aLottaIris

I have been thinking a lot lately about obstacles. Not the clean, manageable kind, the ones you step over and move on. The stubborn, immovable, take-up-the-whole-road kind, the ones that make you question everything. I have been calling them SNAGS this week, because that is exactly what they do.

My business partner has this particular Mona Lisa expression that appears when he has something to say and is deciding how to say it. I had just returned from a week away and remarked that things seemed quiet while I was gone.

That smile. “Yes,” he said, and took a breath. “Absolutely remarkable. My email box has been empty.”

Pause.

An empty inbox. Why? (I wonder as his statement works its way through the sections of my brain)

Because there were NO EMAILS FROM IRIS for the week of your vacation, genius.

Here is the thing about me: I am a crack in the wall of the Hoover Dam. Once it starts, it bulges. It pushes. It increases in force until it has to release in one direction. Out. All of it, all at once, with the entire lake behind it.

Overachiever. Too much. Extreme. Intense. Gluttony.

ALottaIris.

Enneagram 7 reporting for duty.

These are the words that have followed me. And for a long time, the release valve for all of that pressure was wine. Martinis. Booze. You know how that story goes.

This morning I went to hot yoga, which has yoga sculpt woven right into it, weights and cardio bursts folded inside the practice, an ironic surrender to multitasking from someone actively trying to do less of it. It works. I can’t explain it. Sweaty ankles, my new ideal I never even knew existed. How do your ankles sweat??? Full intention. I came home thinking about Stoic focus, about Buddhist presence, about the discipline of one thing at a time. Without force. Without the whole lake trying to gush through one tiny crack.

This is where the Stoics have been invaluable to me. Marcus Aurelius didn’t promise a life without obstacles. He promised a way through them, one decision, one moment, one redirection at a time. The SNAG doesn’t disappear. You just stop letting it have all the water.

The reframe that is the real work of my life right now: what if the dam doesn’t need fixing? What if the water just needs a channel? (ding ding ding)

Fierce. Relentless. Channeled. A data point I keep returning to.

Last night I didn’t drink. A full, pressured, overwhelming week full of honking hairy ugly challenges, and I didn’t open the release valve the old way. What I did instead was bully my husband into a duo order from Kung Fu Little Steamed Buns Ramen, a cheerful betrayal of our prepped weekly meal plan. My husband, eyes glazed from his own version of an overworked week, nodded in spent agreement.

We slurped noodles and soup dumplings too late last night due to an overfull day. But we shared our day in the quiet language of two tired people who love each other.

The Wine Witch offered me her usual deal. I counter-offered with soup dumplings.

I won.

The pressure doesn’t go away. The crack is still in the wall. But we get to choose the direction. And some nights, the direction is hand-cut noodles with someone who loves you.

SNAG met. Direction chosen.

The chicken and zucchini can wait.