I wish I were exhausted tonight.

I wrote the final paragraph of this update before writing the rest. I think I wrote it first because I needed to get that out before I could focus on telling this story. It's funny because as I was thinking of how to relay this segment of the chronology I didn't consider it a very emotional segment. But the more I think about my motivations during this time, the more I realised it is an emotional thing for me. So I changed the title to reflect that. I wonder how many people will skip to the concluding paragraph now.

When I returned to Auckland after my recovery time in Wellington, I had to immediately assume again my role as on the ground manager. The first task was to get rid of a nasty dialer virus that had infected the computer. The next task was to find a new house for us to live. The monastery was about to head for a new stage of growth and maturity, and the first step was to find a new location.

Because of a growing community of Hare Krishnas living in Otahuhu we were told to find an inexpensive place to live there. After checking out a few horror houses, one which actually had a dead mouse in the living room when we went to inspect it, we found our little home on Church Street. This house had immediate appeal, primarily due to its new carpets and paint job, the fact it didn't smell like death, and there were no dead rodents visible.

The next change was an expansion of my services. On day in January my Guru was visiting, and he called me to visit him. I sat with him for a few hours, chatted with him about various management issues in our monastery, showed him graphs displaying expenses, income and book sales. He then called for the monastery leaders, which now consisted of three different monks. When they arrived, I was told I could leave. I started walking home, but about half way I received a call to return, so I turned around. The hot sun was making it's presence known on my bald head. When I arrived back, my Guru said, in front of all the leaders present, that he wanted me to start preparing activities at all the universities in the city, aside from Auckland university. I was to expand our presence onto the university campuses. Then I was told I could carry on back home.

On my walk back home I started thinking up all the excuses I could give as to why I shouldn't or couldn't carry out the mission of setting up university programs. I was scared. But as I walked I realised I doubted myself because I had started buying into all the negative things I had heard said to me over the years. I realised that if I could get the programs running I could show prove those statements and attitudes wrong. I could show that I was as effective as anyone else in our monastery.

I set to work straight away, researching what I could about each different university or polytech in the city. I attempted to set up clubs, food stalls or cooking classes on four different campuses. My first success was at UNITEC. Later I also managed to get a food stall at AUT. For the first year we let Auckland University continue to be 'targeted' by another Hare Krishna without the presence of our team.


(Our vegetarian food stall at Unitec)

Adding this on top of my already heavy workload was tough, especially as my body was still having it's ups and downs, and fatigue was something I had to deal with regularly. And running vegetarian food stalls was a big task. It meant waking up at 3 am, chanting my rounds, then starting to cook, attending our morning prayers, cooking more, eating breakfast, finishing cooking, packing the van, going to the campus, setting up, selling food, packing up, coming home, cleaning everything, doing my management jobs, reading 2 hours a day and preparing to do it all again the next day.

My entire week started looking busy. Sunday was temple day, which meant waking at 3 am. On Sundays I also filled 10 20 Litre buckets with milk at a near by farm that para-legally sold raw milk (this was before the vegan wave hit the Krishnas in 08). So, after the morning prayers and class at the temple I would drive 15 minutes, clean all the buckets, fill them up, put them in the car then drive back to the temple, give half to the ladies from the yoga centre. Then fill up our 3 25L water bottles (the temple had filtered water, which was infinitely better than the tap water in Otahuhu). Then drive back to Otahuhu, arriving at noon, cooking breakfast, then usually reading or sleeping until it was time to get ready to go to the Krishna Fest at the yoga centre. I would be out there till after nine, come home, likely in bed late that night, late me for me.

Monday I would sleep in. But Monday was chaos day. Things that needed doing included banking, book scores, shopping for the university cooking days, a large feast where we would invite guests to the monastery, weekly reports, management meetings (which were massive headaches in themselves), general monastery meetings, correspondence, and then getting set up to cook the next day.

Tuesdays and Wednesdays were cooking days in 2007, at UNITEC at the time, the schedule for which I already described. Tuesday night also ended up being the night we would give philosophy classes at the yoga centre, which meant late nights.

Thursday was the day my body crashed, it was my physical recovery day. Friday and Saturday were days where I caught up on my management, reading, e-mails, communications and sleeping, as most days of the week I was functioning on close to 5 hours of sleep.

I was moving non-stop. I was enlivened and stressed-out at the same time. It was awesome having so much to do, and feeling the weight of responsibility on my shoulders. But I was definitely stressed, and my shortened temper meant that I was less able to deal with other peoples lackings very well. If younger monks, or even older monks, displayed any level of ignorance I would snap at them, mock them, or let them know of my superior knowledge, intellect and skills. My bullying continued, but it also expanded to include attempts to raise myself above the senior monks by pointing out my efficiencies.

I was also communicating a lot with the manager of the yoga centre, discussing aspects of our services at the yoga centre there, and how to improve things. I was ordering large amounts of books as well. We had an order of something like 50,000 copies of one type of book. That meant I became responsible for $250,000 worth of debt to our book suppliers. That was a heavy burden to feel.

I noticed an interesting tendency in myself at the time. It was the tendency to always want to communicate. I would sent out e-mails so that I would have more e-mails to read and reply to. Same with texts. It was an extra distraction.

Sometimes, when I get a moment of stillness in my life, I realise that the reason I often try to stay busy is because when I stop moving all the emotions catch up with me. But if I can fill my day up with constant activities and distractions then I never have to deal with myself. If I can make sure I get to bed exhausted at night the emotions won't catch up with me. 2007 was the year I tried this approach. 2008 was the year it came crashing down.