I’ve noticed that when things get particularly stressful in my life, I start to thinking about running away. That “fight or flight” instinct kicks in, and flight starts to sound attractive. Here of some of my latest escapist fantasies:
Pull the kids out of school for a few months and go to India to study at AYRI, travel, write, and just bum around. (It doesn’t help that my friend Sparky is planning a similar trip this spring.)
Get in the car and just keep driving we hit an ocean. Hang out on the beach. Eat seafood. Drink wine. Listen to the waves.
Travel around the world for a year — with the kids, husband and a tutor to help homeschool the kids. YogaSpell’s version of this one involves sailing around the world. My version involves four-star hotels.
Open a yoga/pilates studio with my yoga and pilates friends. Next door, open a “chai and pie” shop run by my friend the chef. We could call it “YoPiChai.” I don’t want to teach yoga or bake the pies, I just want to run the front desk, wear yoga clothes all day, hang out, go to classes and eat pie.
Go live in Crestone and study yoga with Annie. Hike. Go to the hot springs every day. Embrace my inner hippie.
What are your escapist fantasies?
November 16, 2007 at 3:31 pm
I imagine that often, too, when stress befalls me. I think of two more often than any others:
1). Pack a few things and disappear, leaving everything behind, including family. This is my more selfish fantasy.
2). Just drive and drive and drive and then call in to work the next day.
The one thing that we discover though is that remaining and facing the stresses is better than running from them. If only we could get our minds to agree.
Cheers!
November 16, 2007 at 6:20 pm
I have two children under 2-and-a-half years old. My escapist fantasies all involve SLEEP. There are various locations, settings, surroundings — and I admire them for a moment or two before… lying down and going to SLEEP.
November 16, 2007 at 11:49 pm
I’m totally in on the YoPiChi! I’ll be your front desk relief person. Save me some pie.
And Strawberry, my kids are almost all double-digits now, and I’m still fantasizing about sleep.
November 17, 2007 at 2:06 am
Short selfish escapist fantasies involve Zen monasteries. Or weekends in New York and good hotels.
Moving the whole family to Japan, probably Kyushu or even further south where supermum can spend all day on the beach and I can do a serious amount of archery…
Emigrating as a settler family to another planet, so many light-years away that the constellations of stars are changed beyond all definition and three moons make strange and wonderful patterns in the tides
November 17, 2007 at 4:16 am
[...] was reading a post over at Yoga Gumbo about escapist fantasies when one feels like getting away from it all. I started to leave a comment [...]
November 17, 2007 at 4:17 am
Hi there. I started to leave a comment but it turned into something that needed its own blog post. Thanks for the inspiration and apologies for stealing your idea, I hope you don’t mind! http://noblesavage.me.uk/2007/11/17/the-great-escape/
November 17, 2007 at 9:04 am
It’s so good to hear that everyone has these fantasies! And NS, I don’t mind at all!!
November 17, 2007 at 9:50 am
[...] Fantasy Escape Jump to Comments Thanks to YogaMum for the [...]
November 17, 2007 at 3:17 pm
Definitely a very isolated minimalist housing, beautiful setting, sunsine diamonds reflecting off the water surface, hot tea, friends who row over to my island for long deep conversations, bouts of laughter, buckets of tears, and then solitude once again.
November 17, 2007 at 6:28 pm
Hmmm. None of my escapist fantasies involve bringing my kids. What kind of a mom does THAT make me? Gosh. I’ll have to take a look at that.
My escapist fantasies ALL have to do with being alone.
My favorite: Just get on a train going east some morning. Get off somewhere in, I don’t know, Nebraska or Kansas or something. Have a one room apartment that is so filled with books that it can barely fit a bed. Leave said apartment only for groceries.
I know I’d get tired of that fast, but some days, I swear, it feels like it would last forever…..
November 22, 2007 at 12:09 am
To get an overview of particular yoga techniques before actually participating in them, looked at your website, Good One.