Indulging My Inner Seven-Year-Old

I'm looking forward to ballet class tonight because I have some new gear to try out. I'm finishing my fourth year of dance, and every year I complete, I reward myself by buying some new item of dance gear. After year 1, I got a second pair of tights so I don't have to wash them every week. After year 2, I got a new leotard. After year three, I had to replace my shoes. This year, since my shoes are in good shape and I've got plenty of tights and leotards for a once-a-week class, I indulged in something a little more frivolous. The adult class doesn't have a dress code, and that means most of us don't strictly wear the leotard and tights ensemble. We generally wear shorts, sweatpants, yoga pants, leggings, etc., over the leotard and tights. I've been wearing an old pair of knit shorts that I think were originally meant to be "loungewear" -- not really pajamas, but not for wearing in public. They're lounge-around-the-house clothes. But I decided to buy one of those chiffon wrap ballet skirts to wear instead of shorts. I'm finally starting to feel like I'm really dancing instead of just going through the motions, and that kind of makes me want to dress like a pretty ballerina. Plus, we're starting to do actual choreography. Most of a dance class involves doing exercises that are the building blocks to steps, then doing the steps themselves in a sequence of combinations. Now, though, we're learning a dance. And I get to wear my fluttery little skirt for it tonight. Yay!

I feel weirdly like a seven-year-old, back in my previous dance-crazed phase, when I would have killed to wear a fluttery little skirt for dance class, but we had a strict black leotard/pink tights/no skirts policy. Only now I'm an adult and I can wear what I want, so there! My inner seven-year-old is overjoyed. I think I'll even wear the purple leotard tonight (although my other leotards are black and I like them better).

I really have to buckle down and do some business/promotion type work, and although that used to be my favorite form of procrastination, it's now becoming something I procrastinate on. It doesn't help that I seem to have an extreme case of book hangover from getting to the end of what's available in the Song of Ice and Fire series. My brain doesn't like incomplete stories and keeps trying to finish it for me, and I have to remind it that it's not my story. For one thing, it's not nearly funny enough for me to have written, way too many people die, and there's too much blood and guts. Funny thing, though: the editor for those books is a big fan of my books. Go figure. I guess she needs a happy break every so often. At any rate, I'll be trying to focus on something and my brain will be going, "Hmm, what if …" and then I'll find myself checking the background for a theory either by digging through the books I still haven't returned to the library or by looking in online forums. I may need to get copies to keep because I'm seeing that there's lots of stuff I missed.

I should have known better than to let myself get into a never-ending doorstop epic fantasy series. This sort of thing never goes well for me. I fall into obsession way too easily. I guess I need to find something else to read that will be a new obsession trigger, and I actually have a whole Saturday with no plans ahead of me that I can dedicate to reading and relaxing.