desperate for change

When I retire, I would imagine myself to be an old man with lots of friends and hobbies to keep me busy in my free time. I also considered the possibility that I would no longer have the strength of mental wit to do programming for a living by that point. To that end, I have thought about developing some writing skills to use when I get to that age. I mean, surely I would be rich and famous by that point so at least I can write some memoirs or something. But if I was poor and unknown, I can still scrape out a meager living as a poet, writing about poverty and obscurity.

I have recently been taking dance classes again. This is similar to the writing in that I am preparing a hobby and recreation that I can take on over the next couple of decades.

There is something satisfying about having a long term plan, especially when it comes to building up a skill that you can enjoy for years to come. While I am not a professional in either of my “retirement” hobbies, I am sure that working at something gradually over the years would add up. The 10000 hours of deliberate practice, as popularized by Malcolm Gladwell, isn’t something that is necessarily to be rushed. It is something to be savoured.

What hobbies are you savouring for the decades to come?

My girlfriend and I went to check out her co-worker’s private dancing lesson yesterday. My own dancing has been steadily going downhill – mostly due to neglect and being “busy” with other things. By busy, I mean not really that busy but I just seem to spend too much time vegetating at home. Anyhow, I was curious at this mysterious ballroom dancing location and who the teacher was.

The place: Prior Street near Chinatown. You probably would not go into the parking lot of this warehouse looking place unless you were looking to buy fresh produce wholesale. Inside the building, navigate through some stairs and a hallway, you will find yourself in a quaint but decent sized dance hall. Ahh yes, I have heard about this place before.

The teacher: an older couple. The gentleman is engineer by day. The story is that the wife was a Standard champion and the husband was a Latin champion. I suppose that they compromised by learning each other’s dance.

While watching the lesson, I found myself delving into my own reasons and rational for getting into dancing in the first place. Was it to pick up women? Was it for fun? Was it for exercise?

Then, I went on into more basic questions: What is the meaning of life? I mean, in the end, we’re all just going to be stardust anyways, right? Why dance?

Then it hit me: humans form a network of nodes that serve as a knowledge database system. There is absolutely no way for dancing to be passed from one generation to another generation by using books and written descriptions. It must be passed on by live dancing databases. Even if I am not out to become a dance teacher, we are all part of the ecosystem of passing on the dance knowledge. We are redundant copies of the information to pass on to future generations.

This naturally extends to many other fields of knowledge: academia, art, music, politics. Even for subjects that can be perfectly transferred and recorded using books, you still need another human to point out that such a book exist and is available.

So, enjoy your dancing, your reading, your music, your hobbies and skills. Consider yourself to be doing the good deed of remembering what needs to be remembered for future knowledge seekers.

Last night I went to see the Snowball Classic with my non-dancing friend. I wasn’t planning on going but we were just talking one night and I casually mentioned it to her as something that is pretty big in the  Vancouver dancing community. The next day, she called me up to tell me that she wants to get some tickets for us to go together.

For my dancing friends that read this blog, you may (or may not) have noticed my reduction in my dancing activity. I mean – there was a time when I was doing ballroom and/or going to salsa classes multiple times a week. Honestly, I was in a bit of a burnout of going so hard, nowhere fast.

In a way, it was starting to have a similar feel to my startup-attempts a while ago: a lot of grind and energy spent without much results or much to show for. I was starting to feel like a robot shuffling from class to class and not having as much fun as when I started.

I still enjoy the friendships that I have made throughout my dancing activities. And most absolutely, I will go out for the occasional social outing. I mean, aren’t you dying to go dancing at Robson Square this summer? However, I won’t be pushing myself just for the sake of pushing myself. I am just going to keep it fun for myself.

I mean, there are so many other things to try and do right?

There is something about having the infamous third place in your life. Home is where you live. Work is where you work. The third place is where you can pursue your passions and interests.

These days, my third place is the salsa classes I’m taking. I’ve started taking classes in March – I like the pace and intensity and it is at just the right level of difficulty for me. I only wish my ballroom dancing friends would join me, haha! Did I mention that the classes are starting up again in January? Did I mention that the teacher lets you go more than once a week to his other locations, if you sign up for “one” class? Did I mention that there are more girls than guys? Did I mention that we learned an awesome move that made it look like the guy was tossing the girl in a dramatic looking fashion? How’s my sales pitch?

Dance halls and studios have not always been my third place of choice.

In the past, I’ve gone to church. I’ve gone to Toastmasters. Heck, you might even consider the library as a serious third place in my youth. The Web, could be considered a virtual third place. When I was still in university, school was both the work place and the third place

Where is your third place?