Over the last few weeks, I've started taking a Zumba class at my local community center. Several of my friends had said that they enjoyed Zumba, and I thought it would be fun to try. So I went. It's really fun, actually, despite the fact that I look like I'm re-enacting that scene in Date Night when Tina Fey and Steve Carrell do the robot dance when in fact I'm really doing the cha-cha.

Gracefulness has never been my strong point.  I can follow along. I can keep up.  But I'm not very skilled at the intricacies of the movies. I'm just...not.

So I'm following the instructor* and trying to figure out exactly what she's doing with her fancy footwork, and I kept getting frustrated for my first two classes. I couldn't get my feet and legs to move that fast. So I just hopped and trotted and jumped in combinations that I hoped resembled what the teacher was doing, and then soon enough we would be back to a section that involved walking or the grapevine, and I was all good.

When I went the other day, I finally figured out what my problem was.  I was making the moves way more complicated than they really were.  The instructor wasn't actually stepping, just sort of shifting her weight from foot to foot. And there weren't three little jumps, just two, and so on. I was getting angry and frustrated at my inability to keep up with all of the steps, when in actuality, I was keeping up. I was just overcomplicating things rather dramatically.

It's pretty much a metaphor for my life. I make things way more complicated in my head than they actually are in reality. I'll grant that some of this is what I call the ignorance of the newbie: all the moves look really complicated because I haven't mastered them yet. But often, whether it was when I was still in school or working at the bakery, I had an alarming talent for taking a simple task and making it really difficult. Then I would get stuck in that horrible cycle of berating and blaming myself for an inability to do a simple task, which slowed me down further, which made me hate myself even more.

I need to remind myself that most things aren't all that complicated. They might seem that way at first, but once I get going, I need to remember that things also get easier. That if I can quell my initial panic that I suck and I'm in over my head and I'm never going to be any good and holy crap, do I suck!, then I can see more clearly exactly what I need to do.

Of course, it's much easier to identify these things in a relatively meaningless dance class than in more important things like career and recovery, but I guess it's a start.

*The instructor this week was a sub--it was the male yoga teacher. His style was totally different, although the class was still good. It was, however, a total blow to my minimal self-esteem to see a large, hairy male be far more light and graceful on his feet than me. Sigh.