Moving Day

For someone who purports to like change and growth as much as I do, I'm really lousy with change.  Case in point: it's 3:45am on moving day, and I've been up for the last hour: what started as thirst for me and hunger for Elliot, grew into tossing and turning - thinking about a situation at work that doesn't sit right with me, and escalated into a full-on panic attack thinking about our move ("so-many-things-to-do-mode" that really just masks sadness and a sense of loss), and now has ebbed into finally just opening my computer to get all the angst from my head through my body and out my fingers -- helped with a half-eaten jar of Justin's maple almond butter and sparkling water drunk in a wine glass because all my other glasses are still sitting in the sink.

Whew.  Was that all just one sentence?

I smile with compassion at my younger self, full of angst and anxiety on the day this blog started -- on my own moving day, closing the door to 3E -- ready to meet Tyler in Seoul.  How was she to know everything that was to come since? -- all captured fleetingly into the pages of this blog.  It's like the Rumi quote I just read (note to self: just google Rumi at the first sign of any burgeoning panic attack): 

"Try not to resist the changes that come your way.  Instead let life live through you.  And do not worry that your life is turning upside down.  How do you know that the side you are used to is better than the one to come?"

And of course, this move is nothing like that move.  It's simply north of the river.  A twenty minute cab ride, barring any traffic.

And yet.

It's a pretty fair assessment that after a first initial high of Tyler's offer (which we received on our way home from Cuba -- "yes, it's time we live internationally again!"), I dragged my heels on this move to Seoul...pretty much since Tyler signed in December through the spring and early summer.  The moment that turned that around was a spur-of-the-moment long weekend trip to the Hamptons, just pre-summer mob (thank you, Airbnb).  We were on the beach and, too cold to go into the water, started to "draw" out the life we envisioned in Seoul, using sticks in the sand (our masterpiece below).

It was a flurry of drawing and visioning and creating... and reminded me of how much agency we have to co-create the future we want.  Much of our drawing centered on our apartment -- a three bed-room that included a meditation/yoga room and a nursery.  We'd live near water (see that squiggly river on the right?), maybe look out onto some mountains, be walking distance to work for Tyler and a co-working space and yoga studio for me... and light.  Lots and lots of light with big open windows.  And maybe a nice city view of Seoul.

This is the first time I've actually dug out that photo since coming to Seoul (thank you abundance of time when it's 4am).  I smile thinking about how this apartment is all that we envisioned (save being walkable to Samsung)... and then some (there's the universe winking again).  Wanting a blend of city and nature, our apartment is a ten minute walk to Seokchon Lake in one direction, the Han River in another direction, and Olympic Park (Seoul's equivalent of Central Park) in a third direction; with amazing 180 degree views of both the city and the mountains in the distance.  I remember the first few nights, just sitting with Tyler on the floor of our living room (it would be weeks until we finally bought furniture) in the dark -- all the lights off, just looking at sparkling Seoul around us and taking it all in.

And as I write this, all the angst and anxiety I was originally feeling melt into a feeling of calm and gratitude.  Gratitude that we've lived in the nicest place we've ever lived for the last two years.  Gratitude for the apartment that finally made Seoul feel like home.  Gratitude that we not only know our neighbors but are friends with them (pic from last weekend below); and for the amazing group of expat new moms who have become my community here.  Gratitude for the home we first raised Elliot in.  Gratitude for this idea that people can somehow "draw" their future and live into it.  The list goes on and on...

What I'll miss most is my meditation room, our bathtub with the luxurious whirlpool jets, and looking out into the lake from my writing table (aka our dining room table that we never use as one).  Oh and all the storage space (seriously, we were still discovering hidden shelves and closet space after a year living here).  Tyler will likely most miss the night city views, the modern Asian toilets (even our toilets have remote controls and came with instruction manuals), and the "suite" we/he created when he removed all the doors between our bedroom and the nursery.

But what most matters is coming right along with us up north.  And plus like Rumi says:

Thank you, 2903.  You've helped make this a pretty incredible two years.

And with that, the sun is just about rising...

The magic hour

When I first read about the 5am Club some time over the last two years, I was immediately intrigued.  Jeff Sanders, in his 5am Miracle podcast, talks about this being a miraculous time of productivity and achievement, if not overly-dramatically so: "5am club is a way of life.  It's a productivity strategy, and a means to achieve all you have ever desired."

At the time of first hearing about it though, I was (and perhaps still am) in productivity-recovery mode.  Don't get me wrong, productivity of course is a good thing.  But I'm learning it's a fine balance between focus on productivity and (at least for me), crossing the fine line into the pursuit of perfection, self-flagellation, and feeling a general sense of not-enoughness.  It was a sense of constant running towards an ever-increasing goal.  And I finally stepped off the mechanical walkway.

It was jarring at first, but then somehow this pursuit of everyday pleasures (see my instagram on #365pleasures) became my daily life here.  I learned to live life on a slower tempo, take baths, sip my tea, notice trees along my lake walks (instead of just counting number of revolutions)... and yes, got pregnant on (because of?) this slower path.

The irony, of course, is that far from sacrificing my career for this type of daily luxuriousness, colleagues and clients respected my newfound personal boundaries (like not taking calls after 10pm), more work and responsibility came, and I began to transition from a manager role to a senior advisor.

As I continue to learn, sometimes the trade-offs we think we have to make in life are in fact, false choices.

And so is the case of the 5am Club.  First seeing it in its primary pursuit towards achievement and productivity, I set it aside as "not for me at this time."  At some point in new motherhood with the transition from survival to sustainability mode, I re-claimed the 5am Club as something to do for myself -- my own time, where I could meditate and do my "power hour" (20 minutes of meditation, movement, and journaling).  But as any new mom knows, claiming one hour each day as one's own (without a set childcare plan) is a fool's errand.  Sometimes Elliot would be up with me, or other times I'd be awake with him just prior, having just fallen re-asleep by the time the alarm wakes me up at 5am.

So now what I've stumbled upon is 5am as a "magic hour".  Tyler and I finally watched "Midnight in Paris" -- a fun movie about a struggling author who runs into Hemingway, Fitzgerald, and other greats of the 1920s at a "magical" hour in Paris.  It's a bit like that.  Due to a combination of balancing work and family/friend time (in the US) and jetlag (back in Seoul), for the last six weeks or so, I've found myself up at 5am (and more like 3:30 - 4am back now in Korea).

I've found that when I label and expect that time to be either "productive time" or "me time", I get frustrated if/when I can't control what happens during that time (and you can imagine how well that works).

But when I relax into considering it "magic time", well, that's when the magic happens.

It's when I find my brother-in-law up at the same hour meditating, which inspires me to meditate too.  Or find that Elliot is awake with jetlag too, so we cuddle, stare, and coo at one another in the guest bedroom and let Tyler sleep.  Or, like this morning, I find myself alone, looking out at the view of our 29th floor high-rise into sleeping Seoul, reflecting on our last two years in this apartment, how lucky we've been, and how much I'll miss this place.  And yes, sometimes it's been all about kick-butt amazing productivity.  Instead of overly planning what exactly should happen at 5am (and getting frustrated when it doesn't), being up at 5am is now imbued with some sense of secret adventure, the giddiness of a rendez-vous with myself, those I love, and the universe.

So as wary as I initially was, consider me the newest member of the 5am Club.  The benefits (and often the views) can't be beat.

Joy

And just like that...

Lucky Seven:

The little guy is laughing more than ever (videos to come), chewing whenever he sees me or Tyler eat (he now has his two top teeth to complement his bottom chompers...we'll be starting him on solids this month), and cuddling like it's his job when we sleep together at night.  Happy birthday little bud.