Daily Prompt: Moments to Remember

What are the three most memorable moments — good or bad, happy or sad — in your life? Go!

 

There are a few significant moments in my life that will be remembered for the rest of my life, but these are three of the most significant. I guess if I really wanted to, I could easily do a top ten, because there are many more… but I don’t have

1. Changing my name.

This is something that I’ve previously written about. Check it out HERE.

 

2. Getting into dance school.

This I’ve written about a few times… here, here and here.

 

3. Injuring my spine.

Again, documented briefly in my post, Unexpected – (link above)

 

http://dailypost.wordpress.com/2014/03/25/prompt-moments-to-remember/

Daily Prompt: Young At Heart

What are your thoughts on aging? How will you stay young at heart as you get older?

The thought of getting older is actually something that secretly terrifies me. I find that when I start thinking about it, I get a bit obsessed about it.

I feel as though I’ve been robbed of a life of enjoyment. Life has robbed me of the opportunities to do the sort of things that you’re supposed to do in certain age groups.

For example, when I was in my late teens, all I wanted was to study dance and pursue that as a career. That didn’t happen because of a spinal injury.

In my Twenties, those are the years that you’re supposed to be travelling the world; working overseas; finding yourself etc etc etc. Well, I guess I managed to find myself. The other two – that didn’t happen. Whilst other friends of mine were off getting dance contracts on Cruise Ships, I was stuck in an office cubicle, feeling miserable and being bullied by my employer to the point of having a small nervous breakdown.

In my mid-twenties, other people were working hard and saving for house deposits – I on the other hand was too busy struggling to be able to pay my rent, buy groceries and pay my bills. I was caught up in being Miss Independent, and dealing with an absolutely clusterfuck of a relationship that pretty much destroyed me mentally and emotionally.

By the time I had reached my late twenties, I still hadn’t come to terms with the fact that I was already in my late-twenties. Thirty was rapidly approaching, and it was approaching at a speed that I just wasn’t prepared for. People were getting married and having kids, and buying cars and houses, and here I was renting a shitty apartment with Hulk, trying to determine what our future had in store for us. Everybody around us was travelling overseas – but it was constant. Somebody was just coming back from overseas, and planning their next trip. As they were coming back, other people were getting ready to leave. Sometimes it was a week here or there, or going for two / three / four weeks at a time. I couldn’t wrap my head around how these people were able to afford to do so.

Then it clicked. Money. Management. The one thing that I simply cannot do.

Now that I’m in my early thirties, I still feel lost and confused. Part of me is telling me that I should be doing responsible things like saving for a house deposit. Or saving for a trip overseas. One of my friends is over in Europe for a few weeks. Other friends of ours are in the U.S. for a few weeks. One of my co-workers has just left to go to New York for three weeks. Another co-worker is going overseas for two or three months later in the year. I just find it so depressing.

I still don’t even know what I want to be when I grow up. There’s certainly a lot that I dream about achieving, but getting it to actually happen is a completely different story. I don’t want to be one of those people who is stuck in the same job for twenty years, but I realised that I’ve already been in my job for (I think) ten years already.

If that’s the case… where was my fucking celebration cake? Probably because it’s not the sort of achievement that should be celebrated. Oh congratulations. You’ve failed at life so epically, you’ve achieved absolutely nothing, and are basically more than happy to just settle with a shitty job that doesn’t fulfill you for ten years. *slow claps* well done, loser. What a role model!!

So even though I may get older in age, I still feel young at heart. I still love my video games, in particular, LEGO ones. I love going to the movies. I love going to concerts. I’ve pretty much lost all interest in going out, simply because the ‘scene’ nowadays has totally changed.

…Oh god, I just used the terms ‘nowadays’. Just call me grandpa.

I still buy cool clothes and shoes, but at the end of the day, it’s just stuff. It’s not a house. It’s not a car. It’s not a trip overseas. I really should focus on achieving those.

…but maybe I’ll think about that after the LEGO Movie Game comes out on PS3 next week. hehehe.

http://dailypost.wordpress.com/2014/03/22/prompt-young/

Jan 14: Determination

Marge Piercy said: “A strong woman is a woman determined to do something others are determined not be done.” Tell us about a time when you did what couldn’t be done.

This is also partly in relation to a post I, literally, just finished writing, where I talk about experiencing strength, and for me, it was my rehab journey from my spinal injury.

This one is about determination, but it’s also related to my spinal injury.

So, the day after I injured myself, I wake up in bed unable to move my legs.

After I calm down from my completely hysterical outburst, I make some calls, and end up having my physio literally drop everything and make a housecall. She did some manipulation of my back and everything was okay again, and then said that I’d need to visit her a few times a week for the next couple of weeks.

I went and had x-rays, and MRI’s and tried all different types of therapies, and the final outcome was that I’d never dance again, and if I ever pushed myself too hard, the worst case scenario was that I would end up in a wheelchair before I’m 25.

So, after I get home and cry uncontrollably for a couple of hours because life, as I know, is now over, and all I can envision is that I’ll be the cranky person with no friends in a wheelchair, hating life and feeling miserable every single day constantly thinking about how I can kill myself.

…then I came to my senses and realised that feeling like that is kinda fucked up, and I need to change that.

I knew it was going to be a long road to recovery. I knew that it wasn’t something that was going to happen overnight. I knew that this was going to take some time, and a couple of therapists that I’d seen had said that it would take between 1 – 2 years, and I started thinking that that was acceptable. Whatever the recovery process was, it was going to slow and painful and frustrating.

I didn’t have a choice, I had to accept that.

For the first 8 – 10months I couldn’t actually do anything. I think that was the most frustrating part. Having come from a life where I was dancing, literally every single day, to go from that to absolutely nothing was a real struggle. I watched a lot of movies, and spent a lot of time in bed, and found myself in full-time work.

Then I moved and found a local gym, and that’s what really made me kick myself in the bum and force myself to actually do something to make myself better and begin the recovery process.

Jan 13: Strength

Eleanor Roosevelt said: “A woman is like a tea bag – you can’t tell how strong she is until you put her in hot water.” Tell us about a time you felt your strength.

I remember when I was in my early twenties. I was still in a period of recovery from a spinal injury, and I had moved house, and I’d finally plucked up the courage to look at joining a gym.

There was a gym down the road from where I lived, and up until that moment in time, all I’d ever done was dance. But now that I couldn’t go back to dancing just yet, I had to begin a very long and slow process of rehab and strength training in order to get my body properly functioning again.

That process was initially quite painful and frustrating. Frustrating because I ended up going through three different trainers before I found one that would actually cater a program to what I wanted to do and what I could actually do. The others just had a set basic program that they gave to everybody, but because I had so many physical limitations due to my spinal injury, I was very limited in what I could and couldn’t do.

This particular trainer came along and was very thorough in her assessment and her program – she took things slow and gently pushed my limits, and over a couple of months, my progress became quite noticeable and I was quite surprised at what I was able to do.

Just as I was beginning to make real progress, my trainer left, and none of those other wankers stood up the standard that she had set… they just seemed so…. dumb.

They all offered the same generic information, but then I soon realised that they all had completely different opinions about what I should be doing / eating etc. In the end, I just threw my hands up and thought ‘fuck this, it’s too difficult’ and just continued to do what I’d been previously doing, and every now and then increasing the reps before I started feeling too comfortable. I still took my time, and used the mirrors to make sure that my technique was always right, but for me, just being in the weights area was always so intimidating, because everybody else there was already so fit and muscly and ripped, and I was just a skinny little weakling by comparison.

I hated going to the gym, but it was something that I had to do in order for me to recover and get better if I wanted to have any possibility to get back into dancing.

Until the day I joined this gym, I had never done any weight training whatsoever. I’d never even set foot inside a gym, or lifted weights. I felt so completely out of place. Then all of a sudden, I find myself doing leg presses and I’m pressing 90kgs. That was heavier than I was. I couldn’t believe it.

I also struggled to walk for a couple of days afterwards.

Achieving something like that was incredible. I was so impressed with myself, and I realised that, you know what, I actually can do this ‘working out’ thing – I can feel the changes in my body, and I can see those changes as well. I felt great.

 

Daily Prompt: Unexpected

Unexpectedly, you lose your job. (Or a loved one. Or something or someone important to you.) What do you do next?

I’ve actually already had this experience before.

Twice!

But, perhaps we should talk about the first time.

It was the year I moved to Melbourne. I had moved down here to study dance full time. Previously I felt like the big fish in a very, very, small pond. When I went to dance school, I was actually more like the very, very small, slightly retarded fish in a giant fucking ocean.

But soon enough, I found my feet and came out of my shell and worked my arse off and no longer felt like the small retarded fish any more.

Then I got injured.

I injured my spine in a pas de deux class, and without going into detail was told I had to stop dancing, or I’d end up with severe spinal issues for life, and possibly end up in a wheelchair.

So I had a couple of weeks off, and spent most of that time pretty much like this:

wondering what the fuck I was going to do with my life. All I have done is dance. All I know is dance. I didn’t go to uni because I wanted to dance. I hadn’t had a job, because DANCE! And now, all I had was a giant fucking question mark following me around 24hrs a day!

I spent the rest of the term working at the school. I sewed costumes, and supervised rehearsals for the end of year concert and when I wasn’t doing that, I worked downstairs in the office instead. Then one day, on my day off, I get a voicemail from them telling me that I didn’t need to come in tomorrow, they’d given my shift to another staff member. And that they wouldn’t be giving me any more shifts. They refused to give me any explanation as to why, and then stopped returning my calls.

I had just gotten fired.

Via a voicemail.

ON MY FUCKING BIRTHDAY!!

However, when I left them a voicemail expressing my severe disappointment in their management and how unprofessionally they had conducted themselves, I began to make references to unfair dismissal and legal action. Funnily enough, they called me straight back and explained that due to my birthday, I would be entitled to a pay rise as well as other entitlements, and they financially couldn’t afford to keep me on as a casual. I then told them exactly what I thought about them and their school and their dodgy business practices and that they should be more cautious in how they conduct business, and manage their finances, because multiple goverment authorities could easily have them shut down…

…and we’d hate for that to happen, wouldn’t we!!

Surprisingly, I ended up getting my last pay, and a ‘bonus’, and a glowing letter or recommendation for future employers.

 

 

http://dailypost.wordpress.com/2013/12/11/daily-prompt-unexpected/