when work meets play
About a month ago in this post I talked about an interesting fusion of two of my interests, coffee and ballroom dancing and reflected on maintaining balance between those two interests, as well as in general maintaining balance of all of one’s interests in life. Awhile later, I was feeling stuck. I was feeling stuck in the sense of being unbalanced and only feeling certain aspects of my life and not others. Specifically, I’ve been thinking about ballroom dance virtually nonstop.
Since the start of this year and starting private ballroom lessons, I’ve been thinking about ballroom dance nonstop.
I wake up and make my coffee. Cha cha music to wake me up. I log onto my computer and start work. Rumba music to keep me focused and productive. Lunch time? I make myself a quick meal so I can go for stroll to a podcast about ballroom dancing. At 5pm, I log off work and either warm up for dance (or gyrokinesis) practice or if it’s on lesson day I prepare my bag and head to the dance studio. And then as I wind down for bed, I get ready to rinse and repeat the next day. (Ok, not really I haven’t gotten into any real wind down routines like some people do. It’s really just I feel tired and therefore I know is time for bed).
First, some things to keep in mind. This has really just over been the past couple of weeks, and it just so coincided with me starting up private lessons. So perhaps there is a correlation (or even causation) here with my thinking about dance nonstop, but the point is that this does not indicate any negative inclinations toward my other hobbies or even career. For instance, I still very much would like to grow as an economist or related field with dance as a side hobby and way to socialize and de-stress. I am an absolute believer of polymaths and with developing all parts of oneself. It is just there have been some questioning and self doubt regarding my career choice as a result of the past couple weeks, and feeling somewhat lost and un-enthusiastic about my career trajectory — the imposter feeling of what if I wasn’t meant to be an economist or belong in finance if I don’t feel the same joy at work as that of from dance? And so I just wanted to note that I have started to come to a better understanding that pursuing a career doesn’t mean it’s sunshine and rainbows everyday. But rather it’s how one can incorporate those other aspects of one’s life to help weather the day-to-day and smooth out the downturns and challenges. In other words, using some jargon from work, it’s about reverting to the mean (i.e., the long run average), looking at life through a more “through-the-cycle” as opposed to “point-in-time” lenses. In fact, over the past week, it’s been made even more clear the importance of looking in the moment and having those non-work channels, hobbies, and friends to help weather the downturns. Ok, enough of boring the rest of you non-economist audience out there.
Anyhow, these things considered, I put together this day in the life to showcase these two sides of me, and help me better embrace both work and play. Especially as the euphoria from dance as an outlet has for sure improved both my mental health and confidence in my work, and honestly even helped me bond with my colleagues as well.