I actually like a youtube comment

"Well, Not Exactly, but next time he's Alone With You, he'll give you the Satisfaction of explaining everything."  Sounds kinda hot.

(It's not a bad song either, by the way.)

on being home for the holidays

Since moving to Philadelphia "for real" (I guess), I've been experiencing the transitional issue of wondering what the word "home" means.  Does that now by default refer to my room in the apartment I share in Philly?  Does it matter that I will only be living in that specific apartment for another five months?  It's automatic to fall back to the college student's mindset - referring to my parents' house as "home", and then, remembering that in all technicality it is no longer my primary place of residence, tacking on "in New Jersey".  And thus I'll say to people, "I'm going home to New Jersey".

Linguistic specificity aside, it feels pretty much like home right now.  Last night I went to our local Barnes & Noble with my mom to finish off the Christmas shopping list.  Once back home, my dad distributed glasses of eggnog with brandy (fantastically delicious - makes me want to get into brandy more) and we delved into unwrapping the ornaments.  My mom has a tradition of seeking out an ornament of a new material each year, one for each of my brothers and I, to add to the collections to eventually give to us.  Each year I hang the golden snowflake, the sheep decorated with buttons, the pumpkin-seed poinsettia, the cork reindeer, the flat felt snowman, and so on... along with a variety of ornaments handcrafted by yours truly from preschool, elementary school, and craft projects with my mom.

This morning, after extracting myself from the blankets atop the air-mattress bed that now lives in my bedroom with surprisingly less difficulty than one might expect, we had a nice breakfast with our whole family.  A mug of Earl Grey tea accompanied mine; I'm still hoping it will mostly take care of my daily caffeine quota (normally fulfilled by coffee).

I've been lounging on the living room couch ever since, still in pajamas and wrapped in a fleece blanket.  The couch is awash with (occasionally blinding) sunlight.  The warmth and comfort is precious right now - enough that I've kept on delaying getting dressed and wrapping gifts for the past few hours.

Breaking the narrow-mindedness

It's been awhile, from my perspective, since I was in a relationship - two years or so now.  Though I still think plenty about interpersonal relationships, and most likely worry too much about how my actions come across to others, I have for quite some time now written off trying to understand relationships.  Not being in the midst of the work of maintaining one myself, I've been feeling for some time that whatever knowledge I thought I had collected has been slowly draining out of me.  Whilst my few theories on the subject continue to be chipped away over time, I grow to feel more clueless about how to "meet someone", transition into a relationship, and maintain one.  Without possibilities presenting themselves on my horizon, I've been relegating myself to wondering at how friends around me make relationships work.  As for myself, I mostly continue to rather passively hope that things will eventually fall into place with someone by way of beautiful happenstance.

One theory of mine in particular, developed early on in my forays into thinking about relationships, grew mainly from an experience of my own which I still hold as very special.  I decided that the most logical and successful way a relationship could happen was to transition from best friends.  It made all the sense in the world to me: you are already perfectly comfortable communicating, you get along well, you enjoy each other's company and seek out spending time together.  I guess I figured that all you needed was a spark of attraction to push things past the platonic realm, and then you were all set because the rest of it was already in place.

I held pretty steadfastly to this theory for a number of years.  It received its major crack in the same way I first came up with it - through my own experience.  Though I no longer believe in it like a guarantee, I still think it's possible.  I simply learned that it also might totally not work at all.  And I am glad to have the experience and luckily came out of it for the better.

Another theory: I have long assumed that getting into a relationship only makes sense if you have taken a pretty good deal of time to familiarize with each other.  This one is based partially on precaution: my fear is not taking enough time to discover a person's major characteristics, and then stumbling onto something serious enough to potentially drive a new relationship apart.  It also has to do with my being terribly indecisive, and being afraid to start something because I'm still not sure if I like the person enough yet.  (At least, that's typically what I'd argue to myself which leads me to stall for more time to decide.)

In the past couple of days, I have begun to think about some of these ideas differently.  Perhaps things can develop between people outside of these scenarios I've had outlined in my head for so long, and still be real.  Maybe I don't have to know someone long enough to think I've figured them all out before deciding I like them.  Perhaps a great deal of the joy of a relationship is learning the pieces of someone's personality over many interactions and experiences.

So I think, now, I am closer to letting go of my indecisiveness and being more willing to try letting things happen with someone without knowing ahead of time that everything "should" work out.

Quick list of thanks

My swing buddies (Sloan, Ellis, and Robert).  And of course, our lovely friend and Rum Bar bartender, Zack.  Those blues dances that are completely magic.  Coffee.  My new friend at work, Stephan.  The unbelievably wonderful west coast swing community.  Going to Baltimore Fall Blues Summit.  Being able to go home to my family pretty much whenever.  Working at a company full of truly wonderful people.  Having my weekly dances to always look forward to.  Adding to my fledgling circle of swing dancer friends.  Wawa.  Seeing people with dogs on the sidewalk.  My favorite cafés to hang out in.  Jimmy John's deliciousness.  Sleeping in on Saturday.  Discovering new beers I like.  Keeping in touch with David.  Discovering fusion dancing.  Meeting people from out of town who want to get to know me more.  Having a bit of "me time" in the morning bus ride.  Boots.  That I found a place to live in Philly with near-zero stress.  That I got a job to start right after I graduated.  A comfortable bed.  Visiting my brother at his college down in South Carolina.  Learning PHP and Drupal.  NK happy hours.  Music, in so many kinds and ways.

Being so happy, and often - sometimes I can't completely take it in.

George Michael

Back in high school, I used to listen all the time to a smooth jazz radio station, CD101.9.  The station has since been reformatted to a rock station (figures) which was pretty sad to hear.  (See the section about halfway down the page.)  That station got me through so much of my high school homework and falling asleep at night and I knew nearly every song that was played on it.  Interestingly enough, Wikipedia just informed me that it's sort of revived in an "HD2" format, whatever that means.  And there is an online broadcast of it, on this random Boomer Radio site.

I don't know why, but the song Careless Whisper came to mind tonight.  I've heard it many times on that radio station, but looked up the music video for the first time just now.



I didn't even know that George Michael is his name, but this guy was totally not how I pictured him when hearing the song.  What a strikingly beautiful man.  Beautiful voice too...  And given the recent explosion of dance experience in my life, I like that he holds a dance with someone he loves as this special in the song.

Danced 6 nights in a row

I have to say that having a night of dancing to look forward to most nights of the week is an excellent life morale booster.  It's a fulfilling answer to the question of "what will I do tonight?" - so much better than always going home to likely nothing more than being lazy and poking around on the Internet for several hours.  And it is a guarantee of having people to interact with (literally, given that these are partner dances); while I do talk online often, I really think it is a critical necessity for mental/emotional health to see and interact with other people.  (I think of how miserable it was during some final exams periods -- after sleeping late, I'd wake up and panic about how much study time I had lost due to said sleeping-in and thus immediately dive into studying, and hours later I had to escape and actually speak with someone.)  Eventually, if you keep showing up at the same dances on a weekly basis, people will recognize you and you'll start chatting in between dancing.  And the dance communities, I'm finding, are full of wonderful people.

On that note, here was my awesome week of dancing (not that every week isn't also awesome! haha):

Monday, as always: Powerhouse Blues.  All blues.  So much love.

Tuesday, as always: LaB.  Lindy and blues; the swing dance I've been going to longest.

Wednesday: Westie Wednesday.  West coast swing night at the Atrium.  I might just have to add this to my for-sure weekly schedule. :)

Thursday: Jetlag.  Night of DJ'd remixed world music at L'Etage.  I guess this is fusion dancing?  SO much fun.  I will be making every effort to attend this every month.

Friday: West coast swing dance held at Master Jay's studio in Center City.  Not much space there and a pole-dancing pole fell over mid-dance, but it was a fun little night.

Saturday: Baltimore Fall Blues Summit.  Thanks to Ben (my carpool driver), I got to go dance blues all night long with some truly fantastic leads.  What a wonderful wonderful night.  It was the night of the switch over to normal time so we had an extra hour, though maybe it didn't matter because by a certain time almost everyone was tired.  We got back at...7am new time?  (My photos are up on Facebook!)

What I wonder about really good social dancers

During my recent obsession with blues dancing, I've had the incredible good fortune of experiencing several truly breathtaking dances with a few different leads.  These dances stand out in my mind and stay in my memory because of the amazing connection with the lead and the music, and the emotional intensity thereof.  These are truly special to me and I want to hold onto them (while of course hoping for more).

But... I've been wondering.  Are these leads just that good, that every dance feels like that for them?  (If that's the case, and it was me, I'd be living on a cloud...)  I like to think that every single dance is different.  It's a different combination of two partners, a song, and a moment in time.  When all of those come together right, you have something beautiful.

So, much as I'm sure these particular leads are leaving follows breathless in droves, I just hope that they might feel some of what I feel and appreciate so deeply when I dance with them.