Looking Up

I got back into the swing of things yesterday with more than 3,000 words of new material. Yay! I feel like I've been rewriting, revising, editing and proofreading forever, but now I'm moving forward. I have a bit of brainstorming to do before I get started today because I don't think I've delved deeply enough into today's scenes to get their full potential. It's nice that I don't have children's choir tonight, which gives me an extra couple of hours, in addition to time not spent preparing a lesson plan. I was sort of joking about how every time I get started working on this book, I get another round of revisions. Well, I just got an e-mail from that editor wanting a far more detailed map than I sent. Does that count?

My ballet teacher gave me an assignment for the summer (she's on the verge of giving birth, so she will be on maternity leave for the summer session). I have to learn to look up. I have a very bad habit while dancing of looking at my feet or the floor. We were joking about how I need an Elizabethian ruff around my neck to keep me from seeing the floor. Or maybe a really big tutu. But the thing is, that's generally how I go around all the time, watching the floor instead of straight ahead. Some of it may be a factor of my eyesight. I'm nearsighted, but only slightly enough to need glasses to watch TV or drive. Just walking around, I'm okay, but that does mean my focal point is fairly close to me, and so I walk around looking at the ground about a yard ahead. It's actually kind of freaky to walk around looking up and ahead. I'm having sensory overload issues. My brain is going "aaah, way too much information to process!"

In dance, some of it may be confidence. I'm not sure my feet are doing the right thing, so I have to look down and watch them. I got kind of lost last night when I was forcing myself to look up. But in general, it's a habit, so it will take time and effort to break. My personal summer assignment is to work more on stretching and get my flexibility back. And we'll see what the summer teacher does to me.

I suppose that looking up and ahead is a good way to deal with life in general. It's easy to get focused on what's going on now, and watching your own feet is a good metaphor for self-absorption. Looking up and out at the world makes you more of a part of it. Ooh, I feel so profound.