Pre-Yoga: 6:45 pm

I’m panicking. Life is just too good. Things can’t be right. I don’t deserve this. It’s all just a dream. I’m going to wake up and the bubble will burst, the other shoe will drop, the rug will be pulled out from underneath me. Everything is too wonderful. Everything is just right. How can this be? I’m nothing but a bartender. A college drop out. A drug addict. A slut. Who am I kidding? Everyone is going to find out that it’s all just a big scam. I am dying. I have throat cancer and I’m going to need a voice box. I have SARS. The Avian bird flu. The black plague. There is going to be an earthquake. I’m going to get attacked by a shark. A atom bomb is going to be dropped on L.A. An asteroid is headed for Earth.

And it will be all my fault. Because that’s what I get. I deserve it. I am being punished by the gods for all of the wicked lies I’ve told and wicked things I’ve done. For my excessive hubris, my weakness, my addictions, my indiscretions. I am being punished for every pleasure of the flesh I have ever enjoyed since I was 13. Every cigarette. Every beer. I am being punished. I am being judged. I am being condemned. And I’m guilty. Guilty. Guilty. Guilty.

Who is doing the judging? Who is doing the condemning? Who is really the tyrant?

It seems to me (and drives me crazy) that the closer and closer I come to experiencing the life I have always dreamed of creating, the more afraid I become...and the louder that tyrant’s voice gets.

Post-Yoga: 10:30 pm

Wow. Those negative thought patterns are the persecutors that keep me enslaved to my past, and from fully embracing the me of the future. The irrational fears I am too embarrassed to express and too ashamed to admit are what keep me from fully experiencing the present moment.

During yoga, after reading a poem about “excess, beautiful excess,” the instructor said, “Take it all in, embrace it—the good and the challenging. It can be just as hard to embrace the good, as it is to accept your challenges. In fact, sometimes it’s harder to believe you deserve the good at all.” If we are listening, we always hear what we need to.

My throat has been bugging me for a month. My brain automatically jumps to worst-case scenario, but I think I damaged my voice. And I bet I'll get put on vocal rest. Which makes sense because I talk too much.

But the gods aren’t punishing me; they’re telling me to shut up and listen. I’m not wicked, I’m human. And the only person condemning me--is myself.