The Perils of Advice...and Counsel in Everyday Ramblings

It is a race to see if the daffodils are going to bloom before the snow comes. One thing that is different this year about the prospect of snow is that we are all well used to stocking up and staying in. I may do an extra grocery order just to make sure I have enough treats, or ingredients to make treats so I don’t feel deprived.

For so many of us, this has been one long snow day.

We are beyond cabin fever and out in a whole new world that is off the spectrum of our previous lived experience. I walked with Mrs. Sherlock, Frieda and Charity yesterday and we had a lovely time. Amazingly it did not start raining until literally two minutes after I got in. Mrs. Sherlock got the rain driving home.

There is this calmness to all of us that wasn’t there until a few weeks ago. We are all trying to figure out how to get vaccine appointments. Mrs. and Mr. Sherlock are on the waiting list for an appointment. But other than that, it is more like, appreciating the weather, talking about movies and food and dogs and cats and…

And in my case, navigating interpersonal communication. I have new neighbors and I needed to ask them to not play their music loudly after 10PM because I had a night last week where I had to go into the living area so I could get to sleep. It was so sweet, the cats just moved with me.

And I am participating in this Yoga of Business weekly call that I pay for with two business partners, both men in their mid-forties with families. One is a pretty well-known yoga teacher and the other is a music producer, very New York. Three weeks out of the month the call conflicts with one of my classes so I watch the recording. I participate once a month, but we exchange emails during that time, and I see the yoga teacher in another context on a call just for teachers every week.

This all has been helpful to me in setting up a class structure in this new environment that is easier for the people participating in my classes without using social media. Something I have been fretting about for years. I am not a person who has the stamina or desire to feed the insatiable maw of Instagram.

Anyway, last week before the call, I sent an email with some specific questions and a link to my Vimeo channel where I am putting recordings of two of my classes per week. I hadn’t been participating in the calls for a time and wanted them to know I was still out here doing the thing.

After the call they both separately sent me emails telling me that my videos were better than I thought and that they had talked about them on the call even though I wasn’t there.

I was oh, eek. There were five or six other teachers on that call. I watched it the next day. They brought up my videos and talked about them for almost 45 minutes. None of the teachers participated. It was just the two guys making commentary about the camera angle, the lighting, the sound, the sloping floor. They were making guesses about things. Oh, I think this one was shot in daylight and this one at night and so on.

Then I got a score. I didn’t ask for a score, I wasn’t interested in being graded, I wanted help with a couple of specific issues that they did not address because they only cursorily looked at my email and I wasn’t there. I got a 91 out of 100 in case you are interested.

A few days later I walked with my consigliere, Charity. Taking into consideration that she has absolutely no need for men, she told me that they were patronizing me. The “boys”. I said to myself after watching the call that I was glad the New York music producer wasn’t my dad.

Then later that day I had the unrelated Teacher’s call and I realized while I was looking at the Zoom square with the pretty well-known yoga teacher, who is in general a very nice guy, that I was mad. Yes, it took me two days to surface my anger because you know…a lifetime of working for men and…patriarchy.

The next morning, doing chores I got that Charity was indeed correct, they were patronizing me.

I wrote them and told them that.

Yoga Teacher Guy did apologize, but it was half-assed. Charity and Mrs. Sherlock advised that I end my relationship with them but understood when I said I wanted their expertise, on a live call, on my website. This isn’t about me; it is about getting a functional website that is attractive and useful for the folks that take the classes I teach.

I am sure this will be continued. There is another call tonight.

Last updated February 08, 2021