Karaoke.
I just don’t know about this one. I cannot relax at karaoke; I haven’t…
Tomorrow is the first day of the new school year. The kids don’t come to my school until the 11th. I am not in a good mood. From what I hear, no teacher is…I think it’s time to pause and do this later. I am beyond uninspired. I just don’t care about much. Would rather run. I think I’ll go for a run. Sometimes I structure all my time for the thing that comes after. I’ll do this so then I can do that. So right now the idea is I write and respond to an email and then file some papers, maybe finish roasting the squash (so I can eat vegetables during the work week) and then go for a run and then maybe I’ll be in a good mood. I’m not angry; I’m mostly irritated. Irritated that other people expect me to do my job and the nature of my job involves a lot of unplanned time and when I’m nervous I like to plan more, not less, but there’s not a lot I can plan until the kids actually arrive and so I’m irritated. I’m irritated about some decisions that have been that will make my job harder. Most of the things I felt so in love with and positive about at the end of last year feel totally foreign and forgotten. Everything is kind of annoying.
So yes. Perhaps. I’m having a bit of a tantrum. It seems really stupid to display this in any place that another human being might see it.
This is the thing: the reason I can’t do karaoke is that I can’t relax. I feel completely conscious of how I appear and sound and I just can’t shed it. So I keep on saying yes when I’m invited to go because I think the fact that it’s difficult for me means that I should do it. This is how I respond to many things that are difficult for me, though clearly not all, based on my above response to going back to work. And this writing now too, feels like performance.
I keep on coming back to this notion…how to stop performing?
I am exhausted by my own efforts to please people. It is such a completely stupid and ridiculous thing to do. And this is what my head does: the only way to be good at karaoke is to stop trying to be good at it. So, stop trying. Now. How about now? Stop thinking about it. And…now.
Alcohol only exacerbates it and also I’m trying not to use substances like that anymore anyway.
I do, however, think that bringing my advisory to karaoke would be supremely fun and in order to help them relax, I would myself just go for it and relax. It reminds of how I once took my little god-sister shopping when she was 14 or 15. When we were trying on clothes I saw her being self-conscious about her belly and her hips and I decided right then and there that I would not even remotely feel those thoughts. I wouldn’t pretend not to feel them, I actually would not go to that place in order to set a good example for this budding lady and her budding consciousness. In fact, I would have done anything to circumvent those thoughts for her, the weighing and measuring of skin and curves, would have done anything to make it so that she would never ever feel or think them. I don’t think I did much to prevent those thoughts for her, but it did happen that in trying to give her that freedom I managed mostly to give it to myself. I was kinder to myself then I had ever been in a dressing room.
So this is cute; the logic and the full circle and it amazes me how the words take me where I wanted to go…because, one might say then, that perhaps I should be working with youth right now. Perhaps teaching gives me more then I can give myself. Perhaps it’s time for me to take some kids to karaoke.















