Tomorrow is my last ballet class until January, which makes me sad. I actually really enjoy the class, which is a little surprising – when I first started I was so scared I seriously considered chickening out, and I’m really glad I didn’t.

Fact: I am THE worst person in the class. I don’t have any ballet experience but I snuck* into Level 1 (they didn’t offer beginner over the summer) and on top of that, half the people in class are actually Level 2 (due to scheduling issues they can’t go to the actual Level 2 class). So I’ve gone from 0 to 1.5(ish). I have no problem saying I’m the worst person in class, it’s to be expected.

The thing that I wasn’t expecting was that I have a blast. I look forward to my classes each week. I stumble around and look like an idiot and I have a really great time. Everybody in class is really cool (including the teacher) which is part of the reason I can have such a positive feeling about it.

The other part is that I think there is something liberating about being terrible. In class, I position myself front and center at the barre because I’m already so terrible and awkward, why not go all out and get a good spot? I don’t even try to hide at the corners of the room (well, I do stand back during exercises in the center of the room because I am very tall and don’t want to block my classmates).

Being good at something comes with a sense of pressure. You are expected to always be good which makes it particularly tough when you fail and aversion to failure often means you’ll be safe in what you do (this is my problem). Allowing yourself to screw up in a safe environment (such as a supportive dance class) will eventually bleed over into your real life, as the idea won’t seem so scary anymore. It’s not an instant or necessarily distinct change but it’s safe to say that I’ve become bolder as a result of sucking in dance class.

“Don’t be afraid to fail” is a common mantra in creativity circles. As you may have guessed I agree with this sentiment, but I think it should be expanded beyond the art journal (or whatever it is you do). It’s (relatively) easy to screw up on the journal page where nobody can see you or has to know about it. Doing something way out of your comfort zone, even if (perhaps especially if) it has nothing to do with your craft, is definitely going to shake you out of your routine and give you that weird sense of freedom. And maybe you’ll find you really enjoy it and come away with a new passion. Of course there’s also the possibility that you will have a really negative experience, but that’s why I suggest some sort of class instead of, like, wrestling mountain lions.

Starting in January I will be taking 3 dance classes a week – proof that once you start it’s a downward spiral into adventure: I’ve added contemporary dance based on my “success” with ballet – so I don’t know that I’ll have time/funding to do it anytime soon, but the next thing I’d like to try is an acting class.

Now would be a good time to segue into an ugly journal page. I got this from Zom who posted a week of ugly journal pages. I’m really late to the party, but I still think it’s a great idea – of course everybody always posts their favorites while hiding away the crap. And in my journals it’s like 20% OK/80% crap. So here it is, proof that I’m not always awesome (gasp)!

This is my “favorite” ugly page:

You know how people are always like “omg trust me it’s sooo much prettier in real life”? Well trust me, this is uglier in real life. As you can see, my “quick, somebody make a joke!” defense mechanism kicked in.

* = My spell check was giving me beef for using “snuck.” I googled it and found this on Ask Oxford:

There is a helpful summary in The New Fowler’s Modern English Usage by R.W. Burchfield (OUP 1998):

sneak (verb) Its origins are shrouded in mystery … From the beginning, and still in standard British English, the past tense and past participle forms are sneaked. Just as mysteriously, in a little more than a century, a new past tense form, snuck, has crept and then rushed out of dialectal use in America, first into the areas of use that lexicographers label jocular or uneducated, and more recently, has reached the point where it is a virtual rival of sneaked in many parts of the English-speaking world. But not in Britain, where it is unmistakably taken to be a jocular or non-standard form.

Bryan A. Garner calls snuck ‘nonstandard’ in his Dictionary of Modern American Usage (OUP 1998).

Some British dictionaries provide usage notes warning against the use of ‘snuck’.

Huh, the more you know. I don’t think I’ve ever used “sneaked” in my entire life.

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December 14th, 2009 |