Hey my peeps! How are you? I’m pretty good. It’s a long weekend, for one thing. Tough to beat a long weekend. It’s been about two years since I lost flex days, which have to be just about the best work flexibility ever. I sure miss my Monday flex days. Some people prefer Fridays, but here’s my strategy behind Mondays:

• Mondays are kind of a bummer. Because they’re all Monday-ish.
• Fridays, however, are pretty much awesome. You can wear jeans on Friday and everyone’s in a good mood, what with the impending weekend and all.

Therefore, why would I want to miss Fridays? Much better to miss every other Monday. Plus, long weekends are often Mondays, so then you get Tuesdays off, too. Anyway, I don’t get flex days anymore. I work the same hours, actually more, but alas! No flex days in recognition of it. I do definitely have a pretty flexible situation at work, so I’m not really, really complaining (much). But I still miss them…

So, I said I’d fill you in on the coaching training I’m doing. This could be a really long post, but I’ll give you the Cole’s Notes version.

The long and short of it is that I’m taking a year-long, super-intense training and accreditation program in life coaching. “Life coaching?” you say. “Oh geez. I can’t take Bay seriously now.” I know what you mean. I nearly couldn’t either, when Adam started looking into coaching. But after witnessing his personal transformation this past year, as well as seeing the results in some of the people he’s worked with, I started to change my tune. I wanted it for me. I want me out of my way. Some people live really amazing lives and, quite frankly, I’m tired of envying them. I want to be them. So I dove in.

Thus far, it’s been hard. This style of coaching is called ontological (I totally had to Google it, too). This basically means it focuses on who you are being, as opposed to what you are doing. I mean, there is power in this. But there is also discomfort. For reals. I remember when I was 13 or so and grew four inches in one year. It friggin’ HURT! It felt awkward and achey and uncomfortable. Turns out that personal transformation feels pretty much the same.

So far, both weekends I’ve been in training have been tough (this is somewhat misleading: we meet in-person in Seattle one weekend per month, but there is mad work to be done in between. I guess I’m saying that if you don’t get phone calls or coffee date requests from me, don’t take it personally.).

Tough. Ha! Understatement of the year. I LOST it, very publicly, on more than one occasion. I mean alternating between wracking, heaving, can’t-exhale sobbing and simultaneously saying, “Feck all y’all” on repeat while envisioning doing great physical harm to people. Not killing them (I’m not a monster!), but I was pretty much a Virtua Fighter in my mind. Like a crazy one, with mad ninja skillz and a cold, cruel disregard for pain.

Why was I mentally orchestrating such pointed violence, you ask? Well, there were many reasons, but largely they were of my own interpretation (so I see now. This awareness was not available to me last weekend.). Imagine you have a bear. A big angry momma bear (I think they’re grumpier), and you’ve taken away her cubs and her salmon and berries (this is all that I know that they eat, apart from hapless people), backed her into a corner and then poked at her with sticks. Picture her response, multiply it by 12 and you might be getting closer to envisioning my emotional/mental state last weekend.

The good news is that I’ve come out the other end of each weekend a better person. To my mind’s eye, too quickly for my comfort, my perceptions have shifted and I’m noticing that I’m noticing things. Hilariously, I didn’t want to admit this. That’s what I mean by too quickly. Perhaps that isn’t hilarious. More indicative, really, of some stuff I need to deal with. And this transformation is what I signed up for, after all. Add to this the fact that I am actually really enjoying coaching people (I was really not sure how I’d do/feel, but I’m loving it) and really, things are going swimmingly, if not always smoothly.

I feel like that’s a pretty heavy post, so I’ll stop rambling here. I’ll share more of what I’ve learned about me soon. And I promise I’m okay. Better than that, really. Much better. Some old chains are falling off and it feels much nicer. Lighter. More free.

Sometimes, you just need to get a new perspective.