Dents in My Sheetrock (Blog #348)

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Currently I’m in my room, propped up in bed with a bunch of pillows. The overhead light is off, and the lamp beside my bed illuminates my makeshift workstation, another pillow. Across the room are two closet doors, both of which open up to the same closet. In between the doors there’s a small section of sheetrock about eight inches wide, painted brown like the rest of the room. Several days ago while stretching on the floor, I noticed that there were dozens of dents in that small section of the wall, little pea-sized holes, kind of low to the ground. At first perplexed by these dents in my sheetrock, I then remembered how they got there.

When I was a kid, maybe eight, maybe nine, I had a dart board. The board itself was made of plastic and was rather like a hairbrush–it had these round pegs that stuck out in order to “catch” the darts, which were also made of plastic but had a round, metal tip on the end of each one. As I recall, I would hang the board on one of my closet doorknobs, scoot back as far as I could, and throw the darts toward the board. Well, I guess I wasn’t a very good marksman, as evidenced by the pockmarks still in the sheetrock.

Noticing the dents in the wall several days ago, the perfectionist in me wanted to fill them in with spackle and repaint the wall. But then I thought better to leave them, since covering them up would be a lot of work and they remind me of my childhood. What’s more, they remind me that I once played darts not be perfect and hit the mark every time, but simply to play. They remind me that if for only a brief time in my life, it was enough to try.

Recently I read that when you’re working on personal growth, a lot of changes take place when you’re unconscious or dreaming. You do whatever you do during the day–going to therapy, meditating, or reading self-help books–then everything gets processed or “downloaded” at night. According to this theory, positive and fundamental changes in one’s character or personality happen often slowly and over time, but they do happen. Because they happen while one is sleeping, these changes, when manifested during the day as different attitudes, moods, and behaviors, can come as a surprise. Like maybe after years of accepting someone’s inappropriate behavior, one day you find yourself looking them squarely in the eyes and saying, “Get your hands off my ass.” Later you think, “I don’t know what got into me. I NEVER would have done that before.”

Of course, that’s exactly the point. The old you wouldn’t have.

This idea has been on my mind lately because of online criticism. I’ll explain. When I owned the dance studio I used to upload class-review videos to YouTube. This went on for a number of years, and even as my technique improved, I left all the old videos (with my less-than-perfect technique) online. Looking back at them, I sometimes cringe, either at the way I looked or the way I danced. I think, I should have been better than that. Still, I leave the videos because, much like the dents in my sheetrock, they tell a story. Watching them, I see someone who was doing the best he could at the time. Also, I see how much progress that person has made.

Sometimes people bitch.

Added together, the videos on my YouTube channel have been watched over five-and-a-half million times. Occasionally, maybe once every week or two, I get a notification that someone has commented on one of them. Usually, these comments are positive. Someone will say, “Thanks” or “This really helped me out.” But sometimes people bitch. Last week someone said, “You should NEVER teach dance in flip-flops. This isn’t serious.” Just today someone else said, “After you break a move down, DO IT FULL SPEED!”

Criticisms like these used to wear me out. I’d lose sleep over them, call my dance mentor over them. Am I doing something wrong? Should I quit teaching dance because a stranger in Ohio doesn’t like my haircut? Thankfully, at some point, I quit getting bent out of shape by unsolicited bullshit. I’d check the profiles of people who were criticizing my work, and they almost never had their work online, so I started thinking, If you know so much, you do it. Still, afraid of upsetting someone, I never would engage.

But lately I’ve noticed that I’m more inclined to reply to negative feedback. I’m not interested in starting an argument with a total stranger, since we were all on Facebook during the last political season and know how well that typically turns out. And I’m not saying I reply to every ignorant-ass comment that comes my way. But I’m tired of not standing up for myself when someone, for no good reason, takes a swing at me. So in response to the comment about how I should never dance in flip-flops (which I “mostly” agree with, actually), I said, “We all get to make our own choices.” In response to the comment about how I should demonstrate a move at full speed, I said, “Uh–please say please.”

I mean, god, at what point did it become okay to deem yourself the director of someone else’s life just because you own a keyboard?

This is the fundamental character change I mentioned earlier, the one that can happen when you’re not noticing. Four years ago I never would have stood up to a cyberbully or said, “That’s enough, asshole.”

Recently I’ve been writing about the fact (fact) that I’ve been sick. Earlier today a friend said they thought I was looking for sympathy. I’m not exactly sure where this comment came from, but it bothers me. As I’ve said before, I don’t like being sick. I hate it. I’m like, so over it. But let me be crystal clear–I’m not asking for anyone’s pity or sympathy. (Kindness, maybe.) Life is hard for all of us, and I don’t believe that it’s “unfair” for me specifically or that I’ve gotten a raw deal on this planet just because I have chronic sinus problems. In sharing my experiences, my intent isn’t to whine. Rather, even when I’m at my lowest, I think I work my ass off to provide hope, inspiration, and support not only for myself, but also for others.

Despite all my challenges in life, I think I do a pretty good job of refusing to believe that the world is anything but a good place to live.

In reply to the comment about my looking for sympathy, I simply said, “No, I’m honestly sharing my story.” (And I’m not holding a gun to anyone’s head and forcing them to read it, by the way.) As if you need my permission, feel free to disagree. I get that not everyone will interpret my motivations and my story as I do. That’s okay. I think any person who “puts themselves out there” has to ultimately make peace with the responses they get from others, even when those response aren’t asked for, even when those responses are negative, even when those responses seem to be aimed like darts.

Honestly, if I’m looking for anything on this blog or in my life, it’s understanding. My guess is that’s all any of us really want–to be understood. (And maybe to win the lottery would be nice.) But one thing I’d like to be explicit about–the one and only person I want and need to understand me–is me. If anything good and positive and lasting has come out of this writing project, this is it. It’s taught me to love, accept, and support myself in a way I never did before it started. Because of this small miracle, I’m not looking for understanding–or anything–from anyone else. If I have it, great–thank you. We all like praise and crave support. But what I’m saying is that if I woke up tomorrow and a thousand people on YouTube said my dancing was shit, I might have a bad day, but I wouldn’t stop dancing. If everyone stopped reading my blog–if my statistics dropped to zero–I wouldn’t stop writing.

Tonight I noticed a total-word-count feature on my blog for the first time. Since starting the blog almost a year ago, I’ve apparently written over 350,000 words, an average of over 1,000 a day. When I consider these words and when I consider the videos I’ve uploaded to YouTube, I know they aren’t all “perfect.” (If you’d like to find something wrong with any of them, it’ll be easy enough for you to do.) But perhaps these efforts are much like the dents in my sheetrock on the other side of the room, less about being perfect and more about how I’m simply trying to figure things out, just like everyone else is.

Doing what you love is never about gaining acceptance from others.

In my experience, when you put yourself out there and play the game, you have a few hits and just as many misses. And God knows you don’t make everyone else happy. But this is no reason to quit or be discouraged, since doing what you love and feel called to do is never–never–about gaining acceptance from others. Indeed, if the entire world rejected you because of the “dents” they perceived in your life, and yet you utterly loved and accepted yourself, what difference would the entire world make?

Quotes from CoCo (Marcus)

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All great heroes, at some point, surrender to the unknown.

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One Single Loud Clap (Blog #57)

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In 2008 I started uploading dance videos to YouTube. At the time I wanted a way to keep track of what I knew and what I taught at my dance studio, and I also wanted my students to be able to review what they learned. So each week after class, we’d film a review, and I’d post it online. Nine years later, I’ve posted 1,101 videos, which have a combined total of 5,149,733 views. That last number really blows my mind, since oftentimes the classes I taught at the studio had no more than eight or ten people in them. Sometimes, there were only one or two.

Witness the power of the internet.

Over the years, there have been quite a few comments on the videos, and most of them have been positive. I’ve even had a number of emails and phone calls from total strangers–people in Tennessee, Florida, Europe–who’ve said they’ve learned a lot from the videos. However, for the longest time, it was the negative comments that stood out to me, like the person who ripped me a new one for starting rumba on a quick instead of a slow, or the dozen of people who were pissed off that I wrongly referred to Triple Two Step as Texas Two Step, or the guy who loved the videos but said that dying my hair blonde was “a mistake.”

Five years ago, bullshit like that would upset me for days. Now, thankfully, I’m able to take most of it in stride. For one thing, I have no idea who these people really are. Maybe they know what they’re talking about, maybe they don’t. But I finally decided that if you have nothing better to do than criticize the hair color of a total stranger who’s giving you dance lessons for free, that’s your problem–not mine.

This afternoon my friend Sydnie and I performed at a local nursing home for National Lindy Hop Day. I used to get really worked up and nervous about this sort of thing, but I had a great time today. Sydnie was on her way to another dance event, so she was with a friend of hers, another dancer. He took the above picture of us, which is why he’s not in it. (Thank you for the picture. I didn’t know if it’d be okay to use your name.)

Anyway, Sydnie’s friend told me that he started watching my dance videos on YouTube a few years before he started dancing, and then he continued to watch them once life slowed down and he was able to actually learn. He said the videos had been helpful on his journey, so I was kind of like a celebrity to him. (This sort of thing has happened a couple of other times, and it always makes my day. Still, I’m never sure how to properly react other than to say, “Thank you. That makes my day.” Perhaps if it happens again, I could add, “Thank you for not criticizing my hair.”)

Ironically, when I saw the picture of Sydnie and me, I didn’t like my hair, so I sent a message to my friend Bekah to see if she could cut it. Well, sometimes miracles happen, and she said to come right on over. When I got there, both her teenage sons were there too, and although I’m sure they were speaking English, I really didn’t understand much of what they were saying. (This is one way you know you’re getting older.) But at some point, Bekah’s older son, Christian, suddenly raised both his hands over his head and struck them together in one single loud clap. He explained that when he wants a high-five from a friend but he either doesn’t have one present or his friend won’t give him a high-five, he gives himself one.

Strange, I know, but I still think it’s gold.

(Here’s a picture of the haircut. This last year, for the first time in my entire life, I started parting my hair on my right side instead of my left. I’m not sure why. But Bekah added a hard part to the right just for emphasis. The lady in the picture is my friend Betty. She’s one of the friends I was with in 2008 when I went to Dubai and was told by a witch doctor that I had “weak brain.” She was in town tonight and invited me for dinner.)

As I look at the picture, I realize you can’t actually see my hair, but I promise this won’t be the last selfie I post, so don’t go anywhere. (This is called a cliffhanger. Sort of.)

After dinner I went to return some headphones to Best Buy, and while I was there, I got a notice on my phone that a friend had commented on the blog. Like almost every other comment I’ve received so far, it was positive, but my friend asked kindly that I not use the F word. Well, I responded and said (in the spirit of honesty) that probably wasn’t going to happen.

What I don’t want is for this specific blog post to become a conversation about whether or not cussing is okay. Obviously, for me it is, although my boundary about it is that if I’m in the grocery store, the doctor’s office, or a home where people don’t cuss, I don’t cuss. Clearly, other people have different boundaries regarding the words that come out of their mouths or keyboards. But this is my blog, and I pay the bills around here, and the result of that logic is obvious to anyone who reads a single one of my posts. (I think there’s only been one post completely void of a cuss word, and it just happened that way.)

When I first started therapy, my therapist told me that she didn’t care what I did the other twenty-three hours of the day, but she said, “During the one hour we’re together, we’re going to sit in truth, and we’re not going to judge ourselves.” So for the last three years, that’s exactly what’s happened. If at any point I’ve tried to bullshit myself or her about something, she’s called me out on it. And if at any point I’ve judged myself (which I have plenty of times), she’s called me out on that too.

So my goal with the blog is the same. Here, we’re going to sit in truth. More specifically, I’m going to sit in truth because I’m the only one currently in this room, sitting behind this keyboard. Secondly, I’m going to do my level best to not judge myself. And if I do judge myself at the beginning of a blog, I hope to use my writing as a way to work myself into a more compassionate place by the end of it.

What you see here is what you get.

Those two rules being established, what I can promise anyone who is interested and kind enough to spend your precious time here is that I’ll be as honest with you as I am with myself, as honest as I know how to be. I know there are plenty of other things you could be doing, and there are plenty of other places you could go for fake news. So I promise I won’t bullshit you and pretend to be someone I’m not. God, I did that for the longest time, and it sucks. It’s the worst feeling to pretend you’re straight when you’re not or, maybe worse, pretend you just don’t have a sexuality when everyone else around you is talking about the person they’re interested in, or in love with, or go home to when you go home alone. Likewise, it’s the worst feeling to pretend you’re “just fine” when you’re actually falling apart.

So that shit stops here.

What I would say to anyone on YouTube who doesn’t like the way I rumba or doesn’t like my hair, or to anyone who doesn’t like the F word, is that I understand. Honestly, sometimes I don’t like the way I rumba, and I wasn’t crazy about the blonde hair either, but I’d do it again in a heartbeat if the person I thought I was going to marry cheated on me and then later lied and told me he had cancer when he didn’t. And as for the F word, I remember (twenty years ago) when it used to bother me too. So I get it. We all have our opinions about how to act, and I don’t believe mine are the only ones that matter. But, again, I’m doing my best to not judge myself for failing to live up to a certain level of imagined perfection.

But back to being honest. What you see here is what you get. This is the most authentic I know how to be, and this is currently who I am–warts, cuss words, and all. Personally, I don’t like any sort of negative feedback. It never feels good to think I’ve disappointed someone, especially someone I care about. But as Abraham Lincoln said, you can’t please all of the people all of the time. And what I’ve learned about authenticity is that it doesn’t have to. Better that you’re true to yourself and the whole world be disappointed than to change who you are and the whole world be satisfied. And whereas I’m eternally grateful for every positive comment on YouTube and the blog (and there have been hundreds, thank you), I know that it has to be enough if only one person–the guy behind this keyboard–raises his hands above his head and strikes them together in one single loud clap.

Quotes from CoCo (Marcus)

"We all have inner wisdom. We all have true north."