Musings on Dance, Food, Geek Stuff
I had a revelation the other day about ice cream sundaes. Bear with me here. I was eating an ice cream sundae at one of my favorite ice cream shops in the city, Hometown Creamery in the Sunset. Hometown always has a fascinating, often weird, array of flavors that they make in the shop. I…
DISCLAIMER: I am not a mental health professional. These are just my personal views and experiences as a “veteran” dancer. If you are experiencing intense feelings of depression or anxiety, please see a mental health provider in your area. I’m a “social dancer.” Which means that I dance a style (lindy hop) that requires two…
At the end of the remarkable rock climbing film The Dawn Wall, pro-climber Tommy Caldwell, described what it was like planning his legendary free climb of the Dawn Wall of El Capitan (my rough paraphrase): “For ten years I mapped out what I hoped was a climbable route up the Dawn Wall, never really sure…
As a newbie climber, I can fall into the trap of continually comparing myself to other, more experienced climbers. From this perspective, other climbers are the competition, and their successes make me look like a worse climber in comparison. I’d see someone scend a hard route and think, “I will never be that good.” Not…
Director of the outstanding new film Eighth Grade Bo Burnham had some powerful things to say about what he sees on the internet. As a former YouTube celebrity, I think he knows what he’s talking about. I’ve been mulling over his words for the past couple of days. “I was interested in talking about people on the…
Last night I was flying back from my latest trip to Disneyland, tired but happy. Our small commuter plane wasn’t able to hook up directly to the terminal at SFO, so we had to walk down the stairs to a waiting bus. The bus took quite a long time to get to our final terminal,…
I just realized I am already into the middle of week three of my work sabbatical! This is really the first day I have had completely schedule-free since I finished work at the Cal Academy. So far it has been completely wonderful to have this time to take a break and take stock of things….
I got to practice changing my self-talk yesterday, after I picked up my scooter from the shop. When I arrived, what I thought was a $500 set of repairs and a tuneup turned out to be closer to $700. That was a lot more money than I had hoped to pay. During the scooter ride…
The other night I was was having dinner with a new friend in a dingy but comfortable Mexican restaurant in Oakland. Over veggie tacos, she was telling me about a project she was working on, one that she moved to the Bay Area specifically for. She recounted how much work had already gone into it,…
An older figure I know has devoted his entire life to his profession. He’s excellent at it. It’s also the only thing he has practiced with any kind of dedication or passion for the last 40 or so years of his life. So now that he is in retirement age, he doesn’t have much else…