I wanted to become a novice

I have been very, very tired. Burnout feels like such a soft word for the kind of existential ennui I’ve been feeling. I am an overworked and underpaid freelancer with a Protestant work ethic. I have hoped to crack the code of getting a job, but it’s yet to happen. I have asked my non-workaholic friends what to do and had breakdowns in an attempt to look away from the obvious. The problem was that I have lost my sense of curiosity. That’s the only cure for overload. I decided that I needed to find things that could not easily become material, things I couldn’t master. I wanted to be a novice. Perhaps if I forced myself to learn and try new things I would leave my comfort zone while finding a newfound sense of confidence. I would recover that old virtue lost to the algorithm: chance. I hoped this would get me out of my depressive rut. Maybe one of these hobbies would even become a new lifelong obsession. Because I’ve never had a problem with executive functioning, I decided to try out a few classes from my bucket list I was always too afraid to try.

Since I have horrible balance, I decided the first thing I should try was ballet. I knew I would never become a dancer. My boyfriend D dutifully went to Bloch with me to buy a black leotard and nude ballet slippers. I felt triumphant walking by the fountain on the Upper West Side even before I’d executed a single pirouette. I watched tween girls prance past me with ease, far more graceful than I would ever be.

By the time I arrived at my first dance class, however, I was a bundle of nerves. Miraculously, I recognized a few of the other dancers. My fellow students ranged from pros who probably shouldn’t have been in a Beginner I class to neophytes like me who had simply enjoyed seeing The Nutcracker as a child. I went to the barre terrified of looking foolish—the very shame I wanted to shed. I struggled to pronounce, much less remember, the choreography we learned. I went home and woke up more sore than I’d been from years in yoga or running on the treadmill. Still, I felt good. Like I was accomplishing something. After years battling an eating disorder, I’ve tried to find ways of moving my body that don’t feel oriented around merely shedding calories. When we started spinning, however, I came to think that perhaps ballet wasn’t for me. I could not reach the end of the room without wanting to puke from my inelegant twirling. Perhaps I would come back to it, I told myself.

The world does not allow women many outlets to feel sexy in a safe, chill way. So, I decided I would try a pole dancing class. It felt like something I wanted to do but couldn’t imagine myself ever trying. Add it to the list! I signed up for a few intro classes and dragged my ass to Chelsea for a morning class. I thought I would be one of the shiest women there—I was certainly the only trans woman, a common theme in the classes I went to—but some of the others wouldn’t even take off their sweatshirts. I completely understand. Between being sexually harassed by male writers and cab drivers and scrolling models in bikinis, the erotic life of women is a fragile thing. Still, my goal was to try and put myself out there before imagining someone putting me down. We are often thinking about ourselves too much. I became a regular at my local bar around the same time, also to experience meeting people of different ages and walks of life. The local watering hole became my Cheers. I love it. Classes can offer a similar utopia—the possibility of meeting and even befriending people who aren’t like you. Sure, I’m terrified someone will say something awful. And they will. And they do. But I found the other women in pole dancing just as intimidated by our hot, smack-talking instructor as I was.

There are few water-cooler moments anymore. Less people are going to bars, less of us are watching the same TV. So we may have to create them ourselves. Of course, church has always been one of the main sober social spaces. Of course, it’s a third space that comes with baggage.

Organized religion has always terrified me, ever since I went through conversion therapy. But I recently was trying to write a piece about Quakers, so I knew I had to follow through and do my research. (Another way work and play collide, I hate a vacation.) I found a small Quaker meeting that was occurring in a James Turrell skyspace in Manhattan. I wound my way to the first floor of a school and waited with others during a 5pm dismissal on a gray December evening. After a while, we were led to a freight elevator and taken up to the top floor. We sat in the small wooden box cathedral as colorful lights bloomed and transmuted on the ceiling. We sat in silence, waiting for someone to have something to say. Every once in a while someone decried ICE or talked about the unity of the world or God’s love. Then the kind, wiry leader of the group opened the skylight and we watched the sun finish setting as the James Turrell lightscape glistened on every side of the opening. I left feeling moved, glad I’d gone, taking the subway to the popular gay bar Singers on a Friday night. Duality is everything.

Because I have been converting to Judaism at the only Anti-Zionist synagogue in New York that I’m currently aware of, I decided it would make sense to take a Hebrew language class. Another facet of my life that will almost inevitably find its way into my work. Even the things that are sacred are fuel. Certainly play and learning are the raw material that worms its way in our intellectual development. I have never been very good at learning a new language. I’ve taken a few semesters of Spanish but hardly enough to speak fluently. But I wasn’t the oldest person in the class by a longshot. One older woman came in every evening with her Lipton tea ready to crack us up and tell the teacher that certain rules made no sense. “So you just have to remember that a patach is a patach?” she asked quizzically. “If you say so,” she said.

I jumped to kickboxing. I had gone too cerebral and needed something physical to balance out the life of the mind. Too much of my life has been spent sitting at a laptop with an empty Word Doc blinking in front of me. I decided to go to a queer gym for no real reason other than that it was close to my life and had a cheap intro class. I ambled in, more nervous perhaps than if I’d merely gone to a “straight” gym. A dozen or so lesbians and a few gay guys slowly came in as I sat waiting. Because I’d taken one self-defense class before, I was the only one who knew how to wrap my hands before we started punching—which probably boosted my ego a little too much. But the thing I enjoyed the most wasn’t learning moves, it was the punching bag. I didn’t realize how much anger I needed to let out.

I’ve just started a bridge class in Manhattan, a card game I’ve always wanted to learn. I go in person, because I do really believe when possible it’s a better format than Zoom—offering the ability to connect in the same room. For many reasons, it’s easy to stay home and give up on meeting strangers. But everyone from serial class takers to canvassers knows that meeting other people is a way back into the rhythm of the world.

Certainly part of my burnout has been feeling bitter about the state of the world and the amount of times men have tried to fuck me in inappropriate ways or strangers have been casually cruel. Yet I still believe in the redemptive power of going outside. Each moment is more exhilarating and terrifying than the last. I love getting back home to my couch and my cat and my slippers, but I’ve learned to love the rush of being social too. Sometimes such small danger is worth the cost of leaving the house.

Towards the end of my Bride class, I lost a hand. I made a simple, stupid mistake and I started to get pissed off. I didn’t yell, I just lost my cool. The older woman next to me turned to me and said these words: "It's just Bridge. Take your time, don't worry. If it stressed me out, I wouldn't do it."

Image: James Turrell.

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