What to do when everyone else is moving on

I have a strong body memory associated with dates, times of the year, and seasons. Perhaps this comes from my love of ritual, rooted in my liturgical upbringing that followed a religious calendar with seasons for mourning, for joy, and for penance. But I think it also comes from my experience as a dancer, from the practice of placing my hand on the barre every ballet class, from breathing into my lungs on the floor during contemporary, feeling the groove of the music.

This season of life (from approximately mid-March to mid-April) is ripe with so many memories. In this not-yet-spring-but-not-quite-winter season, I once auditioned for my undergrad dance program. I first kissed my now-wife in early April and debuted my first full-length dance work.

And in 2020, I felt I lost everything. This year was the first Friday the 13th of March since that fateful day in 2020, when my college shut down classes, and I was forced to reckon with a future that did not look how I planned. The months that followed held Zoom dance classes and graduation ceremonies, played out in my childhood bedroom.

I think I could have been more imaginative in that time had I not lost one of my dear mentors to cancer. The combination of this unthinkable loss and the instability of the world at large defeated me.

My time during the pandemic was extremely difficult (as it was for many). I struggled to come to terms with my queer identity and then come out. I lost my weekly ritual of the Mass and then felt alienated from my religious community as I embraced my own queerness. My dreams for a career in the arts were shattered. I lived at home with family who was extremely high risk, so I barely left the house for a year.

Now, when my life has worked out just fine, it’s easy to brush away the difficulties of that time. But occasionally, I do meet someone who shares that the pandemic was one of the most creative and restful times of their lives. Or alternatively, someone who lost their entire family to the disease.

For so long, it felt as if everyone else had moved on. I was stuck in the limbo of mid-March to mid-April, grasping desperately for the version of my life in which the road had not diverged in such a dramatic way.

Recently, I finally brought myself to watch Station Eleven, the HBO series that adapts one of my favorite novels of all time by Emily St. John Mandel. The theme of the book circles around a ragtag group of performers in a post-pandemic world. They rally around the cry that survival is insufficient, that there is more to life than mere existence.

The series breathes a lot of beautiful life into the characters of the book (and diverges in some ways that made me scream, but that’s for an offline conversation at another time). As I watched the characters perform with such vulnerability in a post-apocalyptic landscape, I was reminded of how humans do so much with so little. Against all odds, we do our best with what we have.

And that is enough.

My favorite brewery and hangout spot in the Berkshires (Hot Plate, I miss you) sells merch with the quote “do what you can with what you have,” reminiscent of the owners’ early days brewing on a hot plate in Brooklyn. It’s not glamorous, this way of building something slowly and within your own resources, but it is sustainable.

I think it can be easy to get stuck when making change in your own life seems an insurmountable mountain. Believe me, I’ve been there. On the flipside, I think working within your means to make small everyday change can also appear impossible. What is the point?

In this capitalist environment of instant gratification and virality, the dopamine boost of these small habits can barely compete. I’ve noticed it in myself. I started to struggle to write one poem or read five pages of a book. It’s still hard to put down my phone and bring my gaze outside.

Still, I’m curious about sustainability and long-term joy. I have a hunch they might go hand-in-hand.

Two years ago, my wife and I started a “life planning” spreadsheet. We charted our way to a few goals that seemed so far-fetched that we could barely wrap our brains around them. In this season of almost-spring, we’ve nearly arrived at the end of our plan.

I’m excited to share I will be attending the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign this fall, pursuing an MFA in Dance. A spreadsheet and a village carried me here. I'm beyond grateful to my lovely wife for her support, to my family who housed me through six weeks of auditions, and to the community that provided me with so much wisdom as I made this decision.

Ten years ago, I auditioned for the Dance Program at Loyola Marymount University. Six years ago, I left Los Angeles behind in the pandemic and mourned the loss of my mentor, John Todd. This year, I am excited to continue studying dance at my dream graduate institution.

And now, my wife and I get to make a new spreadsheet with our next plan. As she says, “How do we eat an elephant? One bite at a time.”