On the therapy that is ballet and other thoughts

in

Hello, happy Valentines! What are you doing to celebrate? I am making the bolognese thats posted on designer Pia Baroncini’s instagram. It’s coming together real lovely ;)

I haven’t been updating for a while, mostly because both weekdays and weekends are very very demanding. I have been trying to take 3 ballet classes a week, read some books along the way, cook a little, learn VBA, watch some performances and hang out in the city!

Below are some thoughts for the recent few weeks

On the therapy that is ballet:

Work wise, things have been very slow lately and I haven’t been super productive, and I’m sometimes frustrated because I’m not learning and growing as fast as I wanted. For example yesterday, I had a very bad day at work, very busy on tight deadlines, but was just doing very manual work. I worked until 6:40pm and went to the ballet dance class on an empty stomach.

However, while I was stretching my body on the floor and listening to the piano, my frustration drove me to use more force while doing the dance moves, which actually made them better. Also, since my day has already been so bad, I was determined to have a good class and make the rest of my night better, so I also put more effort in dancing than usual.

My previous negative energy turned into fuel that made my dances better! Which was then turned into joy from seeing myself do good dance moves and making progress in dancing. Win win win!

From many people’s perspectives, maintaining a hobby as demanding as ballet while working a full time job is taxing. However, it is until then I realized the benefits of myself keep doing that. I now no longer rely only on one pillar, which is my full time job - I now have at least two pillars where I derive my sense of achievement from. If there is a period of time in my full time job where I didn’t see any progress, I can still say I am making a lot of progress in ballet. This doesn’t make me feel so bad more.

I once read that a 70-year-old woman dealt with grief from the death of a beloved one through dancing. It helped her cope with a lot of negative energy and has given her hope. In some way, you do need to cling onto some little hobby that in the short-term seems not so useful, but could be your hope when all your other pillars collapse.

On making progress while you are a little more advanced than an ABSOLUTE beginner:

So… time flies! I have been dancing ballet for half a year. I made some progress! In the first few months while I was constantly updating this blog, I was absorbing all the information on how to make a correct move - how to align your body, etc. Now, I basically know like 70% - 85% of what you should feel while doing the dance moves, and is the time to build enough muscle and execute them.

I find the extra open class I’ve been taking at ballet academy east very helpful - they are very intense - basically you will be doing the equivalent of hundreds of squats at the end of the class, but super helpful in terms of building muscles needed to execute these dance moves the way they should be.

I am always super delighted to find out that the moves I have been wobbly on the previous week are no longer that much of a challenge the week after, thanks to the muscles I’ve built over time. This gives me joy, and is the reason why I am taking a 45 - 50min train ride to upper east side for that class.

et voila, so much for ballet thoughts!

I’ve also learned so much on the theory of all the moves I’ve been learning, I will update them in another blog soon!

So excited to start the next level of ballet - the basic beginner workshop next week!

Best,

Grace

at the end, here is a clip of swan lake. I will be watching swan lake this sunday, super excited :)

Fifth workshop and some career thoughts

in ,

Ok, so my big speech at the lunch went well, and now people are getting me involved in more initiatives. I was trembling after the meeting because I couldn’t believe what I just did… things are getting real? I can’t believe it. Now it’s time to actually make the change, instead of sitting back and complain about it. I can’t believe I get to be in this position just a year and a half into my first job! And also, just a day later, our firm announced a re-organization to drive the revenue synergies among previously acquired firms. So, in the next few years we will hopefully be witnessing some big changes among our businesses, which hopefully can transform the way people provide data services. Pretty exciting times!

During lunch today I also read about Fortune’s feature for David Soloman, CEO of Goldman Sachs who is also a DJ. It was pretty inspiring, especially when reading about how he said that if he decided to do something, he’d do it in the highest of his capability, or he’s not going to do it. It’s also inspiring how he managed to have such a demanding job while also being able to keep his hobbies and have a family, giving me confidence that if I want to, I can have it all too. I also aspire to be excellent in what I do, but in most of the time I feel like I am just doing things in my 80% capability, or otherwise I feel like I will burn out. Which is actually not a good way of thinking and hinders progress. Like for example, last night I didn’t really do a good job cleaning our apartment because I was tired, and then my roommate had to re-do my task, and seeing her clean what I just cleaned again did not make me feel good. I think as the year ends, one of my new year resolutions would probably be trying to do everything at my 100% capability, and see how things goes.

This also ties to our management team’s discussion about career progress. Many people asked them for advice on how to get promoted, how to be successful. But in our global town hall, our group president advised that we should think about it the other way around - making our goal to be how to make our business better, and actually do it, instead of arranging for meetings after meetings with the managers and ask for advice on how to promote.

Ok, enough work talk, now back to ballet! Today we learned a lot of things, such as sauté (jump), grand plié, and revised tendu. We also practiced postures by lying on the floor.

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