Author Archives: Rob Pollak

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About Rob Pollak

I plan to get famous via the internet.

How Yoga Cured My Anxiety, Laziness, and Intense Cynicism

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Rob Pollak blog yoga picture Jamaice

(Here’s my latest for Elephant Journal: http://www.elephantjournal.com/2013/01/how-yoga-cured-my-anxiety-laziness-intense-cynicism-rob-pollak/)

Three small ways Yoga helped me set attainable new year’s resolutions.

Before we get started, there are three things you should probably know:

  1. My name is Rob (it’s nice to meet you);
  2. Elephant Journal recently asked me to be a recurring contributor (I said yes); and
  3. Today is January 11th (which, if you’re scoring at home, is a little late for a blog post about New Year’s resolutions).

Why do I care that you know three tidbits of information that on their face are completely uninteresting and mind-numbingly boring?

Because these three little statements represent a whole lot more. They represent a way for me to bring you inside this insane little head of mine. Only then can you start to understand how a few simple new year’s resolutions will help make 2013 epic, and how my new sense of yogic calm will provide me with tools to stick with them.

Resolutions used to be those stupid deals I made with myself at the beginning of the year but forgot by – oh, I don’t know – January 10th. But this year, when I say I’m bringing a yogic calm to my resolutions, what I mean is that I plan to do things that are meaningful to me, but also attainable. It means stepping out of my comfort zone but not so far that my goals become derailed by those inevitable little slip ups.

To start the year on the right foot, I’m throwing my old resolutions out the window.

Good bye, “lose 100 pounds.”

See ya later, “eat healthy.”

Suck it, “read the newspaper every day.”

Rot in hell “quit watching reruns of The Biggest Loser while binging on a scoop bowl pint gallon of Haagen Dazs” (Note – I didn’t even have to look up the spelling of that. Terrifying!).

This year, My resolutions all help make me a little more pleasant to be around. You’re welcome world!

Here are three of the goals that I’ve set and how I hope to meet them.

Resolution 1: Introduce myself more.

I sometimes describe myself as an outgoing introvert. When I feel comfortable in an environment, I don’t shut up. I’ll annoy you until you hate me. Kind of like I’m doing right now. Then, I’ll try so hard to win you over that eventually you’ll come around and start rooting for me. I’m like the kid from the movie Rudy — except without determination, athletic ability, or an overly jowl-y smile. My mixed level of confidence was apparent from a very young age:

Rob Pollak as a fat kid in a blazer on his birthdayBut the truth is that despite that outgoing bravado, on the inside I am anxious and meek when confronted with a new group of people. I hope and pray that someone else will step up and take that first step of introduction.

Practicing yoga helped me realize this trait. When I first went to classes, I’d huddle in the back of the room, timidly balled up in the corner. There, I’d hope that the teachers would introduce themselves to me and relieve my nervousness. With my big ol’ belly, a cotton shirt, and a puddle of sweat at my feet, I felt like an outsider to the Lululemon catalogue occupying the other mats in the room.

But that’s a pretty bad way of living Who wants to talk to a timid sweatball? Exactly!

So I resolved to get better at introductions. You can’t introduce yourself to someone if you’re shy or timid. It might mean faking it, or playing out the conversation 1400 times in my head before it happens, but chances are, other people hate introductions too. By stepping up and taking initiative, I can not only make my life better, but I can also relive the anxiety and lameness of others.

Resolution 2: Say yes to more things.

A few ways I have been described:

  • Cynical
  • a hater
  • Mr. negative
  • Mr. negativity
  • Senor Negativo
  • super lame
  • annoying
  • annoyed
  • an a$$hole
  • Pessimistic
  • a glass half empty kind of guy
  • a glass totally empty kind of guy
  • a glassless guy
  • pudgy
  • A fun-hater
  • a mega-fun-hater
  • handsome.

If you haven’t figured it out by now, sometimes I have a bad attitude:

Picture of Rob Pollak looking annoyed - yoga post

Well that’s all about to change! It’s time to get over those fun-hating, lazy, anxious ways. The anticipation of doing things is often worse than the actual doing of those things.

One way to get over my anxiety is to just start saying yes to more challenges and opportunities. By being more agreeable, I hope that taking possibilities into my own hands and trying to not let great opportunities slip through the cracks.

This actually reminds me of a yoga teacher who once shared an amazing inspirational quote. It was perfectly on point about this topic and completely changed my life and outlook on the world. If I remembered it, I would totally share it with you right now.

Oh! Got it:

“Every time an opportunity presents itself, take it; Otherwise, greatness will pass you by.”

– Some Famous Yoga Philospher

Okay, fine. I just made that up. But aren’t those great words to live by? I say yes.

Resolution 3: Commit to things and then finish them.

[note to self – insert paragraph explaining how I want to get better at finishing things that I commit to].

Medicinal Masturbation: The Man’s Role in IVF

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This is part two of a hopefully lifelong series about fatherhood.  To read part one, Click Here

If you enjoy this, please support me by clicking through to the Elephant Journal:  http://www.elephantjournal.com/2013/01/medicinal-masturbation-the-mans-role-in-ivf-rob-pollak/

The IVF Process for Men:

The IVF process is horribly unbalanced.

The woman visits the hospital on an almost daily basis for monitoring and blood-testing, takes a slew of medications via injection (each with its own warning of side effects that eerily mirror PMS), and feels changes to her body that make it impossible to find the process anything other than all encompassing.

The male, on the other hand, is responsible for much much less.

In my case, I was responsible for parking the car near the hospital, guarding our coats in the waiting room, and making terribly unfunny and inappropriate jokes when I was allowed in the examination room.  (An example: “You could have at least bought her a drink first.”)

An IVF Checklist by Rob Pollak - The Man's Role in IVF

Speaking of inappropriate things . . . That reminds me of the other task I had during the process.  As a male donor, I had to visit the “Boom Boom Room.”

The Boom Boom Room

I visited the boom boom room (“BBR”) three times along the way.  If you’re not familiar with the BBR, it’s a magical place where male patients “provide” a “sample” of “specimen” that a doctor “uses” “for” “IVF.”  

In Japan, there are industries built around the BBR – even for the ladies. Although it sounds like the kind of place that one might want to visit every day, the room is actually equal parts terrifying and uncomfortable.

A typical visit to the BBR proceeds as follows:

First, you’re led to a waiting room where you and other patients desperately try to avoid eye contact.

Drawing by Rob Pollak - A man's role in the IVF process

Then, you wait for the nurse to come return to the waiting room and summon you to your stall.

The nurse then leads you to the room itself and explains the logistics of the room.  For the most part, it looks like a regular hospital room.

It’s cold.  There’s a sink and a generic painting of a tree.  For the fetishists, there’s a blood pressure machine and a stethoscope hanging on the wall.

The primary differences between the BBR and a regular room are that:

  1. the sterile hospital table has been replaced with a big brown barcalounger.  It has a small sheet of paper that “protects” you from the nude man-ass that previously occupied the seat; and
  2. there is a wide array of “recreational materials” around the room.

A drawing by Rob Pollak of the boom boom room: where the man goes during IVF

The office I visited included an assortment of sources to help stimulate the imagination.   These included fine magazines such as Cherry, Barely Legal, and the aptly named, Juggs.

Or, for those with a more refined taste, a closed circuit television played a constant loop of three movies:

  1.  “The DaVinci Load,”
  2. Spanish Asses (en espanol), and
  3. Something that terrified me and is impossible to describe in either words or stick figures.

Once the nurse leaves, you try to figure out a way turn on the television without touching the remote or read the magazines without touching them.

If you can accomplish either of those tasks, then the anxiety kicks in and your mind fills with weird questions:

  • How long is too long to spend in the BBR?
  • Is the volume a little loud?
  • What does Chupas mis huevos mean?
  • Was the doctor serious when he said that if there were any problems that there’s a surgical procedure to remove the swimmers from the scrotum?
  • Isn’t scrotum a funny word?
  • Why can’t I have a room like this in my house?
  • Was there a DaVinci Load book?  I bet it was better than the movie.
  • Did I lock the door?
  • What’s in the garbage can that says “do not put garbage here?”
  • If I finish now, is the nurse going to judge me?

Next thing you know, you’re all done, so you complete the survey the nurse left with you and place the cup of specimen into a secret panel in the wall (seriously).  A magical fairy — (Please God let it be a magical fairy and not the andrologist who was sitting mere inches from me on the other side of the wall) — removes the sample, and then it’s out of your hands and up to science.

All that’s left to do is hope for a happy ending.

(Get it??  Happy ending?)

(Like the massage parlors)

(No, not the ABC sitcom)

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