...and then there are the emotional hurdles
Or something like that.
One thing that I've been struggling with for the last weeks is that there are things I have so little interest in getting past the activation energy for, despite knowing that I'd enjoy myself were I to get there. I could, for example, have gone to a live band at CCB after hanging out at Flyingfeet last night.
At Flyingfeet, though, I did what I do and was praised for it, and I spent some time talking and dancing with a woman who turned out to be in her early 50s and I had thought she was younger than I am. Her secret: she's been wearing hats since her 20s. Oops, too late. In any case, she has a background in solo dance and is new to partner dance and on coming in late at the same time as a few others flummoxed me by not wanting to be paired with the guy I'd walked away from in order to catch the new people up to speed. After class it turned out that she and he had both been in an American Tango class found via Groupon at some studio or other, and she hadn't been able to feel a lead from him. I'd by then danced with him a lot, as with a dozen couples in the room best I can tell there were a couple spare women and him as the spare guy, so with Covert and Martin in the rotation with me I danced with Covert in order to place him such that he would rotate to the lady I'd leant my extra shoes to . . . and come to think of it, /maybe/ there was the other guy whose name I forget who shows up at Swing. And the motorcycle couple. Anyway. In any case, I told her that she might find the short guy easier to dance with now that she has had a little more experience at following, and it didn't take long to get her better to speed with the concept of why having a specific frame was helpful, if hand to hand -- that you can feel rather than see. It later turned out that some of how she was choosing what dancing to learn was because of where the appropriately aged guys were -- it was funny -- she said something about yeah, not having more children, and it was at that point I realized it wasn't "maybe I won't get dances if I'm too much older" but more "I want to mix with people in the same time in life." Honestly, I think her trouble will be in getting guys of an age she wants to realize she is willing to have guys of that age. I told her that the saturday dances at Glen Echo have a wide age range, and that I think Dulles skews older. Perhaps I'll bring her to ccb at some point. I showed her a bit of swing and a bit of blues and we went back to tango for a bit and it was somewhat amusing when Ellen suddenly appeared to further discuss going to the cross.
On being asked what I teach I commented that I tend to be able, in anything I've got some amount of experience with, to get people from 0 to "have some fun this evening." I dunno if that is partly because remembering anything more complex than the very basics isn't something I do, or because I am happiest with the basics. I don't know whether me and one-on-one is likely to be any less basic, because FFE is so rarely beyond a beginner, good fundamentals, evening. But having it emphasized to me, in conversation, that my presence does make a major difference because people who would otherwise slow down the class do not, and because I can deal with newcomers, that was helpful.
I'm on the verge of missing yet another day of picking up mail that needs to be picked up. I don't feel anywhere near as sluggish and down today as I have been for a while, so that's something. I lost a bunch of time to reading stuff on the internet, but it was all further comments and experiences to the sarah sullivan post from a few weeks back. I'm finding a whole lot of things very uncomfortable around it - less so the more serious allegations than the ones that are harder to quantify. What makes an inappropriate relationship? What makes an inappropriate experience? The Europeans in the thread think the people in the States are nuts - experiences in which not only did sex not happen but advances were stopped after no, and those present were over 18 - they're more than a little boggled that a man's career is over from it. OTOH, if you read enough of these responses you find that many more women have described inappropriate behavior, and a couple of them worse, and if nothing else it highlights that treating your traveling instructors like rock stars means them acting, well, I suppose like rock stars. Which is not good. And there's been also some good discussion about how women are socialized and how we freeze and do not necessarily say no, and perhaps some resources there, too. (My comment re this subthread, though, was "this is why we can't have nice things." It's sad enough to read the original post in the subthread, but worse to read some of the comments back. And then, finally, well, I'll just link to the final bit if you insist on skipping. Because it really says it all, and is what I see as one of the other dangers of increased awareness without accompanying sanity.
Needs must leave for the post office. It finally dawns on me that in some ways I'm treating this time right now as near Mom's death, even though she didn't die until early July. It was this time a year ago she was on vent in ICU. It was Valentines day a year ago I fully expected that she would die, with me having had to choose the time*. And for the last decade, my Valentines days have been pretty full of confusion, being unsure if or whom there is someone I would be spending that time with, let alone trying to find a present for. Except Mom. Valentines day was always a big thing in that side of the family. We'd go to my grandparents, and later I would make sure to see Mom somewhere in there. She's been that constant. And the day was important enough that despite the location I still insisted on buying something for her, and that little bunch of long stemmed roses pin was taped to her bed where she could see it. I wish I actually wore pins. And it was the next day that Grandma died. February 15.
I'm told there's this thing called processing.
* If I didn't really need to get moving I'd start musing about some more stuff in Stranger in a Strange Land, but I'd probably end up starting to rant more about attitudes toward women, homosexuality, having sex giving Mike sudden dominance...
One thing that I've been struggling with for the last weeks is that there are things I have so little interest in getting past the activation energy for, despite knowing that I'd enjoy myself were I to get there. I could, for example, have gone to a live band at CCB after hanging out at Flyingfeet last night.
At Flyingfeet, though, I did what I do and was praised for it, and I spent some time talking and dancing with a woman who turned out to be in her early 50s and I had thought she was younger than I am. Her secret: she's been wearing hats since her 20s. Oops, too late. In any case, she has a background in solo dance and is new to partner dance and on coming in late at the same time as a few others flummoxed me by not wanting to be paired with the guy I'd walked away from in order to catch the new people up to speed. After class it turned out that she and he had both been in an American Tango class found via Groupon at some studio or other, and she hadn't been able to feel a lead from him. I'd by then danced with him a lot, as with a dozen couples in the room best I can tell there were a couple spare women and him as the spare guy, so with Covert and Martin in the rotation with me I danced with Covert in order to place him such that he would rotate to the lady I'd leant my extra shoes to . . . and come to think of it, /maybe/ there was the other guy whose name I forget who shows up at Swing. And the motorcycle couple. Anyway. In any case, I told her that she might find the short guy easier to dance with now that she has had a little more experience at following, and it didn't take long to get her better to speed with the concept of why having a specific frame was helpful, if hand to hand -- that you can feel rather than see. It later turned out that some of how she was choosing what dancing to learn was because of where the appropriately aged guys were -- it was funny -- she said something about yeah, not having more children, and it was at that point I realized it wasn't "maybe I won't get dances if I'm too much older" but more "I want to mix with people in the same time in life." Honestly, I think her trouble will be in getting guys of an age she wants to realize she is willing to have guys of that age. I told her that the saturday dances at Glen Echo have a wide age range, and that I think Dulles skews older. Perhaps I'll bring her to ccb at some point. I showed her a bit of swing and a bit of blues and we went back to tango for a bit and it was somewhat amusing when Ellen suddenly appeared to further discuss going to the cross.
On being asked what I teach I commented that I tend to be able, in anything I've got some amount of experience with, to get people from 0 to "have some fun this evening." I dunno if that is partly because remembering anything more complex than the very basics isn't something I do, or because I am happiest with the basics. I don't know whether me and one-on-one is likely to be any less basic, because FFE is so rarely beyond a beginner, good fundamentals, evening. But having it emphasized to me, in conversation, that my presence does make a major difference because people who would otherwise slow down the class do not, and because I can deal with newcomers, that was helpful.
I'm on the verge of missing yet another day of picking up mail that needs to be picked up. I don't feel anywhere near as sluggish and down today as I have been for a while, so that's something. I lost a bunch of time to reading stuff on the internet, but it was all further comments and experiences to the sarah sullivan post from a few weeks back. I'm finding a whole lot of things very uncomfortable around it - less so the more serious allegations than the ones that are harder to quantify. What makes an inappropriate relationship? What makes an inappropriate experience? The Europeans in the thread think the people in the States are nuts - experiences in which not only did sex not happen but advances were stopped after no, and those present were over 18 - they're more than a little boggled that a man's career is over from it. OTOH, if you read enough of these responses you find that many more women have described inappropriate behavior, and a couple of them worse, and if nothing else it highlights that treating your traveling instructors like rock stars means them acting, well, I suppose like rock stars. Which is not good. And there's been also some good discussion about how women are socialized and how we freeze and do not necessarily say no, and perhaps some resources there, too. (My comment re this subthread, though, was "this is why we can't have nice things." It's sad enough to read the original post in the subthread, but worse to read some of the comments back. And then, finally, well, I'll just link to the final bit if you insist on skipping. Because it really says it all, and is what I see as one of the other dangers of increased awareness without accompanying sanity.
Needs must leave for the post office. It finally dawns on me that in some ways I'm treating this time right now as near Mom's death, even though she didn't die until early July. It was this time a year ago she was on vent in ICU. It was Valentines day a year ago I fully expected that she would die, with me having had to choose the time*. And for the last decade, my Valentines days have been pretty full of confusion, being unsure if or whom there is someone I would be spending that time with, let alone trying to find a present for. Except Mom. Valentines day was always a big thing in that side of the family. We'd go to my grandparents, and later I would make sure to see Mom somewhere in there. She's been that constant. And the day was important enough that despite the location I still insisted on buying something for her, and that little bunch of long stemmed roses pin was taped to her bed where she could see it. I wish I actually wore pins. And it was the next day that Grandma died. February 15.
I'm told there's this thing called processing.
* If I didn't really need to get moving I'd start musing about some more stuff in Stranger in a Strange Land, but I'd probably end up starting to rant more about attitudes toward women, homosexuality, having sex giving Mike sudden dominance...