Brain DUMP

from The Comet - February 2021

b-sides

brain dump: the one liner therapist

by KRISTEN ACESTA

It’s too early in the morning and my brain is in overdrive. Again. I grab my phone and start an email to myself with a corny poem I am feeding into my headspace. Maybe I should send it directly to her. No, better not. No good decision was ever made at 2am.

Best to scroll through Instagram. Nothing like making my blood boil to get me to sleep. You see, I’ve got this problem. When I get a business idea, I immediately make an IG page for it. Never too early to start gaining your trusty followers. Besides, what if someone gets the same idea and steals my handle?

Nevertheless I now have 12+ accounts; one for plants, one for the clinic. Another one for specialty botanical food items, and another for cats in hats (don’t ask). I also have one as a dream board for this nonprofit idea we’ve been working on. And since the Facebook organization recommends befriending similar accounts as good marketing tactics, I’ve started following every self-help, self made guru, for better or worse.

So as I’m scrolling through late night post-break up advice, I’m realizing that people actually follow this. Like, for real. I think Word Porn and Rupi Kaur (arguably just the latter) made the minimalist thought provoking visual storytelling A Thing in the picture dominant community. Unfortunately, what followed are very poor 2nd grader imitations of “shit your therapist would say.”

That, and like, this super egocentric way of projecting all your pain, anger, discomfort and more onto the rest of the world without any regard to your part in the process. Things like “Wish him the best and move on. If he was the one he would’ve shown you he was.” and then a litany of advice for women to find the “right” one.

Yeah. I mean, there’s the assumptive hetero-cis error in the statement, obviously, and then there’s the part where if you are an adult, having a relationship with an adult, this might become more complex than making sure your immediate neediness is being met.

Then there’s the new age spiritual advice. It’s like the worst of sensationalized capitalism got ahold of Freud’s unconscious analysis and wrapped it in a shamanic robe. And it’s still an ego trip. Shit like “stop explaining yourself to people who lack the depth to understand you.” Ouchie. And of course, the women in power propaganda: “the woman who’s hustling can never understand the woman who’s hating.”

Wtf? I’m pretty sure I’ve been hustling and hating at the same time before. Not that it was a shining moment or anything. Nevertheless, it goes without saying that Instagram is full of horrible advice. In fact, I’d recommend not using it as a personal self help guide and instead seek out an actual human professional. Or talk to your dog. That might be better processing than the infamous IG.

Anywho, if I was your therapist I would write you this poem/children’s book at 2am as advice instead (therapists don’t give advice, btw):

There once was a woman named Haylee. Who had to move all the feels she was bailing (on). Say what? But how? All the spectators did coo Does one move a feel from there to now? “Well it’s quite simple, you see I have racks upon racks that I was saving” And as Haylee spoke, one could witness her hollar Those feels all tangled up through her hips to her collar. “For those bottle and bottles of feels I was saving

Were so heavy and mean, sensitive and keen, That when I nudged the one rack, my heart started waving.”

“I couldn’t stop it then, my heart jumped with each beat, And my skateboard went flying right under my feet” And those bottles went crashing, banging down to the floor. Some were quite quiet, and some were a bore. But some were real big, with deep meanings and sways. And some were real hard, getting stuck in their ways.

But for Haylee knew this point she’d been preaching For with her loved ones she says “keep moving, keep reaching.”

But now, when she finds a bottle on the rack She smashes it herself, instead of storing it back. C

opinion pipeline: noticeable hypocrisy

By Elvis Garcia Owner of Seattle Yoga Lounge

The hypocrisy doesn’t go unnoticed... from a small business owner that is locally grown right here in Wenatchee.

The hypocrisy of standards that we hold towards large companies and small businesses. We received so much push back for being named Seattle Yoga Lounge, because we were perceived as outsiders coming in to disrupt the city, yet our community will welcome big box chain stores with open arms.

Let me start by welcoming WinCo to the valley. It is a joy to have you here and you have a customer in me. I hear nothing but great things.

When I moved back home to Wenatchee in January of 2019 I had a vision - it was and still is simple. To help create a more welcoming atmosphere for all to enjoy, and to bring in a fresh approach to something so familiar; coffee and yoga. A ‘community watering hole’ is what I called it.

I was living in Seattle in 2014 when I started laying the groundwork for what would soon become Seattle Yoga Lounge, a hole in the wall yoga studio right in the heart of the beautiful Greenlake community in Seattle. The dream would come with its ups and downs like everything does, but we would finally get to open up on November 1st of 2015.

I remember signing day because even then I was invested in my home-town. It was Saturday, October 31st and the Golden Apple Marching Band had a competition in Sumner, WA. I was coaching the band that fall for the 3rd season. I left after the morning round and drove up to Seattle to meet with my attorney and the sellers to sign the finalized agreement. I was about to invest all of my life savings, as well as some of my friends’ and families’ who believed in my vision as well. Even in its inception, SYL was and always is a community, a collective of people, not an individual. Once it was all finalized, I rushed back down to Wenatchee again that same day to meet up with Mr. Kovach and the rest of the GA Band to finish up our business. I believe we took first place at that competition. But what I remember the most, is Jim looking at me and asking me “so, how does it feel to be a business owner?” I simply looked at him and told him that I was excited! What Jim didn’t know at the time was that he, like many others in Wenatchee, had shaped me into the young adult that I was. In that moment, I realized that I felt as if I owed a lot of my values to him and we stayed connected as I would continue to help out the band everytime they asked, for several years.

I remember a cold fall practice, Jim and I were walking around the track and he asked me how the business was going, and that’s when, after many long talks with Teddy, I finally told the first person that we were planning on moving back home to Wenatchee to open up our second location. Which was different from Portland, our original business plan.

I wanted to give back to a community that had shaped me to be the adult I am now. So, we jumped into the housing market and met the most amazing, kind human who sold us our house AND got us the commercial space that we are in now. I mean Shannon is amazing! She got us a tour of the space before the “space available” sign went up. We closed on our beautiful home on January 14th, 2019 and moved in that night. We got right to work on maintaining our Seattle location and the planning and the introduction of a café to our business model, which was a huge learning curve but I would say I enjoyed the whole creative process, an area that I thrive in.

Teddy and I spent day and night building the space out ourselves, with help of course from friends and family. We chose to open up the café part of the business first since it was right in the middle of summer and yoga is typically much slower that time of the year. Plus it gave us some extra income to build out our yoga space. Because we didn’t get any financial help from banks we did it all ourselves and our Seattle location was doing great.

Seattle Yoga Lounge in downtown Wenatchee.

I will never forget our soft opening, it took 45 minutes to get our first customer in, and he was visiting Wenatchee from Canada during a swim meet that the city holds every year. He came back the next day, which made him our first customer AND our first returning customer. Success!

We were welcomed to Wenatchee with open arms by Linda (Haglund) with The Downtown Association along with Sasha, Shilo, and Chelsea at the Wenatchee Chamber of Commerce, and our very own Mayor, Frank Kuntz, as well as the youth of the city! But the negative reviews came quick. From “I will never shop here,” to “why would you bring Seattle over to Wenatchee,” to “oh I see they hired a local to run the store.” Um sir, I am Wenatchee native and I run my own store, thank you very much. All of this backlash because we kept our original business name of Seattle Yoga Lounge. We instantly got labeled as outsiders, and because of that many people never gave us a second look. Although I believe that we have done our very best to get the message out that we are local.

Which brings me to the opening of WinCo being highly publicized and being welcomed by everyone, including myself. I’m all about the growth of the city and I will welcome any business into the valley that is going to make Wenatchee a more successful thriving economy. BUT here is my question for those that give push back on some businesses; why not welcome all new businesses with open arms and fan fare? I guarantee that WinCo doesn’t need help advertising they are opening a business in our community. The local media needs to be focusing on promoting ALL businesses, especially small businesses in this time of the pandemic.

Wenatchee is a great place to live, and that’s why I moved back. It will continue to grow, and I promise it will grow at a much faster rate than some are willing to expect. Embrace the change and welcome all with open arms. C