#49: Seasonal routines, self-acceptance & the magic of looking up

A mezze platter of subjects, for your reading pleasure.

I can’t think straight this week. My mind is leaping around like a Parisian bed bug – fake news: they can only crawl, apparently – and like so many of us at the moment, I’m trying, and often failing, not to doomscroll the horrifying news all day. Meanwhile, I’m cos-playing as three very different journalists (this week’s commissions are on, respectively, relationships; urban design; and 2024’s leading health trends); doing final edits on my novel draft; planning another podcast season; and trying to avoid the annual existential crisis ahead of my 32nd birthday next week. Marie Kondo herself would balk at the messy interior of my head right now.

Ah, but such constraints are creative challenges, cries my inner cheerleader! As the task of writing my usual essay-length newsletter feels beyond me today, would three shorter reflections work instead? Well, why not? Let’s give that a try.

Self-acceptance, among strangers

Some take up recreational drugs in their 30s. Others marathon-running, or salsa dancing, or Crossfit, or furniture-making. As for me, I’ve gone sort of woo-woo adjacent: yoga, meditation, sober raves. The latest addition to this list came last weekend, when I spent my Sunday evening at a Mantra Dance class (think expressive dance and chanting followed by a gong bath). Reader, it was the most fun I’ve had in a while.

It felt a bit like being a kid again, my friend commented afterwards. For three-quarters of an hour (it was a 75 minutes class), we danced around the room like five-year-olds at a school disco as the teacher, Siri Sadhana Kaur, called out prompts: thrusting your hips around! Go up and down! Backstroke through the air! As someone who was, until my recent sober rave experiences, a horribly self-conscious dancer, I was pleasantly surprised by how much fun I had. And yet, it was more than the dopamine hit. Reflecting afterwards, I think I relished the ability to be so in the moment and let go of my inhibitions, my self-consciousness diminishing as I twirled around the space. It was, I can but imagine, a bit like going to on a nudist beach. I acted in a way that felt silly, childish, and, well, natural in public – I danced imperfectly and ungracefully – and, miraculously, no one laughed.

In the past, I’ve thought of self-acceptance as something that stems from oneself. That’s the accepted wisdom, isn’t it: that it must come from within?