of loneliness and longing, but I just have a wild imagination, and having never been in a relationship before, I often wonder what it would be like to go on fabulous dates, adventures, and to be wanted.

During shavasana, it was one particular man that worked his way into my mind, someone from my past whom I’ve just gotten over, a man who also randomly reached out to me the other day.

So yeah, he was on my mind, interrupting my practice with scandalous thoughts and causing me to lose focus during the one hour a day I set aside specifically to focus on myself and my breath!

Seriously so inconvenient.

I mean, come on man, you couldn’t have waited until I was at least settling down for the night in the privacy of my room?

I nonetheless let my mind wander down the path of fantasy and in all honesty, it felt so damn good. It was only after I could feel my heart pounding in my chest in which was supposed to be a period of rest and relaxation, that I snapped out of it.

What was I doing?

Long before I began taking up yoga, and long before I deleted his number once and for all, I had spent sooooo much time thinking about him, fantasizing about our life together and then eventually daydreaming about shaping him into the man I wanted when I realized he wasn’t giving me what I needed. This consequently got my heart broken after I came to the realization that I could not change who he was. Like most guys I meet, he lacked the courage and maturity to deal with emotional situations because it was uncomfortable and yet HERE I WAS letting this passive aggressive ghoster go and make appearances in the form of unrealistic fantasies in my head, yet again.

After realizing that I was most distracted, I went back to the breath.

A few months ago, this wouldn’t have been possible, because a few months ago, I didn’t know how to handle musings, especially the ones that brought about bouts of heart pounding feelings that had immature men attached to them.

I probably would’ve kept on with my unhealthy ways had it not been for Maxie McCoy’s book You’re Not Lost and a quote that lay between its pages.

We get to decide what the events in our life mean to us. No event means anything unless we attribute a meaning to it.

Instead of allowing this thought of him to ruminate in my head and cause me to relapse into imagining a future with a guy I know is so obviously not the one for me, I acknowledge its presence and let it go away on its own.

I imagine thoughts to be like clouds. And instead of ignoring the dark clouds that occasionally get mixed in, I accept their passing as they float by in the sky.

The solution that’s worked best for me and my efforts to move on doesn’t have to do with getting distracted by these feelings that put me in a negative state of mind, but to acknowledge that I’m having these thoughts in the first place and determine where they’re coming from.

In this particular case, it was the perfect storm of a relaxed state of mine, relative peace, and a desirous state of mind.

And how do we weather perfect storms?

We ride them out.

Odds Are Gooood.

There’s an old saying about dating amongst the women in Alaska regarding the men of Alaska.

The odds are good, but the goods are odd.

It’s hard to find accurate history about its origins, but the rugged, rigorous, and outdoorsey lifestyle of the Last Frontier has always attracted… odd individuals, especially men. 

Odd is described as being “different from what is usual or expected; strange.”

And Alaska is definitely different!  

Because the 49th state is known for supplying jobs that bring oil workers, hunters, fishermen, forestry workers, and gold miners, there has always been an abundance of guys. Living life on the last frontier was not often a dream shared by women, and so the population has always been skewed in favor of men. And because of that, the few women that did come to town were rare, and competition fierce.

For a single gal in her early twenties, you’d think, then, that there would be countless options to chose from, as far as dating goes. Yet I continue to spend my nights alone (OK not “alone” because technically my cat sleeps with me, but you know what I mean), watching seemingly everyone around me in some sort of relationship.

Though there still remains this high population of men (which is slowly becoming equal to that of women because hey! we too like to be independent and live in the wild), it seems as if most of the men in my age group are either: married, engaged, already a father, or snatched up by the few single women remaining, like me.

It’s like every time a new guy comes to town (one who hasn’t been round in round in the local dating circle), not a week passes before he’s already shacking up with a girl before I’m even aware of his arrival. 

Girl, I haven’t even been a part of the local dating circle.

Not that I think I’m missing out (based on the few horror stories I’ve heard), but it’s a bummer for a girl like me who’s kinda thought her whole life that maybe... she’s man repellent.

I KNOW.  

How can I let such vicious thoughts consume me? 

What started as a self-pity joke in middle school has since become the ominous dictation of my current dating life and though I try to shake it, this little insecure part of me still believes that I do, in fact, repel men.

Repel might be a strong word at this point, but I do seem to either intimidate or scare men, or happen to be one of the unluckiest women in the world. All I know is that I’m starting to wonder if maybe... I’m the odd one here. 

Though the numbers tell me that men still outnumber women in the great state of Alaska, I can’t help but feel that the tides have now turned and it’s women who are now competing for men, and that I am now one of the “odd” ones vying for a mate.

Whatever the case may be, whether I’m odd or not, destined to be single in the rugged lands of the Last Frontier or not, I accept where I’m at and who I’m (not) with.

I know part of this craving to have a significant other has to do with my environment around me and the people who surround me, who just so happen to be in a time in their lives where having someone special is part of their path right now. Plus, it’s summer, and there’s summer romance and I’ve never experienced that before, so of course my hopeless romantic self starts to daydream.

My priority right now is following my dreams and pursuing the passions that excite me. And while men also excite me (I’m a twenty-three year old woman, of course men excite me) maybe it’s just not the right time.  

I can’t let what I see around me influence how my life goes. My path has always been unique, why should my route be any different now?   

If I am indeed odd, let it be so.  

Cause I’ll be sure to make being odd look gooood.