Normally on Fridays I’m home on my couch, never to be moved until Monday, by 6:30 pm. I honestly cannot remember the last time I went out on a Friday night in Seattle. The answer may be never. But today was a completely awesome day.
It started out at the office, where we’ve been celebrating 100 million RealPlayer SP video downloads all week. It’s a big deal around these parts. Here’s my friend Lacy and I posing at one of quite a few celebrations from this week:
Do you guys see what I am wearing? Mismatched denim and plaid. I look just like Lacy, who has lived in Seattle forever. With the onset of winter, my fashion sense is rapidly taking its cues from Seattleites. More on that later.
Today Lacy released the video I told you about. I think she did such an amazing job with it. It’s uber-cute. Chelsia and her gangsta chin-jut are at 0:30 and my head-banging is at 0:37:
After work I did some grocery shopping and some tanning (I know, I know, it’s terrible for my skin, but I swear to you it keeps me sane in this weather) and then went to meet my friend Kat for restorative yoga. I’ve blogged about it before, although this class was only 75 minutes as opposed to the three-hour ones I love. I was so excited for restorative yoga — where you find comfortable, “delicious” poses and hold them for 10-15 minutes while you breathe deeply and meditate. It’s just pure relaxation. I was looking forward to it because my legs muscles and my shoulder muscles are ON FIRE from the gym workouts I’ve done this week and then from dodgeball. I just needed to re-center my body without adding stress to my muscles. Unfortunately, our usual teacher was sick and we had a sub, who was like, “Yes, I know this is a restorative yoga class, but I think some light hatha flow work is also restorative.” So instead of spending an hour and fifteen minutes on my back, breathing and meditating, I was doing squats and down-dogs and basically all the exercises that would be most excruciating to my already excruciating muscles.
While I was disappointed, it’s good that the situation forced me to take a class with another yoga instructor. Normally I will not take anything if Lisa’s not teaching it, because Lisa is amazing and a yoga goddess and probably also my guru, but it’s nice to hear about yoga from someone completely different. I learned a lot from our substitute teacher, who clearly knew his yoga shit, and I was able to approach the practice from a new angle.
Afterward, I had dinner with Kat, and she’s one of those amazing girlfriends with whom I always just feel at ease. I can tell her things honestly — I can be vulnerable. I can tell her thoughts and feelings I have that I’m ashamed of, because they’re so silly and yet they consume so much of my thought space, and she puts it all in perspective for me. It’s so important to have friends in your life where you can do that, where you can say “These are the things that are wrong with me, this is the totally stupid and unwarranted resentment I’ve been carrying around toward some person I haven’t seen in two years, and here is a list of my insecurities,” and then they respond and you don’t feel judged. You don’t feel like they’re trying to act superior or prove that they’re smarter. You don’t feel that they will use your trust to betray you later. You just feel like you have a friend, a confidante, someone who can help you carry these things so it’s not all your burden, someone who can help you see the irrationality in your thought process, and someone who can just keep listening until you’re through it. I guess I’ve always had those friends. I’ve just been unwilling to open up to them, to show weakness. I had so much ego around the whole thing. But it’s something I’ve learned how to do just in the past three or four years, and I wish I’d learned it earlier. It makes life so much easier when you allow yourself to trust your friends.
After dinner, I did something I never ever do on a Friday night — I went out in Belltown. I put on makeup and brushed my hair and decided I was going to be a scenester. Starting with some amazing peeps I met at the Twitter conference, I’ve kind of been introduced to a whole different crew out here in Seattle, and I’m really impressed with them. They’re social media superstars, and all of them have a third-standard-deviation mastery of writing and web technology and marketing and just generally being a freakin’ blast to hang out with. Hanging out with them is also a really good way to keep my ego in check, and to practice humility. Their accomplishments and their skill sets are remarkable. I ended up meeting so many impressive people tonight, and having so many fantastic conversations, and my ass stayed out until nearly 1 am. On a Friday! I never do that. Anyway, see how much fun:
And look what I’m wearing here: a down vest. Let me tell you, that shit works. It was freezing and I kept my ass warm in this thing. I’m officially a Seattleite. I love my down vest, and I love Seattle.
