5 Things I Tried This Week (And You Can Too)

I've been trying a lot of new things lately. It's all part of my effort to be a "fun" person. I was a fun person once. It was about 5 years ago. But over the past couple years, I've experienced a steady decline in my mood and outlook, stemming mostly from a growing dissatisfaction with my career choices. Rather than taking positive action, I've allowed fear to take hold and nudge me deeper into depression. In the process, the sphere of my social, professional and even cultural interactions has shrunken. I go out less, I enjoy less, I take fewer risks. As a result, I've become more depressed. And the more depressed I become, the harder it is to do the things that help counteract depression (e.g. leaving the house, calling friends, journaling).

I've managed to maintain a modicum of sanity and a considerable amount of manageability by forcing myself to exercise regularly, eat relatively well, get enough sleep, stay in touch with my support network (albeit with minimal effort), attend counseling, and limiting my time on the couch. From time to time, I've even gathered my energies and directed them toward higher-level goals for the sake of more profound spiritual and emotional growth: meditation, volunteer work, a brief attempt to practice The Artist's Way. These efforts have been sporadic and therefore mostly ineffective, in fact leaving me feeling even more discouraged and down on myself for failing to follow through.

The trouble is, I've been avoiding the root of the problem: the despair with which I view my current career trajectory. I avoid it because I feel trapped, incapable of change, afraid to commit to any course of action lest I discover that all jobs, all careers, lead to the same place (misery). It's not rational, I know. But I recently - finally - saw a career counselor, and I'm feeling something I haven't felt in a long time: hope. I'm seeing possibilities that don't seem completely unattainable. Although maybe sensing is a more accurate description, since I'm wary of optimism and reluctant to examine said possibilities too closely for too long (baby steps). But reticence aside, it's progress in a positive direction.

So I'm leveraging that momentum to do something my therapist recommended after I told her I don't find joy in things, which is to take "opposite action." In other circles, it's called "faking it 'til you make it." If I feel like isolating, I should socialize. If I feel depressed, I should do things that give me (or once gave me) joy. The more I take these opposite actions, the theory is, they will eventually lead to positive feelings.

That's how I decided to be more fun. So for the past week, I've been saying yes to things. And I thought I'd share my experience, because one of the benefits of doing things is having things to write about. Even if I start writing about them by resorting to old habits of sharing my feelings for eight paragraphs (baby steps). So here they are, 5 things I tried this week that you can try, too:

1. Foie gras

I went to dinner with a friend in the industry, who expensed our Michelin-star-rated meal as market research. Because I was just grateful to be there, and because she's a master of the culinary arts and I am merely an enthusiastic consumer of them, I let her do the ordering. Foie gras is not something I would normally pursue, but when in Rome and your friend is paying, do what the French do and eat engorged duck liver with (among other eyebrow-raising accoutrement) chocolate covered cherries. And honestly, I wouldn't order it again.

Maybe it was the ethical qualms I harbored or just my unsophisticated palette - or maybe bittersweet chocolate and fatty liver don't actually go well together - but it was the kind of dish I could only eat by not thinking about what I was eating. Also it just didn't taste good. I think that was the main takeaway, actually. Chocolate foie gras doesn't taste good, even if it's free. Lesson learned. No regrets.

2. Seeing a Play Alone

This initiative was inspired by the aforementioned book, The Artist's Way, which suggests taking yourself on "artist's dates." The idea is to reconnect with one's creativity by spending an hour or two each week doing something fun/creative/spiritual/culturally enriching by yourself. Since I sometimes hesitate to invite people to plays, lest it turns out to be a terrible play (not altogether unlikely, in my experience) and they think I have bad taste or they just don't enjoy themselves, which would obviously result in a catastrophic end to our friendship. Seeing a play solo seemed like the perfect solution. And it was!

I happened to choose an excellent play: This, written by Melissa James Gibson and directed by Carl Menninger and performed at the Windy City Playhouse. The venue was delightful, offering comfortable seating, a full bar that included non-alcoholic options, and clean bathrooms. The acting was good, but it was the writing really stood out. Smart, funny, thoughtful and subtle, it explored the somewhat mundane topics of middle age, infidelity and relationships in general in a way I found honest and interesting.

I didn't feel awkward being alone, even during intermission. On the contrary, it was refreshing to simply absorb the production without worrying about my guest's experience. I found it relaxing to be in the company of others without any pressure to engage in conversation. The introvert in me found it a much more rewarding way to spend some quality alone time than my typical Netflix-and-overeat routine. I recommend it enthusiastically. 

3. Bollywood Dancing

An acquaintance of mine has written and is directing/producing her own web series, and I've been cast as her roommate. She's from India, and she wanted to have a Bollywood dance in the series. So this past weekend, I went to the first rehearsal to learn a short choreographed routine. Because the dancers are amateur actors and not professional dancers, the routine is simple and the instruction was slow-paced. Which was perfect for me, because despite my relative athleticism, I have the grace of a turkey rather than a swan.

As usual, the difficult part was showing up. Actually leaving my house is always the hard part, and I didn't really know the people who were going to be there very well. In fact, the first 15 minutes of rehearsal were pretty awkward, as we all had to wait for the choreographer and I'm not super into idle chit-chat with near-strangers. But once things got going, I had fun. With a task at hand, I'm much more comfortable and relaxed. I like learning new things and I like using my body and being both active and playful, and it helped that I wasn't out of my league. It helped even more that there were no mirrors. The whole thing lasted about an hour, which is the perfect amount of time for new things to last. I'd give it four stars (out of five).

4. Boxing

I've been taking a break from running lately because it's been so hot, so when a friend asked me on a fitness date, I suggested we try a new class. But since I've been doing this 90-day yoga challenge, I wanted to try something new. She mentioned a boxing club that had a first-one's-free policy, so we signed up. I'd never worn boxing gloves or punched a bag before, and let me tell you, it was amazing.

The class was mostly women, which made it less intimidating. I learned how to wrap my hands, which is a valuable skill that I will probably list on my resume from now on. Then I grabbed a pair of foul-smelling gloves and got laughed at by my friend, who told me that was the "dirty laundry" pile. So then I grabbed a pair of less foul-smelling gloves from the "clean laundry" rack and got to work.

The warmup was a full-on cardio workout, and I was glad I'd been doing so many FitnessBlender workouts so I could keep up and maintain the don't-fuck-with-me vibe I'd been projecting ever since learning to wrap my hands. Then we started punching, and things got real. Fun. Real fun.

To be honest, I couldn't really see the instructor and the audio was kind of terrible, so mostly I was just going to town without any real sense of what I was supposed to be doing. And I loved it! I really don't like witnessing violence, but apparently I'm a big fan of inflicting it on a large inanimate objects. It was invigorating, empowering and fully absorbing. It was the kind of workout that leaves you exhausted without seeming like you're working out anything other than a whole lot of pent-up aggression that you usually channel into embittered social media rants and emotional power-eating. Five stars!

5. Bone Marrow

My friend described it as meat butter, and I think that's a fair analogy as any. You scrape it out of a bone and spread it on toast. Maybe the taste was masked by the accoutrements (I believe one was apply chutney and the other was a pickled vegetable of some kind), but I didn't have any strong feelings about the actual marrow. As someone who isn't an avid eater of animal protein, this wasn't a surprise. I like toast and spreads, though, so I found it enjoyable and far superior to the foie gras.

So there you have it, 5 things to try or not try. If you have any suggestions of things you'd like me to try and then review, leave a comment. Otherwise, I'm just going to go take a nap because being fun is super hard!

"If you needed to write, you'd be doing it."

That's what the career counselor I saw today said to me. It stung. I hurriedly explained to him that not writing made me feel bad, which he dismissed, not knowing that what I meant was that not writing makes me feel awful. Guilty, maybe even ashamed, perhaps worthless. It feels as though I'm wasting my potential and cowardly avoiding a difficult but important task. It feels like I'm not doing the one thing I might be good at, lest I discover I might not be good at it, and therefore good at nothing.

I feel embarrassed about referring to my aptitude for writing as potential. Which is absurd, because it is potential. Even if it's just potential to be a really good personal blogger, which maybe isn't all that grand, but it's what I've got. I don't have aspirations to be a great novelist, but that's probably more a reflection of my fear that I don't have it in me to be a great novelist. Let's be honest, I'd love to be Stephen King-like in my prolificacy and success. But as much as I envy those two aspects of his career, the thing I really envy is the way he describes losing himself in a story. Channeling, rather than writing. Feeling words flow from one's fingertips. I know he also says that in order to write prolifically, one must write prolifically. Not novels, per se, but anything. My problem is not one of talent, but of avoidance. Which can also be called laziness, ambivalence, what the career counselor called "not needing to."

But I argue that I do "need to" write. The fact that I don't - at least not consistently - says more about my mental/emotional/psychological/moral fortitude than about my desire.  Call it depression or call it plain old fear, I don't write because I feel afraid to try. I am afraid to write badly, but in order to write well, I must first write badly. I must also learn to follow through, to write past the point of feeling inspired and through the inevitable ambivalence I start to feel after writing a first draft. Maybe it's not ambivalence. I'm really into labeling today, I feel a need to label the feeling of relief but also immediate avoidance that comes after writing something. I feel better after writing, but I don't want to look at what just came out of my mind. It's like vomiting. And while there's no value in examining one's regurgitated lunch, returning to a piece of writing is an essential part of the process. Or so I've heard.

But I want to say something and be done with it. Words are never easy to get it out, and I fear that examining them more closely will only counteract the positive benefits I got from writing in the first place. That is to say, I want to take the fleeting relief I get from pounding out an unedited blog entry and cling to it as long as possible. But in doing so, I am no doubt denying myself the opportunity to wring even greater satisfaction out of the writing process. By honing a pile of verbal vomit into a thoughtful and concise essay, I will create something instead of merely spewing something. There is real satisfaction in that, and pride. Those feelings are also fleeting, but at least I'll have something substantial to show for it.

Before I go ahead and publish this mostly unedited blog entry, I just want to say that the aforementioned career counselor isn't a jerk. Aside from that stinging comment (which inspired me to write, and thus ended up being productive), he had a lot of helpful things to say. I'm actually feeling hopeful about my career prospects for the first time in recent memory. I hope I didn't jinx it - I'm so wary of positive feelings, always preparing myself to be disillusioned. But it's nice to write something positive. Let's call it an affirmation. An experiment in conscious hoping. And I'll just let this moment, this day, be a hopeful one and let that not be a dangerous thing.