Can dancing give you whiplash?

Apparently, it can. My dance instructor kicked my butt yesterday. After learning a snazzy section of Fosse's choreography to "Sing, sing, sing," my entire body is aching. Well, not my entire body, just my neck (ahh, Fosse whiplash) and my legs--if only I could live in a world without stairs! The rest of me is exhausted, but feels a little leaner and meaner. I also found that I could bend and stretch more after 6 weeks of dance classes than I've been able to do since last summer, when I was doing movement 5 mornings a week.

There are certain activities, like dancing and singing, that I tend to abandon every time I get low on free time and money. Whenever I do pick them up again, I feel like I've woken up from a long, grey sleep, and the little girl that used to sing into her hairbrush while dancing around her bedroom shakes her head at my surprise at how easily these activities come back to me as if to say, "well...duh." The odd thing is that this cycle happens so frequently, I pretty much always feel as if I'm slipping into that sleep or shaking it off. You'd think I'd wise up and actually make the time and the money available to keep these activities in my life so I don't feel that way, but both can be so hard to come by sometimes.

What activity would you pick up again if you had an extra hour or two in your days and more dollars in the bank?

The road not considered

"Let's give it a try"

I don't think I say this phrase enough. I'm too used to being one step ahead of the conversation, to thinking of reasons why something might fail, why a course should be chosen or averted. I'm not always good at strategy (I'm very easy to beat in chess) but I am good at imagining results of certain decisions. Where I lack this insight especially, is visually. I watch HGTV in awe at the designers who can take an old barn and turn it into a palace. If you were to ask me to mark-off a 3-foot square on the floor I would probably end up with a 4.3-foot trapezoid. It's actually quite pathetic.

Last night, Andrew and I rearranged our living room to incorporate a newly-acquired dining table and four chairs. We started by talking about what we should do but, in a rare moment of personal insight, I said "I'm never going to know until I see it. Let's just try things out." The first attempt was the most difficult. We put a table here, the couch there, and it looked bad. Fortunately, we were ready to tackle the problem, so when Andrew suggested something else, I said "let's give it a try." I probably uttered that phrase more often last night than I have in the entire summer as we arranged and rearranged until we were satisfied (and the pizza came).

The result surprised me. Not only did we end up with a fantastic living and dining area, but that spirit of being willing to try pervaded the whole evening. We were more open-minded in our conversations, better listeners, better at trying to express something, failing, and trying something else.

So though Robert Frost may have taken the road less travelled by when they diverged in that yellow wood, I like to imagine that, were I walking with Andrew, he might suggest going off the path entirely, and that I might say "sure, let's give it a try."

Actions

Act as if what you do makes a difference. It does.
―William James


I subscribe to Real Simple's "Daily Thought" email. Every day, first thing in the morning, a quote like the one above wings its way to my inbox to amuse or inspire me. I loved this one, especially paired as it was with this picture (any subtle hints to my husband are purely coincidental), because it reminded me how often I take my own actions for granted. And it got me thinking; how would I act if I was always aware of the difference my actions could make? I tried this today and here's what I've come up with so far today:

• took a few extra minutes this morning to give my kitten undivided attention rather than shooing him from my computer's keyboard. Difference: It put a smile on my face and he seemed to enjoy it.
• took out the garbage and recycling in preparation for our trip. Difference: Now I don't have to ask my husband to do it tonight and I'll come home to a better-smelling apartment.
• sent an email out to my fraternity telling them my plans if elected president of the alumni association. This going to take a big belief that I can make a difference, because I want to implement some pretty significant changes.
• wrote back to some of the people who have emailed or facebook messaged me because I always feel a little odd when I write a friendly note to someone that goes unanswered. Difference: maybe I've averted a friend's sense of awkwardness at my non-response
• used my lunch break to get a bikini wax and pedicure in preparation for the beach. Selfish? Absolutely. Difference in my mood and sense of self: immeasurable (plus such a good feeling meant the woman who performed these services got a great tip).
• focused on my posture while walking today (my new dance teacher has me thinking a lot about this) Difference: I feel more attractive and more confident. This feeling will inevitably bleed into my interactions today.
• Responded with more friendliness and generosity of spirit to my typical customer service issues: people wanting free tickets, vendors wanting us to use their services, and complaining customers. Difference: Much friendlier responses than I usually get and potentially good karma for my company.

Something I'm noticing now that I'm reading through this is how dramatically my choices affect my experiences. Of course that's logical, all of our actions are going to affect us the most, and then those closest to us, and then those we encounter, and so on and so on, but it's nice to know that I'm not as much at the mercy of fate as I sometimes feel I am. Maybe I don't have the power to change the world today, but my actions can still make a difference to those around me and in my own life.

What would you do differently if you were more aware of the difference you make?

Letting the Music Back In

Hello music, it's me again.

I know I've left my Ipod dormant while reading on the subway in the morning. I know I haven't been putting you on when I'm lounging around the house or when I need a distraction at work, but I've had my reasons.

I've never been a music-in-the-background kind of girl. The concept of putting music on just to ignore it has always escaped me...what's the point? If I'm not singing or dancing along I have trouble putting it on (or maybe the reverse is true, I have trouble not singing and dancing along when I put it on). I never knew that the biggest sacrifice of giving up my car to live in New York would be the loss of the perfect, private space to blast a good song and sing at the top of my lungs. Now my life is often noisy and often crowded.

But I haven't been keeping you out to spare my neighbors or my husband or even because I'm too busy. The real reason I've kept you out is that I haven't been doing much for myself lately, and in my mindset of getting from day to day I've been missing the larger picture of what I need to be happy.

I need you, music.

And last week, I found you again. My friend encouraged me to go out for an audition for Candide at a locale theater troupe. I put off preparing an audition and almost didn't go, but at the last minute I pulled something together, marched out the door, and after three hours of listening to other auditions (and about 4 million renditions of "Poor wand'ring one"--all dull as hell) the music was flowing through me and the high E-flat I'd worked into the end of my piece happened effortlessly. By the time I got home, the floodgates were open again. I pulled out every musical theater anthology I owned and sang every song I knew until about 1am. I sang my husband to sleep, and then I kept going. I haven't gone a day without singing since.

Welcome back.

The Right to Mourn (what's not right to mourn)

Every weekday I flip through Metro NY for my dose of the news on my way to the real reason I pick it up: the soduko and crossword page. This page also tends to have room, just across from the horoscope, for an op-ed piece. One of the columnists writes for the Daily Show and I read his pretty regularly, but the rest I can do without. Today, columnist Clark DeLeon echoed the cries of the rest of the media that's obsessed with Michael Jackson's death by telling us that who we should really be mourning is Farrah Fawcett. This reminds me of when the media covered the news of Princess Diana's death 24/7 for about 2 weeks, all the while telling us we were bad people because we should have been clamouring to mourn Mother Theresa, who died at the same time.

Media hypocrisy aside, what really bothers me about this is that there is some assumed right and wrong about mourning someone or something. When I was in high school, my grandmother and my dog died in the same week. My grandmother was in her eighties and I saw her 2-4 times a year. My dog slept next to my bed every single night. You can guess which one broke my heart.

I don't believe that there's a bottom line of personal tragedy which can be reached by adding up the sum of our experiences: Let's see, add two points for regular contact, subtract one for bad qualities, add 3 for tragic and sudden reason for demise...
...it doesn't work that way.

Although my will to live was not crushed by either Farrah or Michael's passing, if I had to mourn one of them, it would be Michael Jackson (and that's a pretty big stretch). After all, as a child of the eighties and not the seventies, I haven't had much to do with Farrah. Michael, on the other hand, has been in my musical vocabulary since I was old enough to listen to the radio. I still blast "The Way You Make Me Feel" when I need a pick-me-up and if the radio stations would ever stop playing "Thriller" these days I might be able to go back to enjoying it once a year on Halloween as most members of my generation do.

So if you want to mourn the death of Billy Mays as loudly as he used to sell OxiClean, go right ahead. I won't tell you you're wrong.

It's (not) my job

Probably the most frustrating phrase you can hear when you're looking for a little help is "it's not my job." Suddenly, the boundaries of someone's job description become so absolute that the person in question cannot act against it to lift a finger to help you. If you're lucky, this phrase gets the add-on of "Sorry," as in "Sorry, it's not my job" which means that the person would help you if they could, but oh shucks, the world is too clearly defined into categories of "my job" and "not my job" and the universe will be thrown out of whack if they test that. Sorry.

"No, it's alright, I don't need you to hold the door while I carry this heavy box through it, I'd hate to overturn the natural order by making you do something that's not your job. Thanks for saying 'sorry,' though, it really makes me feel like you're not at all an ass and are in fact a terribly well-intentioned person bound beyond your own strength but an all-too-confining job description."

The only phrase more frustrating than "it's not my job" when you're an underling with 30 bosses is the exact opposite. Suddenly, you can't even staple a piece of paper without someone asking why you didn't get their permission first, since overseeing stapling is their job and how dare you step on their toes to make that decision. The most frustrating aspect of this problem is that this is the moment when job descriptions suddenly become so elastic that the person in question (and your 29 other bosses) can stretch their job as far as they like to argue any excuse to oversee whatever it is they want. Never mind that two other people already claimed that it's their job to oversee proper staple consumption and office equipment usage, what matters is that the person in front of you suddenly also has a line item in their job description about correct angles of staples on the page that now means they should have been in on the staple decision from the beginning and next time you should know better.

It sounds confusing, I'm sure, to navigate your way through this rather mutable environment, but I have figured out a quick guide for said underling to know where you stand:

--If you don't want to do it, it's your job

--If you want to do it, it's not your job.

I'd wish you luck, but it's not my job. (Sorry)

My Personal Heaven

Based on the numerous times I've uttered the phrase "I'm in heaven" in the past few weeks, I can now imagine that my personal heaven would contain, at the very least, the following:

• A picnic on a sunny day


• Fresh fruit


• A library of books that I could read without interruption - best with sunny armchair, fireplace, and couch.


• A kitten amenable to cuddling and purring (this goes well with the library above)


• Andrew


• Talented musicians who actually enjoy playing/singing for the fun of it


• A home in Brooklyn Heights


• A highway, a fast car, and good music blasting


• A comfy bed that I don't have to get out of unless I want to


• Root beer floats


• A dance floor, a good band, and a room full of partners (but especially Andrew)


• A garden I don't have to weed


• A glass of merlot


• ...make that a wine cellar (it is heaven, after all)


• Friends and family, especially the ones that make me laugh