Dancing Geek

I’ve a couple of ideas hanging around at the moment that I want to do.  The thing is, they involve putting myself out there.  They do it in different ways, but they’re both very much outside my comfort zone in terms of biggification.  And I’m totally stalling.

Am I really stalling?

I have “perfectly valid” questions cropping up about each of them, things like “What am I looking to get out of this?” and “Is this the right one to go for?” but the thing is that these are both just long winded ways of asking myself ‘Why?’:  “Why do I want to do this?”, “Why should I go for this one?”.

I believe that the empowering question is ‘Why not?’.

“What have I got to lose by doing this?” – Nothing

“What’s the worse that can happen if I go for this one?” – I get it

So those “perfectly valid” questions?  Yeah, they’re real questions, but they’re stalling questions.  It seems I can add ‘needing a very good reason’ to my list of stalling tactics:

• Staying up late and sleeping through the day
• Telling myself that I’m not ready, I’m not prepared enough
• Needing a ‘very good’ reason

Visualising my fear

This came from another extended (2 hour) meditation today – thanks to Joely for “giving me permission” by example.

After clearing my head, like I wrote about yesterday, I started to think about what was holding me back from following through on these two ideas, bringing my attention to how I feel when I think about them.

I noticed a tension at the base of my sternum, where the two rib cages separate.  So I gave it form in my mind and it showed up as this black, sticky, dense rubber ball.  It immediately started pumping out this noxious toxin so I put it in a bubble and ran a tube out of my body to drain the liquid away.

Thing is, I wanted to talk to it, so I tried to make a gap in this transparent plastic cover but every time I did the toxin would get sprayed through the hole (it wasn’t till later that I realised why).  However, I was pretty determined so I put a second ball around the first, put a drainage tube on that and then opened up a gap in the lower half of the first ball and the upper half of the second.  That way sound could travel (if a little muted) but the toxin was safely being drained off.

At this point, I got a strong feeling that the toxin wasn’t wanted by the black ball. So I asked if I could lance it to take away the toxins and it agreed.  A quick prick with a pin and a gush of toxins ran out and down the drainage tube.  The ball began to shrivel and dry out and it suddenly became clear that it was hollow as it split open down one side, being unzipped from the inside.

Out stepped a funny little creature – purple, bloated, but with two definite arms and legs.  It had been stuck in the ball and desperately wanted to take a shower.  So I made it one and it had a wash.  As it washed, the creature lost the purple colouring and bloated look.

It turned out to be a tiny little version of me (which totally threw me at the time).

I was naked, so I gave myself some underwear and we sat with each other for a bit.

I noticed that there was a sense of vacuum where the ball had been so I cleaned out the area with some warm scented water and then let it fill up with this.  As I did, the area expanded into a spacious, spherical swimming pool, fresh water ran in from above (my heart) and drained out below as there was still some ick left behind to be dissolved, and no one likes a stagnant pool.

So yeah, the fact it was right in my third chakra didn’t escape me.  Eventually, I noticed that my tiny little me had erected this protective barrier, complete with defense system, but that it had somehow kept going long after it was needed (namely at school) and had caused my little me to become trapped, deformed and unhappy.  Gee, metaphor much?!

So let’s add to the stalling tactics:

• Staying up late and sleeping through the day
• Telling myself that I’m not ready, I’m not prepared enough
• Needing a ‘very good’ reason
• Keeping everyone away by being toxic
• Hiding behind an unnecessary protective shield
• Trapping myself into a tiny space to be safe, even though it ends up totally disfiguring me

The bit that was missing

There still felt like something was missing after all of this so I decided to do some Shiva Nata to see if I could get anything more to come up.  I went through a few rounds then settled down to see what came up, just asking myself the question “What am I missing about this?” over and over again.  Suddenly I realised that a little story had played itself out in my head.

Rather than type it all out I’ll go with this: think a global version of Cloverfield, but with odd little pixies (blame Alex for those) and everyone running scared.  Suddenly it turns out that they’re terrified of me, my image is splattered across the globe and I’m an instant world hero.  The pixies all run away.  Then the world goes back to normal, except that everyone knows the pixies are scared of me but they don’t know why.  People start avoiding me, they start shouting at me in the street.  No one dare come near me.  I’m completely and utterly alone, I walk into a full dance studio and it empties and I’m left just dancing alone.

So yeah, again with the not very closely veiled metaphors – what can I say, I guess my subconscious understands that I don’t tend to get the subtle cues.

It turns out that I’m scared that if I let myself shine fully again that I’ll end up completely ostracised again.  Oh school, what wonderful things you taught me.  Let’s just pull that out so it’s easy for me to find again.

I’m scared that if I shine fully I will be ostracised (again).

Finding another way to feel safe

I am going to do these things, I happen to be fortunate enough to have a damn stubborn streak for things like this, so I could do with finding to help me feel safe even though I’m putting myself out there.

The most obvious thought is that I need to find people who are like me, find my tribe.  I have some great friends and groups already, but I’m also looking for other Dancing Geeks.  I’m looking for a way to feel like my own little brand of crazy is not so crazy.  I’m not sure how, but I’m sending this intention out into the world and we’ll see what comes back.

Life is pretty good at the moment, and there’s a few reasons why:

My own little morning thing

It’s only been the last two days, but I’ve found my own little morning practice that has proven to be pretty darn tooting awesome.  Yes, it’s really that good.

It basically involves me sitting still (so, there’s a meditation-y aspect, but nothing so formal as to make me feel ‘shoulds’) and feeling (note: not thinking!) and then writing down exactly what I feel (so my left-brain gets to do something and keeps busy).

It comes from something that Joely suggested in our fabulous Shiva Party last weekend (that would be the ‘write down what you are feeling’ part).  It works for me because it’s something that I can achieve, with some effort.  It’s a challenge, it makes me work, so I feel that I will be giving various synapses a workout, but it’s not totally alien or out of my reach so that I feel unsure that I’m doing it right or never feel like I can finish (I like finishing things, finishing things makes me happy).

The end result is also pretty spectacular.  Though I fear to jinx it (rational mind steps in to scoff at superstition) the last two mornings I have found that as I go through and write down a list of the emotions that are milling around (In Just a Minute style, so no repetition, deviation or hesitation) that each one (and the count stands at 35 and 83 for each day!) gently melts away and I’m left with a real sense of calm that has lasted a long while, and even returns after a while if I get wound up by anything.

A new thing with no name!

One of the reasons that today saw such an increase in feelings was because I started a new thing last night, and it’s all about putting myself and my dancing out there in 12 second chunks!  Much whirring of emotions, but ultimately a determination to create lots in order to create good stuff.  That’s the way it works, or so I’m told.

Anticipation of food

It really is telling that my sole focus on the gardening is around how much food I can get out of it, but there you go.  Today saw me planting out a load of seeds into trays, but I’m a little worried that I got it all horribly wrong.  Fortunately, I made sure I didn’t use all the seeds in one go, so in a few weeks time, whatever happens, I shall start my second batch – continuous cropping FTW!

Tweetdeck on Ubuntu

Yes folks, I’m a geek, and that includes running Linux on my laptop (though it’s the super user-friendly Ubuntu – even your Granny could use it) so it was a joyous moment when Adobe finally got the Air application system thingy working for Linux users too.  Now I can run Tweetdeck actually hold decent conversations with people and see what’s going on without being overwhelmed.  I’m now on a mission to find as many Dancing Geek’s as possible, and get to know some of the cool people in the UK that also use Twitter (thank you @StephenFry for the big push).

Home Pilates studio

Well, a laminate floor now exists in my little corner of the house (it’s also the spare room and piano room, but ostensibly it’s my corner and is respected as such.  Which is a good thing, because it’s a real pain to have to piss over the door to mark the boundary).  Coupled with my new favourite toy, aka a fitball (think Space hopper without the handles and spherical – or just think big fuck off bouncy rubber ball), a foam roller (thing over-sized and over-priced pipelagging without the middle hollowed out) and a yoga mat I now have enough bits and pieces (not forgetting my dolphin massager and spiky balls) to do a good bodywork session.