I have lived and continue to live a very blessed life, but it has not come without hard work and a big heap of God’s free favor. This truth has been a main subject of my internal dialogue for years – trying to make sense of it, trying to accept it freely, trying to make good use of it.
With age, I have found myself waning in enthusiasm and struggling with a lack of vision that I once had boiling over. This has been in conflict with my goodie-goodie-honor-student-affirmation-seeking self. Part of the issue, is that much of my previous motivation was rooted in fear, making other people happy, keeping peace, and proving my right to air space. Ironically, being set free from fear – which is another gift from God and ongoing process – left me clueless at how to go about my day. This freedom was brand new and I had no clue what to do with it – how to get myself out of bed without telling myself I’m a bad person if I don’t. How do I set goals and achieve them if they are truly for me and what I want and for the betterment of my future? That is freakin’ scary!!
As many of you know, I started dance classes again this summer. It just makes me happy. I’ve never been in a dance class and wished to be somewhere else (except for my D.C. Tango class – but that’s a whole other story). I signed up for tap and ballet. The tap came back in a week or two, but that was to be expected. I’m not the world’s greatest tapper or anything, but it was always a more natural and fun movement for me.
Ballet is a whole other story. Ballet is about technique and discipline. It’s about standing at a bar and doing one movement over and over until your body is trained to do it in a perfect way that sets you apart from all the non-ballerinas of the world. How very Russian of it. I hadn’t been in a ballet class since I was 17. Needless to say, I struggled. In fact, I was terrible. At 30, with a Ph.D. and a padded resume, I was flat out bad at something I wanted to be good at. Granted, I’m bad at plenty of things, but the wanting to be good at something was the burn.
I was so frustrated. But, I was still having fun because I was in a dance class. Regardless, I decided I could switch to the lyrical dance class and play to my strengths and stop being the tall girl with big hips in the black skirt and pink tights – which they don’t even really make for people my size. I could go to the lyrical class and move my arms around a lot and express myself and be free from my inabilities to remember French words and have a good turn-out in 5th position.
Then, during class one night, I maintained my balance in Releve Sou-sus. I hadn’t done that in years, and it felt good. For a second I thought “Hey, maybe I can do this. Maybe I’ll get better.” So, when fall registration came around, I stuck with ballet and I’ve noticed a change every week. I may not get everything right – but I get more right than I used to. And for the first time in ages, I’ve felt the joy of working towards something – a feeling seemingly extinct in this generation.
Somehow this small accomplishment in ballet has crossed over into my work life. Yes, I still procrastinate about writing my 5-year research plan and submitting a grant (which is what I'm doing by writing this), but it’s not nearly as frightening as it was. I have ideas and potential collaborators and somehow things seem much more possible than they did before.
I came across this scripture, which initially is a tad offsetting. Why would accomplishments be bad for you? Because you take goals and vision and hard work for granted. Because you become disillusioned. Because it can have the opposite effect of expected, and you can actually lose joy.
It's not smart to stuff yourself with sweets, nor is glory piled on glory good for you.
Proverbs 25:27, The Message
As adults, and as people that go to the same job every day, it can be easy for us to lose vision and to become accustomed to the day-to-day. Is there anything you want to be good at that you have to work for? Is there a forgotten about dream that maybe it’s time for you to pursue? A first love that you need to return to? (Meaning God and/or the things that you have known you loved from the very start).
I feel like this post may be disjointed and not flow – but it’s where my head and heart is at the moment, so I just hope you can make some sense of it and that it blesses you J.
With age, I have found myself waning in enthusiasm and struggling with a lack of vision that I once had boiling over. This has been in conflict with my goodie-goodie-honor-student-affirmation-seeking self. Part of the issue, is that much of my previous motivation was rooted in fear, making other people happy, keeping peace, and proving my right to air space. Ironically, being set free from fear – which is another gift from God and ongoing process – left me clueless at how to go about my day. This freedom was brand new and I had no clue what to do with it – how to get myself out of bed without telling myself I’m a bad person if I don’t. How do I set goals and achieve them if they are truly for me and what I want and for the betterment of my future? That is freakin’ scary!!
As many of you know, I started dance classes again this summer. It just makes me happy. I’ve never been in a dance class and wished to be somewhere else (except for my D.C. Tango class – but that’s a whole other story). I signed up for tap and ballet. The tap came back in a week or two, but that was to be expected. I’m not the world’s greatest tapper or anything, but it was always a more natural and fun movement for me.
Ballet is a whole other story. Ballet is about technique and discipline. It’s about standing at a bar and doing one movement over and over until your body is trained to do it in a perfect way that sets you apart from all the non-ballerinas of the world. How very Russian of it. I hadn’t been in a ballet class since I was 17. Needless to say, I struggled. In fact, I was terrible. At 30, with a Ph.D. and a padded resume, I was flat out bad at something I wanted to be good at. Granted, I’m bad at plenty of things, but the wanting to be good at something was the burn.
I was so frustrated. But, I was still having fun because I was in a dance class. Regardless, I decided I could switch to the lyrical dance class and play to my strengths and stop being the tall girl with big hips in the black skirt and pink tights – which they don’t even really make for people my size. I could go to the lyrical class and move my arms around a lot and express myself and be free from my inabilities to remember French words and have a good turn-out in 5th position.
Then, during class one night, I maintained my balance in Releve Sou-sus. I hadn’t done that in years, and it felt good. For a second I thought “Hey, maybe I can do this. Maybe I’ll get better.” So, when fall registration came around, I stuck with ballet and I’ve noticed a change every week. I may not get everything right – but I get more right than I used to. And for the first time in ages, I’ve felt the joy of working towards something – a feeling seemingly extinct in this generation.
Somehow this small accomplishment in ballet has crossed over into my work life. Yes, I still procrastinate about writing my 5-year research plan and submitting a grant (which is what I'm doing by writing this), but it’s not nearly as frightening as it was. I have ideas and potential collaborators and somehow things seem much more possible than they did before.
I came across this scripture, which initially is a tad offsetting. Why would accomplishments be bad for you? Because you take goals and vision and hard work for granted. Because you become disillusioned. Because it can have the opposite effect of expected, and you can actually lose joy.
It's not smart to stuff yourself with sweets, nor is glory piled on glory good for you.
Proverbs 25:27, The Message
As adults, and as people that go to the same job every day, it can be easy for us to lose vision and to become accustomed to the day-to-day. Is there anything you want to be good at that you have to work for? Is there a forgotten about dream that maybe it’s time for you to pursue? A first love that you need to return to? (Meaning God and/or the things that you have known you loved from the very start).
I feel like this post may be disjointed and not flow – but it’s where my head and heart is at the moment, so I just hope you can make some sense of it and that it blesses you J.
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