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I went to a yoga class once in 2001, a couple times in 2002 and in 2003, and maybe once in 2004. In 2005, I gave it my strongest effort, attending a handful of anusara classes at the only yoga studio in the small town of Jackson Hole, Wyoming. Back in San Francisco, I bought my own mat, which inspired me to avoid yoga for all of 2006 and 2007. During this time, in the first of many Yoda-grasshopper moments, someone said to me, “When you are ready for yoga, you will open to it.” By the time I set foot in the Castro Yoga Tree only a few blocks from my house, I had attended maybe a dozen classes in a half dozen studios over the course of almost eight years.

Going in, I was aware of some of my struggles. I tried not to let the anxiety provoking length of a 1.5 hour class get to me, and I promised not to berate myself for my novice yoga skills. It turns out this was the whole point of mellow flow, a class that isn’t easy like restorative, but sets the challenge for all of us to go easy on ourselves. The teacher, the much-loved Janet Stone, reminds us of this repeatedly throughout the class, and occasionally I listen. Her classes draw over a hundred people and we all line our mats up, mere inches apart, so that we are nearly sweating onto one another in the warm but not Bikram hot room. As dusk settles onto our Friday, darkening the barn-sized studio, we are instructed to let go of the week’s stress and the American mantra of harder, faster, better. Once a week, I told myself, just go to this class once a week. Sometimes I did, and sometimes I didn’t.

I followed directions well. If Janet said to close my eyes and wag my tail, I did. If she said to take a deep breath and let it all out with a great big sound of relief, I did. Upon command, I introduced myself to neighbors. I chanted off-key. I mooed and meowed. I did this all, perhaps, because I was in the midst of a break-up and I lacked the energy that self-consciousness requires. I needed to blindly trust in something; I was either ripe for a cult or yoga or the cult of yoga.

It took me months to try a different teacher and a different class. I started going to the Sunday morning bhakti flow class because a few friends attended it as part of their forays into yoga. The four of us would set up in the corner, the only ones, or so it seemed, following the level one instructions. Once, during the new age sermon that carries through every class, the teacher said that yoga was an event. All of a sudden, I stopped considering yoga a workout or meditation or something I did for a couple hours in between other things, and I began to think of it as the highlight of my day, an activity of grand importance, an event.

I also treated yoga class like a 12-step meeting in that there was always one going on, waiting for me when I needed it. If I was having a bad day, and for awhile there were some real rough ones, I would look online, find the next class and go. I always learned something enlightening about myself and my body, and I collected words of wisdom like these: “We are here to breathe. If we decide to do some poses, that’s great. But we are here to breathe.”

My favorite part of yoga class is the beginning. We are encouraged to come up with an intention, to think of a person and offer up our wants and needs and benefits of our practice to them. I change up the person every time, but I always hold someone I love close to my heart. I like to start with that person and imagine my well-wishes rippling in concentric circles out through the studio, the city, the world. I can’t help but picture the slow-motion images of a nuclear bomb, spreading not annihilation, but radiations of warmth and light from my own personal point of impact.

I also like the poses themselves. I like to root my hands and feet into the ground, spreading my fingers and toes wide, envisioning them gripping the earth. I like to concentrate on pulling my kneecaps up, elongating my rib cage, letting my shoulders melt into my back, and relaxing my jaw. I like trying without trying to feel the presence of my entire body, to engage muscles it would never occur to me to use in a certain stance. I like the names of the poses, the Sanskrit words and their English counterparts–tree, mountain, warrior, frog, fish–each one rich in metaphorical significance. I like the focus on balance and strength and awareness over achievement.

The other day one of the instructors approached me during a session with guidance on a pose, and he told me my practice was blossoming. I was surprised, convinced that none of my instructors had noticed me. Feigning amazement, or showing teacherly encouragement, he asked me how I did it, and although the question was rhetorical, I spent the rest of the class alternating between beaming pride and a variety of answers to his question.

I wanted to tell him that I was facing the biggest challenges of my life, that I got to the end of the road and it said, “Not a through street,” that I ran out of places and ideas and escapes from the discomfort, that breathing into it was my last ditch attempt at living. I wanted to say that I came to yoga in desperation, or in a failed attempt to battle desperation, I came in resignation. I considered saying that I’m an addictive and obsessive person, and now that I’ve gotten a taste of the spiritual enlightenment revolution, finally a bite of that bliss, I’m back for more, again and again, because I can’t get enough. I wanted to say that my mind is so full of chatter, and I listen when you tell me to place my head on the ground and let the contents spill out, or that I need to hear that yoga is endless, which is why it’s called practice, or that I think I’m being kinder to myself, softer, and more thoughtful to others, or that I feel physically alive, more in touch with my body than ever before, or that when my thoughts become a runaway train, I need someone to remind me to say “thinking” to myself, smile, let it go, and show up on the mat again.

Yesterday, I tried a new teacher. He asked if it was anyone’s first class, and one person raised a hand. The teacher told him, “Happy Birthday.” It was my 28th class in the last five months. I know because I got curious and had the desk person check the computer. I said “Happy Birthday” to myself, commemorating the big event that is my every class. During that session, the teacher mentioned a few different types of breath. He said, “If you have no idea what I’m talking about for a decade don’t worry about it.” I had no idea and I didn’t care. I spent the last decade on the path to yoga, understanding finally, that I am here to breathe. It doesn’t surprise me that I will spend the next decade learning how to do so.

The other day, I was walking the last block to my house after a run and a woman engaged me in one of those “I used to run, but now my body is broken” conversations. I’m a sucker for that kind of nostalgia, because despite being a white person in America with no real financial worries, I’m constantly needing to remember that I’m lucky. Last week, a particularly rough time for me, I rented Murderball, the movie about quadriplegic rugby players. I watched it in three installments so I could have a daily reminder, the gift of my able body, to give me perspective on my privileged woes.

The woman on the street told me she had run in a handful of marathons. She gave a specific number, but once the number is one, it might as well be four or five or whatever. Marathon runners kill me, and not so much in that impressive way. We are not made for twenty-six miles; it’s so much unnecessary stress on the body. And I tend to worry about the mental condition of someone who wants to run twenty-six miles. She told me that she used to run up the 17th street hill that we were standing on the lower part of. That impressed me. I don’t bike up that hill. There is a warning sign: 17% grade. “I’m not sure passing cars could tell I was actually running,” she said. “But if I could just make it up that hill, I knew I was okay.”

I have been working out a decent amount in the past few months and have come to count on sweating as a catharsis integral to maintaining a semblance of mental health. But I don’t really set goals or anything. I’ll occasionally leave spin class five minutes early just to spite the workout. Until the other day, I hadn’t bothered to figure out how far I usually run and now I forget, but I think it’s 3.5 – 5 miles, depending. I usually run for about 30 to 45 minutes, but I don’t wear a watch. (I’m scared of finding out that I run a ten-minute mile.) I have no interest in running marathons or a 10k. I’ve always run just to feel good and that’s it.

Today, I needed to feel good. I awoke to PG&E jackhammering outside my window at 7:45 am. If I had planned on being in a decent mood, this would have been a severe blow, but since I was already feeling crappy, the construction workers didn’t bother me. On my way to the cafe, the back door of a van of slid open revealing a bunch of queer kids who appeared no older than twenty. The ringleader called for my attention. She announced that the gay boy thought I was hot, but then the lesbians claimed me as one of their own. “We just want you to know we all think you’re hot,” she said, while her entourage giggled in the background and one of them shouted to the driver, “Go, go.” When that ego boost lasted a whole four seconds, the length of time it took for my smile to fade, I knew I was in trouble. My writing session was awful, if one can call staring at the computer screen writing. By 11 am, I didn’t think I would make it through the day without my mind combusting.

Running doesn’t always put me in a good mood. Sometimes, it is as hard as writing. Sometimes, like today, I know I just have to do it. When I left my house this morning, the sun was just starting to peek out. I ran the out portion of my longer route: down the hill, up and over Divisidero, along the panhandle, and into Golden Gate park to the turn-off for the art museum.

I would never tackle the 17% 17th St hill from my front door without a warm-up. But every since I met that former marathoner, I’d been contemplating hitting 17th St from the backside. It’s still the same height but the grade isn’t as steep, and I’m so desperately in need of a change of running route, or even an alteration, that I consider it a potential reason to move. So after I ran out of Golden Gate park, rather than continuing home, I headed up towards the backside of 17th St.

I barely noticed the uphill. I was in the zone, that adrenaline fueled fantasy where I believe I can run forever. At the top of 17th St, I could see the burnt brown mounds of Twin Peaks, the towers poking through a thin sheet of San Francisco summer fog. I was afraid of the post-euphoric slide, afraid that if I stopped running, I might die. A voice inside my head said, “If you just get to the top, you’ll be okay.”

I plugged along. Passing cars probably didn’t know I was running. By now my hair was wet, my face was dripping, and I felt like a shaggy dog. The noon sun was out in full force, pinking my cheeks as I headed up, up and up to greet it. I knew from biking that on the final climb to the top, the curvaceous switchbacks have a gentle grade. It didn’t take very long for me to reach the tourists lining the walled viewing area where I scooped my arm into the air in the subtlest of victory gestures. In almost nine years in San Francisco, I’d never run to the top of Twin Peaks.

It didn’t surprise me that I made it. It didn’t surprise me that the whole time I believed I would make it. It certainly didn’t surprise me when the tears that had threatened at the start of my run, the ones that were preparing themselves all morning, came spilling out; I know I’m okay.

There is a post today on the New York Times’ book blog, Paper Cuts, that combines March Madness and creative writing graduate programs, two of my favorite subjects. The goal of the post was to find Cinderella writing schools, the lowly ranked MFA programs that produce a surprising number of graduates on best seller lists. The results are inconclusive (i.e. nonexistent) and the post serves only to prompt MFA bashing and MFA justifying in the comments section.

Scanning the blog post, I hoped that my program at the University of San Francisco (USF) would be like the NCAA basketball tournament’s Davidson, an underdog to watch out for. Unfortunately, USF is ranked #83 in the U.S. News and World Report rankings, and if the NCAA graduate writing tournament is anything like the basketball tournament, there’s only room for 64 teams in the bracket. Hello, NIT.

But really, #83? There are three writing programs in our backyard — San Francisco State (#46), Saint Mary’s (#50) and Mills (#62) — that are ranked higher. There are schools in Hawaii and Alaska that beat us. Two schools in the top ten, Michigan and Arizona, are even basketball powerhouses, too.

None of this was news to me. When I tell people about my writing program and they respond positively, I usually point out that they are thinking about SF State not my USF. Also, when I initially looked into programs, I discovered the highly ranked schools focus on fiction and poetry and many lack nonfiction tracks entirely. Since I write nonfiction, the list is useless. As is my graduate degree, which not only says, “The Society of Jesus” on it (damn, Jesuits), but comes from a lowly #83 school.

In my family, personal worth is directly correlated with the ranking of the person’s undergraduate school. Every year my mom pored over the U.S. News and World Report with the rankings. To this day, when I’m at a magazine rack and see the famous annual issue, I check for my undergraduate university, hoping that some useless category like alumna giving will keep it in the Top 5, just behind Harvard, Yale, Princeton, and Stanford (three of which rejected me).

I fell for all of the crap when I was younger–the competition, the grades, the importance of going to a top ranked school. I like to think I’m past all that ranking stuff now, but the truth is, I’m not. Going to the Iowa Writers’ Workshop might not have made me a better writer than going to USF, but getting into Iowa would’ve proven that I’m a good writer from the start. And the people who say all it takes to be good at anything is hard work are fools; it takes talent, too. A lot of it. A basic grasp of language and grammar helps, and even with my degree, I’m still figuring out how to use basic punctuation.

But I do want to say that the University of San Francisco has a terrific MFA degree program, and at least some of the instructors went to top ranked writing programs. They are shellshocked. What I learned from them is this: The better the program the more horror stories you will have, and your book advance won’t cover the cost of lifelong therapy.

Next year, perhaps US News will rank the MFA programs by tuition, and perhaps the NY Times book blog will tell us how much money the author of a non best-selling book can expect to make. Then all of us writers will have some truly useful information.

The Superbowl was as moving as an episode of Friday Night Lights, and the only reason I didn’t cry when the Giants won is that no music from Explosions in the Sky played in the background. Even Kristina, who is just starting to get a handle on the basic premise of the football–four opportunities to go 10 yards–conceded that the game was exciting. Afterwards, she asked me why I wasn’t happier about the Giants victory.

I stood and screamed when Eli Manning scrambled into history and David Tyree’s helmet seeped glue. I showed Kristina the goosebumps that pricked up on my arms after Plaxico Burress caught a TD pass with 35 seconds left in the game. The play of the Giants was almost strong enough to make me wonder if there is a God, but no need for me to investigate, Plaxico thanked God for me. As for the tears, they formed in my eyes and would’ve fallen had it not been for the interruption of a car commercial. But I’m not sure if happy is the best word for my emotions.

I long ago stopped being the kind of sports fan to bang on my chest at the sight of an opposing team’s fan. I do not care about NY vs. Boston or East Coast bragging rights. I no longer desire the escapism of endless hours of games and looping reruns of SportsCenter. I do not have friends or family on or affiliated with the Giants. I watch sports, no, I love sports for the inspiration.

My brother is the most inspiring of my sports heroes. And like Peyton Manning, I have watched my little brother win a championship ring, except I didn’t have a ring of my own, and I watched from wet bleachers not a skybox, and the game wasn’t the Superbowl, but the Div III NCAA lacrosse championship. My brother’s big play as the goalie, like Eli’s miraculous completion to Tyree, came at the end of the fourth quarter. An opposing attacker had a fast break, a one-on-one advantage against him. My brother stepped up to meet the speeding attacker, mirrored the attacker’s cradling stick, stood his ground and kept his pool skimmer up to block what should’ve been an easy goal. His stop signaled the final momentum swing that led his team to a victory.

This moment was on my mind before the Giants won the Superbowl. My brother is going through a tough time now, and he recently went to visit his college lacrosse coach. The coach told my brother that he wasn’t the best lacrosse goalie, but that he always played his best when it counted most. There’s something inside of him. Reporters have asked my brother about his poise, and usually his answer sounds something like this, “I don’t know, man. In a tough game, you have to step it up. You can’t think about the goals scored against you. You can’t get down on yourself about the past. You just need to believe in yourself and play hard. I couldn’t have done it without my teammates.”

My brother’s coach also explained that the reason he pursued a career as a coach is that the obstacles he faces are similar to challenges outside of sports. Athletes learn the importance of accountability, teamwork, practice, strategy, mental preparation, but there are still factors that no coach, person nor human can control. I’m not sure if the two of them diagrammed a play for my brother to get through his tough time, but in the Zen of their jockspeak, they were talking about sports as metaphor for life.

This certainly isn’t a new concept, but one that I seemed to have forgotten. As of late, my pessimism has gotten the best, or rather, all of me. And I do blame my mother for this. My mother who sat next to me during my brother’s championship game, squeezing my hand and repeating. “They’re gonna blow it. They’re definitely going to blow it.” And it was my brother, wearing his Tiki Barber jersey during the Superbowl and probably injuring innocent bystanders when the G-Men won, who believed in his team the whole time.

Expecting the Giants to lose was not a crime. Everybody expected them to lose. They were the underdogs. My reasons for caring about the Giants are based on little more than the Lawrence Taylor jersey and Giants helmet of my youth and my connection to the New York that I came from, but will never called home. The reasons are not enough to make me “happy” about the win. All of my excitement about the game ended with one second left when Pats coach Bill Belichick walked off the field and Tom Coughlin was doused with water. But the feeling I’m left with is made from the things we can control, like hard work and preparation, as well as things we cannot, like luck. It is hope.

I’m in the middle of a standoff with Gold’s Gym. I’m not sure if they know about our battle, but regardless, I’m holding my ground. Yesterday, I canceled my membership. For several weeks prior to that, I’d been walking by and not going in, avoiding both working out and making my decision to leave official. Lately, I can’t bring myself to use the cardio machines, and I haven’t been in a pumping iron mood, and the spin classes are held at the nicer SOMA branch, which is never as convenient as it should be, and despite loving the Castro one near my house because it is the gayest gym in the universe, the stretch room smells like foreplay and the gay men who grunt into their lunges just aren’t self-conscious enough.

But my decision has little to do with the merits of Gold’s Gym. This is about money. I have been paying $49/month for the gym for almost 2 years. Most of my friends, who never use the gym, pay $39/month. One friend, who also never uses the gym, said that she signed up for $25/month, a discounted rate because she left 24 Hour Fitness a few blocks away. For $25, I could continue to belong to, but never go to, Gold’s Gym.

A couple weeks ago, I made the mistake of telling a Gold’s salesperson about my $25 friend, trying to use this as leverage. Gold’s did not lower my rate, but the salesperson did offer to raise my friend’s rate. Then I asked the salesperson about lowering my rate because of “financial hardship,” which the Oakland YMCA used to do for me. Nope. Then I asked about canceling, but I couldn’t do it. I was afraid that no gym membership would be bad for my psychological and physical well-being. When I’m unemployed, I often attempt to minimize expenses. And not always for the better. I’ll let myself go without a gym, therapist, and fun activities, while subsisting on PB & J and library books, while believing that I’m less depressed than I would be if I had a job.

Kristina suggested I bluff with Gold’s. She meant cancel my membership and state my reason as “the rate is too high,” instead of begging for a scholarship. I’m not good at bluffing or haggling. I never understand irony. And I’m gullible. Because I am literal and honest, and I expect others to be, too. I waited until it was no longer a bluff to cancel because the rate is too high, but the truth.

The salesperson immediately offered to drop my rate to $39 if I could commit to a year. I didn’t bite. Then, she offered $29/month if I could pay a $100 upgrade fee and commit to a year. This is when I had to restrain myself. Basically, her “offer” translates into a monthly rate of $37.33, which is $1.67 a month less than the $39 rate, and Gold’s would be getting $100 from me immediately. Perhaps you’re not following, but this is a bad deal.

The gym deal rip-off pisses me off more than any other rip-off. I understand that with most deals, there is some type of discount for buying or committing more at once. Like, sign up with Sprint for a year and get a free $200 phone. Or buy a 4-day ski lift ticket and save $3/day. But signing up for a gym for a year and paying $100 up front to save $1.67 a month is really infuriating. And the salesperson always acts as if she doesn’t know such a thing is a crap deal, because she usually doesn’t. I have on occasion done the math for the salesperson and said something obnoxious, like, “You do realize you’re asking me for a hundred dollars now, so I can get what amounts to a free Big Mac at the end of the year.”

I’ve been a jerk, and now I don’t argue with the salespeople who sit at desks in the corner of the weight room, and I only argue those who have offices with four walls and a door. The real problem is I’ve belonged to too many gyms and have had too many salespeople “waive the initiation fee” after “talking to a manager.” And I’ve joined too many gyms that don’t have membership pamphlets, but have a “deal of the week,” in which a salesperson writes a number on a piece of scrap paper and then tries to convince you he’s doing you a favor.

Anyways, at Gold’s I asked the salesperson to waive the $100 upgrade fee to drop my rate to a doable $29/month. She didn’t go for it. And now my membership expires on March 21. It’s a long way away. She told me I can change my mind before then. But I’m hoping she changes her mind about the upgrade fee before then. This is a matter of principle. It’s me against all gyms. I will not back down.

I am a New Yorker and a sports fan. I am a fan of New York teams. But just to be clear, I am not a New York sports fan. That would be a person who reads the Daily News before the New York Times, a person who likes either the Mets or the Yankees because without baseball there would be no New York team to watch in the summer, a person who currently follows the Knicks even though the have a cellar dwelling record of 13-28.

A New York sports fan would’ve stuck around for the overtime of last week’s Giants win against the Packers. I did not. I spent most of the game screaming at the TV, things like “you fool” and “hit him you bastard” and “go, go, go, no, no,” but overtime crept into my prior commitment. I had told Kristina (the g-friend) that I’d go to a bar to watch the L Word with her. When I asked her if she could go alone (and meet her roommate at the bar), first she said she would be “angry” then lowered her charges to “disappointed.” Although I went with her, I was still in some trouble for enacting a dated gender stereotype whereby I was the loutish husband watching a stupid game while she cooked dinner. The real problem wasn’t me, but a potato chip commercial we had seen in which the women huddle, high-five, and call out plays as part of their game-time snack preparations. It gave her the chills.

The reason I bailed on the overtime was simple. After two missed game-winning field goals, the Giants didn’t deserve my support. After two missed game-winning field goals, the Giants deserved to lose. I’ve spent too much of my life rooting and caring for New York teams only to be disappointed. Taping Knicks games and sitting in restaurants, ears covered and hymning “La-La-La-La” to avoid the score, only to go home and see John Starks shoot 3 for 18. I remember Patrick Ewing’s last second finger roll miss like it was yesterday. And Charles Smith’s bricks. And Superbowl XXXV, when the Giants lost 34-7 to the Ravens in a game that only appeared winnable to Giants’ fans: suckers.

A New York sports fan believes the Giants will win the Superbowl. A fan of New York sports wants desperately for the Giants to win the Superbowl, but knows they won’t. I do not say this because the Giants are 13.5 point underdogs up against the undefeated Patriots. No, no, the Giants have played so well in the past few weeks that it’s about time they blow it all by themselves with no help from their opponents.

New Yorkers know that only bad things happen, that the man approaching you on the street will not ask for the time, or some change, or directions, but will mug you. And a New Yorker knows that there are no honest mistakes, only rip-offs. A New Yorker knows to avoid sugar coating the truth. And a New Yorker and a sports fan knows that there is only one way for Eli Manning to end a streak of no turnovers. With a fumble and an interception.

Go Giants!

No hate mail, please.

Disclaimer: I live in San Francisco.