Dreams

(photo via A Ballet Blog)

The other evening, some colleagues and I reminisced over our aspirations in younger years and our fall back careers if we ever decided to quit the day jobs. On my truly awful days (which are rare and few as I do love my work), I'm tempted to fill my time as a barista slash florist. That job exists, right? Though, if I were granted a genie and  a wish, I would ask for the talent of a prima ballerina. Growing up, I religiously took ballet classes and other varieties of dance. Since I didn't want to spend hours and hours in the studio every evening, I begrudgingly decided to stop taking classes, but I still think about it everyday and opt for occasional classes and attending performances. But, sometimes we have to make these decisions. One of my favorite passages from Sylvia Plath's The Bell Jar says it best:

“I saw my life branching out before me like the green fig tree in the story. From the tip of every branch, like a fat purple fig, a wonderful future beckoned and winked. One fig was a husband and a happy home and children, and another fig was a famous poet and another fig was a brilliant professor, and another fig was Ee Gee, the amazing editor, and another fig was Europe and Africa and South America, and another fig was Constantin and Socrates and Attila and a pack of other lovers with queer names and offbeat professions, and another fig was an Olympic lady crew champion, and beyond and above these figs were many more figs I couldn't quite make out. I saw myself sitting in the crotch of this fig tree, starving to death, just because I couldn't make up my mind which of the figs I would choose. I wanted each and every one of them, but choosing one meant losing all the rest, and, as I sat there, unable to decide, the figs began to wrinkle and go black, and, one by one, they plopped to the ground at my feet.” 


P.S. Have you heard of the ballet documentary First Position? Beyond excited to see it.