Dancing Geek

So one of the big things that I have had a hang up over is the P-word.  At what point have I earned the right to use it?  Will people judge me for using it too soon, or too late?  Will someone call me a liar?  Will I get stones thrown at me and chased out of town?

Yes, the P-word has a lot of emotion attached to it.

The P-word is <shudder> ‘Professional’.

Well, I figured that one reasonable marker was that once I’d been paid to work in dance then I could use it.  Except I’ve been paid to teach a number of times before now and I still didn’t feel I could use it.

I got as far as semi-professional, or even part-time-professional (I know, I’m totally making these up – that’s what crazy does to you), but mostly not out loud to other people, just as a label for myself in my head.

Note to self: labels are not that useful unless being used to provide simplified ways for people to understand something quickly.  In your head they just mess you up!

The good news

Cause I like to try and end my posts on an uplifting note, if only for my own sanity.

I recently had the privilege to work with a group of students of varied ages and dance experience.  For two sessions of 3 hours.  I don’t remember being happier, and there was a big part of the final ‘click’ that started to break open the mess around the P-word.  Note I said “started”, I’m still calling the P-word after all.

At the end of the first session I realised I had hit what I termed the ‘holy triumvirate’ of career path hunting:

• I liked it
• I was good at it
• Someone was willing to pay me to do it

The first one was easy to spot – I was bouncing around the place, chattering my head off or simply dancing around in the space enjoying moving.

The second one came later when I realised that I had real ideas and experiences to share when asked questions or facing problems.  I’m rarely lost for something to say, but to actually feel I had something meaningful and valuable to offer – now that felt good!

The final one was the simplest one.  I was there as an invited guest artist, they were offering me money to be there.  I’d have totally done it for free too, but I ended up walking away with a cheque in my hand and big ass grin on my face.

Frankly, when I had this realisation (right about the time I read this awesome Ittybiz post) I was actually a little disappointed not to hear angels singing and blinding lights – but that’s what a childhood spent in places like Sunday school will do to your expectations.

And next?

Ah yes, my brain’s immediate and wholly annoying questioning of where this is going to lead.

Well, I don’t know.  That’s been one of my big lessons this year.  And I’m still working on being ok with that.  In the meantime, I try and taper the heart-exploding panic of not having my life mapped out for the next 20 years with the reminder that 1) having it mapped out would cause me to die of boredom, and 2) I’m actually making progress here.

Today I intended to get on with something concrete.  Just one little thing that I could do to move me forwards.  I still intend to find something, but despite feeling really good about this idea all weekend when I got up this morning the idea suddenly filled me with dread.

Oh, hello fear.

So, I decided to try and find out more about what was going on, because I’ve never been the one to push through yuck and hard, but having learnt other ways of engaging with it I don’t have to ignore it and hope it goes away any more.

Child me

As I sat with the thought for a while, trying to understand what had changed, I realised that when I was thinking about it as a future event I was very calm about it all, I saw all the benefits and really wanted to get some of these things done so as to move towards my goals.  However, once it got into the present a different mindset took hold.  This one was definitely much more of a child’s viewpoint.  The feeling of wanting to stamp my feet and scream “NO!” at the top of my voice, to pout and say “You can’t make me.”

Since I now know that I don’t actually have the mental or emotional age of a toddler, there has to be something else going on here.  So again I sat with the idea as to why I would react so strongly, and in such a child-like manner.

I wondered if, like fear, it was trying to protect me from something.  I wrote out a little note asking child me to let me know what it was protecting me from or wanting to keep me from losing.  I certainly have read enough about adults who have forgotten what it’s like to be a child, and are causing suffering for themselves and others as a result, to want to make sure I didn’t lose the connection to my little playful boy-self but this didn’t explain what was going on for me.  (Which isn’t to say it doesn’t make sense, at least to me, but that it doesn’t have that click-aha feeling attached to it of suddenly seeing what’s going on.  It’s this separation between sense and fit that causes so much well-meaning advice to be completely useless and frankly annoying.)

Team of one

At first, I wondered if there was a way for adult-me to choose what to do, and boy-me to choose how to do it.  So that both were happy.  But thinking this through with examples showed that to blatantly fail very quickly.  It needed a more combined approach, where both adult-me and boy-me were involved in all decisions, which is tricky because I don’t want to end up with a life that looks like a camel and frankly the idea of installing some kind of beauracray in my head just to make decisions sounds terrifying and nauseating.  Rather, finding a way to get back to a feeling of wholeness where I include both these sides is what experience tells me is the route to take.

Still, until that happens I’ve got two competing ‘voices’ to deal with, so I sat them down to talk.

Adult Me (AM): I need a CV in order to improve my chances of X. [yup, I'm still being coy about the details for now]

Child Me (CM): BORING! *pout*

AM: It could be fun remembering all the stuff we did before.

CM: … (ouch)

It turns out that remembering all that stuff actually hurts.

Peeling back the layers

Once I get to an ouch, I know that I’m starting to get underneath the surface of what’s going on.  The next thing I wrote says it all:

I’m still so afraid that people will laugh at me & think I’m odd.

Which triggers shame at still being afraid, compassion at being human, and pain from the memories that caused this protective fear to get put together in the first place.

More to the point, if someone laughs at me I’ll remember what it was like at school.  I’ll remember all the hurt, and the loneliness, and the misery, and the hatred, and the fear, and the anger, and the resentment, and the confusion, and the betrayal, and the pain.

Can’t think why I’d want to avoid that.

My current plan is failing

I didn’t even realise I had a current plan, but it slowly dawned on me that I was trying to forget about all of this.  Trying to erase what happened and give myself a new childhood full of happy thoughts, good friends, fun times and laughter.  And it’s not like these are bad things to have, it’s just that I can’t have them as a child and as an adult at the same time.  And that’s where we come back full circle to the original problem.

I’m trying to be a kid and an adult at the same time.  I’m trying to be fully self-actualised (yuck, spit, ack – need a better word for this) and at the same time to rewrite my childhood by giving myself what I didn’t have before.

Turns out that doesn’t work.

I suppose I could put a hold on the adult stuff and try and give myself a wonderful new childhood, but the lovely denial siren is going off in my head at the thought.  I know that I wouldn’t be satisfied with that, it wouldn’t be real, and it would cause as many problems as it might seek to solve.  So I need another plan.

If I am not able to fix the crappy parts of my childhood, can I accept them?  Can I forgive myself for not knowing then what I know now and let what happened be what happened?  Not let it define who I am now?  Not need to fix it, but rather start from here and move forwards?

Right now, I’m not sure, but it sounds like a better plan to try.  It’s a more mindful plan, a kinder plan, a more compassionate plan.  I’m just not sure how to make it happen.

Soft vs Hard vs Easy

All this stuff is working in the soft still.  That is, working with emotions and mindsets as opposed to real world systems and actions.  Now that I have an idea of what I want to happen for me I’ve this drive to get into the hard stuff as well.  And I can do both at the same time, it’s just that the hard (concrete) stuff will be hard (difficult) whilst I’m still working on the soft connected to it.

Knowing that I’m working on making the hard (concrete & difficult) stuff easier (but still concrete) makes it easier in itself, or more palatable at least.  It becomes a choice between waiting indefinitely or working to get the rewards, rather than a choice between doing the hard (difficult) stuff or not.  It seems that child-me can get on board with the first option (waiting is boring after all) but not the second.

[I'd edit that to make it make more sense, but I can't be bothered.]

Whatever happens, I plan to start letting go of the past, let it be what it was, and instead look at the present and what I can do now to change the future.

…I wrote every idea as a blog post?

Finished or not, polished or not, complete or not.

What would happen if I didn’t worry about writing something that was patently false just because I’d missed something totally obvious? Or if I let myself make a mistake?

What would happen if I stopped censoring myself, making sure everything I had to say was perfect, or a piece of art?

What would happen if I didn’t worry about trying to create value for others intentionally, but let others find the value themselves?

What would happen if I didn’t assume that I knew best about what people needed to read?

Erk!

There’s a part of me that thinks it would be total meltdown.  Fire! Death! Pain! Anguish!

There’s a bigger part of me that thinks it would be exciting, interesting, engaging and worthwhile.

There’s a part of me that thinks it would invite criticism, mockery, throwing of sticks and stones, punishment and ostracisation.

There’s a bigger part of me that thinks criticism is useful, mockery is unlikely and unsticking, sticks and stones are imaginary, punishment is fictional and that ostracisation from those who would choose it is beneficial.

Oh no, Charlie – I think you might have started something.  Questions is, can I keep it going?