I swam in the Hudson River

Never Done: I swam in the Hudson River

I wanted to get in the Hudson River well before the triathlon so I could get a feel for what it is like to swim in the river before I do the triathlon in August. I knew of course that it would be a lot colder now than then, but I wanted to feel the chop, and the pull of the tide, and most of all -- what it is like to swim in a wetsuit -- so I signed up for three open water swims this summer -- the Great Hudson River Swim in the Hudson, a The Pancake spring triathlon in Raritan Bay, and the Brooklyn Bridge Swim in the East River.

The Great Hudson River Swim is a "beginner-friendly" (as per the NYC Swim website) 1.6 miles in the Hudson, from Christopher Street Pier 45 to Battery Park City. I was was worried about it being cold, and worried about what it would be like to swim in a wetsuit, and quite nervous about the start, when I'd been told people would jump in and swim on top of me -- but I was pretty confident about the swim itself. I've swim long distances before, I love the open water, I am in great shape right now -- and doing especially well in the pool.

Still, as I approached the sign-in area at 6 AM, I had knots in my stomach. I wasn't sure why I was nervous, because this wasn't a race for me; it was an experiment. My nerves calmed down as I signed in (first person to get my number: 208) penned in Sharpie onto the backs of my hands. They calmed down more as I waited an hour and a half for the swim to start, put on my wetsuit, and joked and talked with other swimmers.

Finally it was time to jump off the Pier, into the Hudson. Everyone says that the hardest part is the beginning, when other people are jumping in on top of you, so I made a deal with the person in front of me and behind me -- told them I wouldn't jump on them, and they shouldn't jump on me. It loosened things up a little bit, and made me feel better to have that level of human connection about the scariest part.

I was in the second wave of swimmers, so I got to see other people jump in and gather together to wait for the start. When my turn came, it felt otherworldly. I was on the edge of the dock, I was told to jump in, I hesitated for maybe 1 second and the man running the show told me to hurry, and so I jumped -- over my own natural tendency to take a little more time -- but I jumped. My goggles stayed on, and the water was chilly but not unbearably cold. (I had a sleeveless wetsuit, and that was just fine.) We waited a good 10 minutes in the water before our heat took off, and during that time I talked with the other swimmers, and waved to Josh who was supporting me from the pier, and thought cockily to myself, Well the hardest part is over. Nobody jumped on top of me, and this water is not too cold.

Finally we heard the countdown and the horn, and we were off -- and it immediately got hard. I set out nice and slow, and within a minute someone was swimming on top of me. I just pulled aside to let them pass, and started again -- and again, someone started to flail on top of me. It felt strange -- there was plenty of room for us to spread out, so I wasn't sure why they were on me, unless they couldn't see or they were panicking or they were assholes. (Probably it was at least one of those reasons.)

Meanwhile, I already hated the wetsuit. It was tight around my neck, and I was having a tough time breathing. Not from exertion -- I had barely exerted yet -- but I think from the compression of the wetsuit combined with my already-compromised lungs combined with the water temperature combined with my reaction to other people swimming on top of me. I couldn't take a significant breath, and I just wanted to rip the wetsuit off from around my neck and chest. I slowed down and let everyone pass, and just tested out what it was like to swim without anyone around. The strokes felt fine, but I could not breathe right. I didn't feel panicked at all -- I just knew that without breath, I wouldn't be able to swim a mile and a half. With a sinking feeling (metaphorically, not literally) I swam over to one of the rescue kayaks and told the guy in it that I shouldn't do this. I felt really disappointed, and also realistic.

He pointed me to the big rescue motor boat, and asked if I needed help getting there. I didn't -- I could swim over there just fine. (I mean, as fine as you are when you can't get a breath and you want to rip off your wetsuit, but really actually fine.) On my way over, it occurred to me that I could take off my wetsuit and get back in the water -- that this didn't actually mean the swim was over for me. So when I got up on the boat, I took off my suit, and asked the rescue captain if that was fine. He wasn't actually a race official, so didn't really care one way or the other. So I did it -- I jumped back into the Hudson without a wetsuit, and set back out on the course. Again, the water temp was fine on my limbs, and it felt great to be in my element without the wetsuit on, but I still couldn't get a breath. (In the end, all day and night passed without my being able to take a significant breath, so the fact that I couldn't get it in 62 degree water isn't a surprise.)

I went through the same process of disappointment and reality all over again, swam back to the rescue boat, and climbed back up. My Great Hudson River Swim was over. Lung fail.

But it turned out it wasn't over. Because I stayed on that boat -- with the two captains and the three other swimmers who got picked up -- for another 45 minutes. I tried to talk with the other swimmers, but they were pretty sulky. One of them had a cut hand, one of them was "off his game" and the other one wouldn't even talk. A sorry bunch, feeling sorry for themselves, while meanwhile, I felt surprisingly emotionally OK. I watched the swimmers in the water, and the rescue kayak culture -- trying to learn as much as I could from my unexpected vantage point. I felt a lot of appreciation for the boating support team. I watched the slow swimmers and noticed how good they were at taking their time, and also that they actually had support kayaks boating next to them. Had I understood that I would have had that level of close support, I would have stayed in the water, and while that increased my disappointment that I had gotten out, it also felt like it was still the point of doing the swim in the first place -- to experiment and to to learn.

In other words, I decided to practice Humility: Seek wisdom from others, and not to sink into humiliation.

Until later, once I was on land again, and I started to feel my confidence tank. If you've been around me over the past months, you've heard me sound pretty cocky about the swim -- saying again and again that the swimming part of the triathlon is no problem. I'm a great swimmer. My weak sports will be biking and running. Well damn, if I can't breathe in a wetsuit, it doesn't matter how good a swimmer I am.

I told Josh about all of this on the way home, and we discussed the etymological roots of the words humility and humiliation because I wanted to know how closely related the two things are. We weren't actually sure about the derivation, but Josh gave me a wonderful definition of what he felt I'd been through: Humiliation is being dragged kicking and screaming into a state of humility.

Later in day, he went out while I was napping, and came home with a beautiful spray freesias, and a redefinition of my entire race day. He said there were 6 waves of races: 5 waves of swimmers, and one boating wave. And then he said that I placed first in the boating wave, because I practiced so much equanimity and patience and humility.

Now I just have to keep practicing all three, as I strategize my way forward. Can I swim without a wetsuit? If I do that, do I just swim in my tri shorts and top? What about wearing a neoprine vest? Or maybe a one-piece trisuit? And maybe more importantly than all that, what is really going on with my lungs? Why does it feel like the rest of my body is getting stronger and stronger, while I can't get a full breath? I think it's time to practice diligence, and take my compromised lungs to the doctor. Onward.

DIligence: I took a nap in the editing room

Never Done: Shadow post

Sometimes I write shadow posts when the real thing I did was too personal for me or someone else to write about. So, I did something today for the first time that is too personal for me or someone else for me to write about. But, it was a very Mussar-like thing to do. Very much about balancing the needs of self and other. But enough about me ...

And then after that, I rode 15 miles on Pam's bike for the first time, with my feet clipped in to the pedals (not for the first time, but for the first time on a longish ride.) And I still haven't fallen over. But everyone says I will eventually.

And then after that, Brett and I knocked out a rough assembly of our video for Sandy Pope, and it's better than I feared and still has a long way to go, and in the middle of the work day, I was nodding off and trying desperately to stay awake, and I eventually just asked Brett if he minded if I would take a nap. He didn't mind -- he was assembling video clips, and while I could have been useful, I wasn't essential. And so for the first time ever, I napped in the middle of a work session with a colleague other than Josh. (It was great, by the way. I woke up completely revived, and ready to go.)

I think we all know that mid-day moment when we are just too tired to function. I think most people reach for caffeine, but I don't drink the stuff. Sometimes some raisins will give me a little boost, but not today. Today I was on the shut-eye train, and I knew that if I were at home, I would lie down and sleep for 20 minutes, and wake up refreshed. For maybe 10 minutes I was trying to follow what we were doing, and really doing a bad job. A bad job paying attention, and a bad job faking it too. Then it occurred to me that I was working with one of the most relaxed and flexible people I know, and I just asked him if I minded if I would fall asleep. I did feel a little guilty, but I also knew that staying awake wasn't exactly productive.

This weeks' mide (middah) is Diligence: Always find something to do. There's an exercise that goes along with this practice -- every hour for a week, stop what you are doing, and log how you spent the past hour. Then, use some kind of assessment -- it could be the Urgency Matrix from Stephen R. Covey's 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, which Rabbi Alissa Wise recommends (and I really like) or it could be something else that is meaningful to you. I haven't actually done this logging exercise, but now I'm going to. If I'm really brave, I'll post my hourly log in this blog. But first, the thing I want to say about diligence, for all you hard-working, over-scheduled 21st century over-achievers, is that resting is doing something. Let me say that again. Resting is doing something. Sometimes the thing we need to find to do is just stop, and rest, and recover. And sometimes the thing we need to do is get off our asses and write that screenplay, or bake bread, or make that scary phone call, or go for a run. But sometimes, we need to rest. This morning I got up at 4 AM because I am going to go swim in the Hudson for the first time ever, and then I'm going to have brunch with Eric and Jessica (who I have never yet met) -- and after that, I am going to rest. Come on over if you want. I'll be on the couch.

I went to the Guggenheim Museum

Never Done: I went to the Guggenheim Museum

And it turns out that somehow I've never even seen it from the outside! How is that possible? I've been coming to New York on a regular basis since 1993, and I've been living here since 2002. I've been to the Met. I've been to the Jewish Museum. Presumably I've walked right past the Guggenheim, and what? Didn't notice it? Again, how is that possible??

Well anyhow, thanks to Groupon, I finally went. And I think it's my favorite museum I've ever been in, with the possible exception of the smallest film museum in the world, which is in the south of Sweden, which now that I think about it, I just peered at from the outside so that doesn't count, and even if it did, it really doesn't compare to the Guggenheim anyhow.

I went in without knowing anything really, so the fact that you get to walk up a gently ascending interior spiral while viewing all of the art was a delightful surprise to me. I expected the interior of the Guggenheim to be huge -- with a bunch of rooms and separate galleries. (Only one gallery was open when I was there -- the others seemed to have work being installed in them.) I didn't expect it to be so compact (and yet spacious) and I didn't expect it to be so centralized (and yet decentralized.) I guess I just didn't expect to like it so much.

I can't actually think of a time I've enjoyed being in a museum -- any museum -- as much as I enjoyed being in the Guggenheim. Usually I get tired, or overwhelmed, or lost, or my feet get tired, or I feel like I should want to see more. But at the Guggenheim, you just keep walking. And if you want to stop and spend a lot of time with a painting, you do -- and if you want to keep walking, you just keep walking. There aren't irretrievable choices -- doors you go in that might lead you out to completely other parts of the museum. You just go up ... or down. And occasionally you go in, but then you come back out the same way you went in, and you get to go up or down again. It's brilliant. My feet didn't even get tired.

The show that's up right now is called The Great Upheaval: Modern Art from the Guggenheim Collection, 1910-1918. It's full of paintings by Chagall, Kandinsky, Marc, Picasso, Delauney. I'm not even much of an art historian, and I felt like I was in the company of old friends. I particularly love Chagall, and I saw two of his paintings I'd only ever seen before in reproductions: The Soldier Drinks, and The Flying Carriage. I walked right up to them and looked at the brushstrokes. There was so much sense of space in the museum that I could do that without being in someone else's way, and I did it again when I came upon something by Van Gogh, whose up-close brush strokes are incredibly moving to me.

So what's this all about? I think it's about Diligence: Always find something to do. Here I live in this vibrant cultural center, and after almost 20 years of spending time here, I have never been to the Guggenheim Museum. Now, it's not like I sit around all day watching Survivor (actually, I have never watched Survivor. Shit, does that mean that now I have to?) but I think I could be more diligent about discovering New York. I should ask all the New Yorkers I know to make me a list of their favorite things to do here, and I should check to see if I've ever done them. I know some things I've never done: I've never gone to the Bronx Zoo, or to City Island, or to Roosevelt Island. I've never eaten street meat, or gone into FAO Schwarz, or swum in the Hudson (but I have plans to quite soon!) I'll make you a deal. For every idea that you give me that I've never done, I will 1) do it and publicly thank you for the idea, and 2) the day I do your thing, I will not complain about the things that usually make me complain about New York. Deal?

I saw past the blemish to the beauty

Never Done: Saw a staged reading of a new opera of Enemies, A Love Story, by Isaac Bashevis Singer, with a new libretto by Nahma Sandrow

This is the second time in as many months that I have written that the thing I had never done before was to see a world premiere of a work that Nahma either translated or wrote, which has a lot more to say about what Nahma is out there accomplishing than what I am, except that I think that supporting and learning from our colleagues (Humility: Seek wisdom from everyone) is a vital part of the creative process. Really. I once took a master class in acting from Marian Seldes in which she spent as much time (literally) teaching about how to be a good audience member as she taught how to be a good actor. I will probably never forget her modeling how to sit in the audience, leaning slightly forward, in rapt attention -- her point being that the job of the audience member is to give as much attention and energy to the actor as the actor is giving to the audience. Her class reminded me that my friend Barbara teaches first graders how to listen, and they practice sitting across from each other making encouraging sounds like, "mhmm" and "oh." (I found this out because when I still lived in Portland I used to go help her take her class apart at the end of the year, and I found a piece of butcher paper with an illustrated three-step tutorial on how to be a good listener.)

This being New York, and the theater community being small, I later found myself in audiences with Marian, where I saw that she does, in fact, sit perfectly still -- fidgetless -- and completely attentive, with an interested look on her face. Unlike Edward Albee, who sat behind me recently during a Public Theater production that I thought was well above average, and also both politically and emotionally ambitious, and also had one of the best raised poor characters I've ever seen on stage, and he alternately slept and complained through the first act, and then didn't come back for the second. I myself usually fall somewhat in between. I aspire to be like Seldes, but I sometimes fight back the sleep, and sometimes I succumb.

I think I was a good (which as I think about it, means that I was an ethical) audience member at Enemies. I wasn't as still as Marian suggests, because I was still fighting off a sore throat, and needed to sip tea, and once to unwrap a vitamin C throat lozenge. But I paid close attention, and I gave the actors my energy and attention. And here's the thing: it wasn't necessarily so easy to do, because even though I was super interested in the libretto and the plotting, and even though a couple of the singers were wonderful, the guy who played the main character swallowed his words, making it really difficult to understand, and the music was ... well the music was ... well the music was ... I hated the music. There, I said it. I hated the music. It made me want to act out. It made me want to whisper judgmental things to the people I was with. But I didn't. (Unless I am right now. Which I am a little worried that I might be.) Instead, I sat and paid attention to the parts I was far more interested in, which took at least five mides (middot) to accomplish: patience, equanimity, humility, decisiveness, silence, and calmness. And diligence too. In the end, I think everyone was the better for it, but I know I was.

I live with someone who does this extremely well -- he sees right past the blemish to the beauty, whereas my mind tends to get stuck at the blemish. (There are some downsides to this -- cleanliness and order are not his strong suits, but they are mine.) I've been trying to get better at seeing the past the blemish to the beauty for years, and have started to see some real progress recently. I'll take my experience at Enemies as a success, and will keep building from there.

Ready to be 48. Bring it.

Never Done: Turned 48

This whole Never Done project is really thanks to the fact that I just turned 48. 48 seems so close to 50, you know? And I wanted to feel prepared for 50 -- not just have it show up on my doorstep and freak me out.

In general, I think the project is going well. On the downside, I am more tired than usual, because in addition to finding new things to do every day, I also need a good hour or more a day to write this blog. But on the upside, I am doing things I've never done before, and discovering what I like and what I don't. (I love the soup swap, and today's my day to cook soup, and tomorrow I'll be writing about it; I don't particularly love the draping class. I like it, but unless something really comes into focus for me, I don't think I'm going to be buying a dress form and pursuing this as a life passion.) More importantly, I think that the basic idea -- to choose one thing to do every day, and to override the "Should I? Shouldn't I" questions that would otherwise waste my time and paralyze me, and to seek meaning in the practice, has been fruitful. And the deeper idea for me, to expand my life as I head toward and into the second demi-century, has been as well. Hey, I have a Groupon for hot air ballooning later in the year!

So it was my birthday, and I decided to spend it doing things I wanted to do. This is interesting when you are thinking about Diligence: Always find something to do. Because when the world is your oyster (or your lobster roll) what do you actually want? When you take work and your other usual defaults off the table, how do you really enjoy spending your time? I decided that I wanted to do things that I enjoy, and also that I wanted to do things for people I love. So after cheesecake for breakfast with Josh, and then a second round with Dana, I spent the morning sewing presents for people. I made some microwavable flaxseed lavender bags for Karen and Josh, and I started a surprise sewing project for another friend, but it's a surprise so I'm not saying what or who.

I wanted to make myself a skirt, but I got flummoxed by downloadable patterns, so instead I spread out lots of fabric on the floor and pictured myself wearing a skirt made from different combinations.

I planned to finally take a Zumba class, but when I got to the gym it was the same (bad) teacher I had the other time -- the one who the other people in the class said was teaching faux Zumba, so I lifted weights instead, which felt metaphorically excellent (power... the metaphor is power) for me on my 48th.

I tried to Facetime chat (never done) with Karen, but I was out in the gym and then out on the street, and it turns out you need to be connected to WiFi, so we just talked instead.

I wanted to get a haircut, and I actually found a someone I think will be great, but she didn't have time, so I made an appointment for next week.

I got very tired (had a bad night of sleep the night before) and tried to take a nap but couldn't quite, so instead I indulged in an episode from Season 2 of Veronica Mars (thank you Alex for turning me on to this guilty pleasure!)

I took a 40 minute walk through the cold park and down to BAM to see True Grit, and Josh joined me there. I really loved this movie, and (SPOILER ALERT) am still grappling with the end. The frame. The way that we see what has become of this spunky intelligent girl -- that it's so unsettling, that she's lost her spunk. Was it just hard prairie living? Was it that once you taste that level of adventure and revenge nothing else compares? Thematically, I respect the Coen Brothers for hitting us with the epilogue, because it reminds us that the fun, and often hilarious romp we had just seen was actually about killing and revenge, and that many people's lives were deeply unsettled. Discuss please.

And finally, Josh and I met Patricia and Serena and Graciana for lobster rolls (my treat) at Luke's Lobster which is a terrible place to have a birthday gathering because it is to tiny, and a wonderful place to have a birthday gathering because the lobster rolls are SO GOOD. And because Luke is a Mainer, and his dad used to be a lobsterman, and Luke's donates some of its profits to the Maine Lobstermen's Association. And because the lobster rolls are SO GOOD.

And really finally, I got to bed before midnight, and slept for a delicious 8 hours, and woke up ready to be 48. Bring it.

Cake for breakfast

Never Done: Made my own birthday cake

When I was growing up, my family's birthday tradition was to have cake and presents at breakfast, before going to school. I love that my parents let us have cake for breakfast, and I also love that they let us have presents when we woke up, because really, who wants to wait? As soon as I was old enough to choose, I chose cheesecake with raspberries on top. We grew amazing raspberries, and would freeze bags and bags of them in the summer, and one bag would always be reserved for my January birthday cake.

It's one of those traditions that I have kept up -- as often as I could, asking friends or partners to make me a cheesecake for breakfast. This year I decided I want to have a low-key birthday celebration, spent doing things I like to do. I love to cook, I love to bake, and I love to multitask. So this year I decided to bake my own cheesecake in the middle of a work day. So while I was on a phone call, I scooped out two pounds of ricotta into a metal bowl, and smoothed it with a spatula to get out the air bubbles, and I blended in 1/3 cup of flour and 3/4 cup maple sugar, and then one by one I stirred in 6 beaten eggs (I beat them before the phone call) and then added in cinnamon, vanilla, salt, and lemon rind, and poured it all into a springform pan that Abigail left at my house (thanks!) and she will get back this weekend, and set it in the oven to bake at 300F. (Now you know my recipe.) That all took just 10 minutes.

It needed to bake for minimum 90 minutes (ended up taking longer because the pan was 8 inch instead of 9 inch) so when I got off the phone, I decided to slip in a trip to the gym, which I hadn't made time for since before the New Year!

I think I should mention that this week's mide (middah) is Diligence: Always find something to do. While I am typically very good at finding something to do, I also have let some things, like go to the gym, slip off my plate lately because I have been quite busy. At this week's Mussar va'ad (Mussar study group) Alissa mentioned that she thinks that for busy, over-programmed people, it can be as useful to think of "something to do" as resting or self-care as it is to think about it as work or our traditional notions of productivity. So in the midst of a day in which I revised a screenplay treatment, did production work on two documentaries and a short video spot, and had a meeting with my sister, I am glad to say that the Mussar practice helped me get back to the gym.

When I got back, the cake was still jiggly in the middle, so I let it stay in the oven while I showered and got on the phone with my sister. We had an extremely productive meeting, during which I checked the cake from time to time, and finally took it out after it had been baking for a full two hours. And then it sat on the counter cooling for the rest of my work day, smelling wonderful and building my anticipation for my birthday, which I am going to start out by eating cheesecake for breakfast.

Patrick Stewart after all

Never Done (and still never done): Zumba

A friend of mine posted this as her Facebook status: "Today is a loss. Stick a fork in it. I'm just trying to entertain myself for 2 hours. Then, we hit reset." That happens to me sometimes too. Occasionally it happens when I have so much to do that my brain freezes up and I get paralyzed. More often, it happens when I have too little to do, and can't quite organize my time effectively, and I get paralyzed. Most people who know me know that most days, I am the opposite of paralyzed -- long list, mostly accomplished by the end of the day, or if not, then by the end of the week. The last couple weeks have been tough though. The problem is that I have too much work to do, but not enough of it pays. And that which does pay doesn't pay up front. So how to prioritize? Usually I've been going from most pressing deadline to most pressing deadline, but not staying true to my own long-term plans and priorities. And the past couple days, I just fizzled out and accomplished very little on any work front.

Yesterday was a total wash for work (although I should say on my behalf, I was doing a good job of taking care of someone close to me.) So when I went out in the afternoon to get some medicine at the wonderful local family-run pharmacy (Ansonia Chemist) and was greeted with incredible warmth and familiarity, it felt comforting. While I was waiting for the prescription, a man came in, who was also greeted with great warmth and familiarity. I saw him from the back, and he seemed like a nice, 60-something, Park Slope guy -- nice jeans, balding, friendly. I heard him say something about a trip he was about to take, and something about his line of work. And then a younger woman came in, and the pharmacy staff made a big deal over how much better she looked. I guess she'd been pretty sick. And the guy made a big deal over how he'd had to go into Manhattan to get medicine for her, and then I caught it. There was something special about this conversation. The woman was glowing a little too much, and the staff was shining a little too much light on the guy. And when the couple turned to leave, I saw why: it was Patrick Stewart.

When I told a couple friends, they both responded the same way: "That has to be your blog post for the day!" But I didn't agree. I felt like running into Patrick Stewart in the pharmacy was pure chance, and didn't require anything on my part. I didn't choose to run into him in the pharmacy, and once we were there together, I don't think I learned much from the experience. (Except that three of my queer women friends have big crushes on him.) So I was determined still to do something I'd never done, even though all I felt like doing was going to bed early and hitting the reset button.

One of the 13 mides, (or middot) in Mussar practice is Diligence: Always find something to do. I find this useful when I hit paralysis. Mostly it reminds me that there always IS something to do, and it's not necessarily work. It helps to have a gym nearby, and a big beautiful park. When I got home I checked the gym schedule, and there was a Zumba class listed for 8:30pm. I decided to go. I went early to stretch, and found that the room was already filling up 1/2 hour before class was to start. The crowd was friendly and talkative -- a very different vibe from the serious spinning crowd. I asked them what to expect, and they said, "Just don't worry if you can't follow all the steps." OK, I thought, I can do that.

When the teacher arrived, she apologized in advance for being sluggish. Apparently she was a substitute, and had just been called in after she'd already eaten a big meal. And then she flashed a beautiful smile, and asked if anyone minded starting class 10 minutes early. No-one did, so she put on music, and started teaching us steps -- all showing, no explaining. The room was packed, and so I could neither see her directly, nor could I see her in the mirror. I followed as best as I could, and felt like I was in some kind of a crowded, mime African dance class -- a room full of confused dancers trying not to Zumba on each others' feet. After about 15 minutes, I wasn't clear if we were doing the workout, or still doing the warm-up, but there was a lot of stepping on twisted knees, which didn't feel very good to me. Also, I started to feel claustrophobic -- caught in the middle of a mime dance routine from hell. When that song ended, I grabbed my water bottle, and slipped out to go work out on the elliptical machine, feeling like I had failed Zumba, and failed to do something I had never done. That's when I noticed a woman behind me, who had also slipped out of class. I turned to her, and she said, "I am so angry. I don't know what that was, but it sure as hell wasn't Zumba!"

It was such an interesting moment. This woman was angry, but I felt relieved. I hadn't failed Zumba. I hadn't even taken Zumba! We both went into the cardio machine room, and she got on the treadmill, and I hopped on the elliptical machine (tshuve) and did a hard 30-minute workout and realized that I was going to be writing about Patrick Stewart after all. And then I went home, went to bed, and hit the reset button.