A weird thing happened in my Yoga class last night. My teacher came up to me and in front of a few other people said, really intensely, “what’s going on with you? You’ve really transformed!” I was really taken aback, my mind whirling with how I feel that I am blossoming since getting to grips with my graphic novel, my mind feeling blown that other people are noticing how amazing a change it is having on my life, my confidence, the way I am dressing……etc etc. and I started in a stumbling, blushing, way to tell him about producing my graphic novel and getting it printed, But by the time I was half way through the sentence someone else claimed his attention and he had turned away and I could tell he wasn’t interested in what I was saying.
We then moved into doing the class and by the end of it I had worked out what was actually going on. He is currently recruiting for next year’s yoga teacher training and was thinking I would be a possible candidate. Why he didn’t just ask me in a more straight forward way, I don’t know! He is a great teacher but I have also noticed that with one to one interactions, he often gets it subtlely wrong. I felt a fool for not recognising that his head is 100% in his yoga world and not remembering that when he singles me out, he always has his own yoga agenda going on, I am of little interest to him as a person as opposed to as a pupil / client.
It was good in a way as it made me reflect about how we each live in our own little bubble with ourselves at the centre and see everyone else on the periphery. Yoga is really important to me, but it is in the periphery of my life, not the centre (I certainly would hate to take a class!) I also enjoy the other exercise classes I go to, and they have helped my strength and no doubt have contributed to the “transformation” that my teacher was actually describing.
Two good things came out of the encounter, firstly he had previously made the comment that he thought I was capable of more than I was doing (again, is this just his own agenda??) but there may be an element of truth, I am physically timid, scared of hurting myself, I should have more confidence I think, push myself a bit.
Secondly, one of my classmates overheard what I was saying and was really interested in hearing about graphic novels so that was an unexpected benefit for a topic which wouldn’t usually come up in yoga!
Other news: Cards
After much fiddling around, not least having to find a way to convert black to colour on photoshop I realised that the images I had chosen for cards would work better if digitally printed, so even though I love riso prints I will just have to save that for a different image, maybe my xmas cards next year?? That way I would do a big run of just a couple of inks, maybe on a coloured card.
I have now sent my card designs to the printers so that is another job done.
Tea towels:
Excitingly, a big parcel arrived yesterday with the tea towels! I had tried to suggest to the other editors that we print off more of the Vixen tea towels and give them as a gift to contributors to the magazine. One editor was very complimentary about the design, the other disliked the whole idea of tea towels and absolutely vetoed it. Anyway, I had still printed the designs as a showcase for my work (I want to give them to family if nothing else). When the tea towels arrived I pushed one through each of their doors with a jokey note…..and one was delighted and I have had no response at all from the other one (not even a text to say “thanks ha ha you know I didn’t want one!”). Again, another example of how we can only keep on doing what we feel is right and other people’s responses are out of our control and maybe irrelevant at times.
Vixen tea towel