I Was Looking for a Job and then I Found a Job...
There is way too much work but there is also DANCE THERAPY!
Hello all!
I am taking a little time out from the work day in order to write this, because despite the fact that I have an absolute mountain of shit to do, I need a little bit of a break from doing it. I’m weirdly exhausted despite sleeping quite well last night, and I think I also didn’t eat quite enough dinner because I got to work VERY HANGRY, and I’m just now starting to feel less inchoately murderous thanks to muesli and caffeine.
I have been in a bit of a work tunnel - I took on a bunch of extra stuff about a month ago and I’ve had to work the last two Sundays as a result, and it’s probably going to continue like that until mid-to-late March when my deadlines wind down. This is basically a good thing because it will allow me to pay off those pesky taxes I owe, after which I can get back to some bigger-picture thinking about what I actually want to be doing, rather than how I can simply do the most possible. I’d also like to take a vacation at some point, but even thinking about going to NYC this spring is a bit more advanced planning than I feel capable of right now.
All this said, life is not terrible, it is even mostly good, even though the brain-stress of working this much has been making me a little cranky. But it’s been an unusually mild and sunny winter here, and I do occasionally manage to do things that aren’t work.
Such as:
See friends
Yes, I have friends. I am not seeing quite as much of them as I’d like at the moment, but I am seeing them.
Cook
I have slowed down on trying new recipes basically every night, but meanwhile I have confirmed that adding a splash of fish sauce does, in fact, make pretty much everything taste better.
Go to an after-work movie
Most recent ones were PERFECT DAYS and ALL OF US STRANGERS, both of which I really enjoyed. For PERFECT DAYS my friend accidentally bought tickets to a showing that was dubbed in German, which neither one of us speaks well. But if you’re going to see a movie in the wrong language, it might as well be one with sublime visuals and almost no dialogue.
Dance classes
This has actually been the most revelatory thing in my life in the last few weeks, though it’s not exactly new. I started going to ballet once a week in August after hemming and hawing about it for a couple of years (yes years), but new workout routines are a bit hard to establish when you’re sick and coughing all the time for like 3-4 months straight, while also having a slow-roll meltdown and not really sleeping, and I couldn’t be consistent enough to get it to stick.
However since I’m now feeling like a healthy person with a stable routine, I’ve finally managed to not only stick to the first class every week but add a second. My body is very much still adjusting to that second class, which is a level higher and also just got switched from Sunday mornings at 11 to Sunday mornings at 9:15 FUCKING AM 😭😭😭. But I’m hoping that once I get to the point where it no longer turns my legs into flaming jello for 72 hours, I may be able to tack on a third some-other-kind-of-dance class on weeks when my schedule is accommodating.
The flaming jello thing is no joke, though. Like I go to the gym very regularly and my legs are strong, but apparently they are not that strong. Also, I haven’t taken anything harder than an intro class since high school and I forgot that ballet can be, well… very challenging. Or I knew intellectually, but all those muscles that you never use for literally any purpose other than holding your turnout while rising from plié up to relevé and back down over and over and over for 90 minutes, and sometimes doing it on only one leg while the other one is in the air somewhere, while trying to keep your upper body working constantly but in a very relaxed way and being just so incredibly graceful about it - those muscles had forgotten what fucking torture that is.
On top of this, this teacher I’ve decided I really like is not only really on her shit technically, but also legitimately a model, as I discovered when I stalked her online. This did not come as a complete surprise because she has the vibe of someone who is not just casually hot, but hot as part of their whole deal. So this is kind of a lot for my ego to deal with on a Sunday morning when I’d rather be in bed.
But also… it feels fucking great, because apparently I’m a masochist. I mean, I can barely get my heels off the ground by the end of this class because my legs are fucking dead, but in the last couple of months I can also feel myself getting stronger and more stable and just being in my body in a much more fluid and activated way every day (or most days anyway), and yeah it feels fucking great. A few months of this and perhaps I too will be built like a fitness model. Though not actually, because I’m finally too sane to fool myself that I should try have the body fat percentage of professional dancer a decade younger than me, or of myself when I was 16 and had no ass.
My legs will be made of titanium though, and it will be fiercely hot.
I actually don’t think I’ve felt quite this good, physically, since before I wrecked my spine. Doing ballet again seems to have annihilated my lingering lower back pain/sciatica issues, which is ironic given that the reason I held off for so long was that I was so terrified I somehow couldn’t handle it. I think it took me until last year to start to feel fully safe in my body again, which is kind of insane, because that’s almost my entire thirties that I was dealing with the sensation, either sublimated or not at all sublimated, that one accidental wrong move and I would break. I’m still cautious, and I will always be cautious, but the “know your body and pace yourself” kind of cautious is actually very liberating, because it’s rooted in trust rather than fear and apparently you actually CAN push yourself a lot further if you have the patience to do it intelligently. Hard-acquired wisdom! Good shit!
Anyway
I need to figure out what to do with this newsletter going forward, because even beyond the fact that work has been making me feel a bit overtaxed mentally, I’m not sure whether this whole rambling diary format is actually working for me. It’s a bit too easy to half-ass, and I’m also a bit wary of spamming people with the bullshit minutiae of my life.
I’m glad I’ve stuck to every-two-weeks for a while now, but I’m wondering whether I should cut it down to once a month for a bit, but try to make it a bit more structured, and just randomly shoot out a little missive like my Valentines Day post when I have something cute to share. Not sure yet, I need to ponder, and some of this pondering may have to wait until all my deadlines are passed. You will continue to hear from me though in some format, so NEVER FEAR! Because I know you were, like, so fearful about that.
I am not proofreading this one before I send it because I really need to get back to work. Sorry if it’s messy.