Rabbit Hole—Figure Drawing, Dancing, and the Body

“This is such a meandering stream-of-consciousness about a specific subtopic I went down while analyzing my reading list. So welcome to Rabbit Holes. I discovered via Google that people tend to use "rabbit hole" negatively, but I've always used it in a positive one—whatever mental thread's catching my fancy. No word count limit, just chaotic musings.”

Recently, I've of course been thinking a lot about the body.

I know as a thinker and writer, I can sometimes get stuck in my brain, living in a little dreamland. So over the last few years, I've discovered that my personal key to happiness is to get out of my head and into my body more—whether deepening my sensory experiences and appreciation of the here-and-now (I call it my own form of meditation) or through physical activity and exercise.

It can get really easy to despair over the abstracts of the future, veer into nostalgia for escapism, bury myself in a scroll—and all in all, not be fully in the moment. Time is much less solid than we give it credit for!

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Recently, that’s been reflected in my reading taste too. The books in my appendix have been about a lot of physical and mental limits (or lack thereof.) I’ve been on an existential kick—sue me. Similarly, stories like Good Old Neon have reminded me not to get stuck in my head, and that I tend to be happier when I move past my own circular reasoning.

“'Imagining the future is a kind of nostalgia. — John Green, Looking for Alaska”

In college, my favorite class was figure drawing, and I grew up dancing and playing sports. I didn’t fully realize how my aesthetic appreciation for the body impacted my thinking so much, especially as I've learned more about dopamine, flow states, the identifiers we absorb and those we don't, my personal passion for art's effects on the brain and our well-being, etc,.

Being an Identical Twin Probably Makes Body Awareness Weird

As an identical twin, I probably have a strange POV about my own body. My mom used to plop each of us in front of the mirror as babies and ask us who we were looking at. We’d point to our reflections and say the other one’s name. “Grace!” “Hannah!”

Us! She's my best friend.

I have a weird awareness of what I might look like to outsiders. Personally, I don't think we're meant to know what we look like from the outside. It's not that I have any particular opinion on how Hannah looks to me and thus how I must look to others, but I'm very aware that every other non-identical twin person in the world will never know what they actually must look like as a body moving, sensing, resting, whatever in front of them. Their mannerisms, their angles, everything. On one hand, I don't know what it's like to not have that, but I think every other person goes through reality blind to that.

Nowadays, Hannah and I style ourselves differently—nature vs. nurture and all. I'm more of a maximalist, and she's more classic in style. I went sort-of blonde for a change, and she's still brunette. She keeps her hair shorter and straighter, and I tend to go for long tangled chaos. I'm not sure how much of my lack of desire to ever cut my hair is because I genuinely love my hair long or because it's an easy shorthand for differentiating ourselves.

One of the most unexpected, crystallizing elements of getting my sun tattoo in 2019 was actually that I got strangely sad over the idea that I was choosing to do something that would forever mark me as not-identical to her. I was making a physical change that would always be able to tell us apart. (We have the same DNA. Just on a surface level!) Apparently, that's a psychological shift that a ton of people go through when getting tattoos, just for different reason! You are permanently changing something little.

You can cover up freckles. You can change your hair. We could get the exact same weight and muscle definition, and style ourselves the same. We do our makeup the exact same way because I taught her how to do specific eyes. She used to have me try on clothes for her in the dressing room, and I will sometimes note a specific outfit or look I should try because it looks good on her first. But she's not going to get a sun tattoo on her wrist (she could, idk) and if she did, time and activity would ensure ours faded in subtly different ways.

Hannah's coming to see me in O'ahu this month. She's visited me in town before, but never up here. And I'm very prepared for friends to get thrown for a loop in registering what it's like to have two of us looking so similar. (Just an FYI: I will ruthlessly make fun of any friend who hits on her while she's visiting. She's the coolest and a catch though, so actually—do whatever you want. I will vet you tho.) Whenever someone asks me what it's like being a twin, I always have to answer that I don't know what it's like not being a twin, but it's absolutely (of course) impacted both our trajectories and identities significantly.

Body Changes, Size, and Self-Awareness Over Time

Note: Skip this section if you find conversations about weight, size, and others' perceptions of your body spin you into a bad place. There's no shame in self-awareness and consciousness about what makes you go dark! The brain is unconsciously curating its landscape all the time, and I would hate for my reflections to negatively impact you.

Like I said, I studied art. And I loved figure drawing. So that was one of the first really transformative experiences in impacting how I reflect on my mind/body relationship. (Is this my way of addressing the mind-body problem?)

In figure drawing, our final involved taking a nude of ourselves then drawing a life-sized self-portrait. People are genuinely shocked to hear that, but it’s way less creepy than it sounds. Of course, the photo doesn’t make it to your portfolio. (And even if it did, we had such a distinctive separation between the art and ourselves that it probably would have been fine—everyone in the class was so kind, respectful, and passionate about the class. If not for COVID-19 hitting, we supposedly would have hung them on display in the art building.)

The hardest part of the process was actually taking the reference photo. I like my body, for the record, but it's hard to look at yourself for that long and mentally evaluate which lines and curves you’ll exaggerate for the “idea” of you that forms a drawing’s impact.

Lena in the third Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants book, Girls in Pants (classic coming-of-age), struggles with the self-portrait for the same exploratory reason why a self-portrait is a classic final project within art educations. They teach you how to look and separate out vision / seeing / breaking down elements / conveying the essence of a whole, and then you have to apply all those skills to your own self—and for many reasons, the brain resists this. It's hard to describe if you haven't studied art (or self-taught), but you really do break everything down into lines and shapes rather than having an instinctive modesty reaction.

Introspection and "objective" evaluation is extremely uncomfortable, delusion is good for the soul, and evolutionarily, we're really probably not meant to have an accurate picture of ourselves at all times because we'd be way more sensitive to all our flaws. (Which is why “seeing yourself” as a twin can be so bizarre.)

Emotion steps into your depiction too, whether you plan for it or not. One portrait I did during a speedy, inky session in my 2019 printmaking class unfortunately captures a lot of my brief darkness then. It’s an accurate portrait to how badly I was doing in those few weeks.

Still, the self-portrait process is also a good reminder of how you judge yourself more harshly than others in some ways. For each model, you're never thinking about their figure in terms of moral qualifiers or attractiveness. You might be thrilled by a specific physical attribute that's going to look dynamic on the page. It’s about objective traits; beauty itself is subjective. Drawing my portrait forced me to really look at myself. To be a little less shy and a little more aware of what I like and I don't.

That year was a weird year, physically, actually, because I’d never been so aware of my body before 2019. I'd dropped a ton of weight because of stress, and came back to school to a ton of compliments about my figure, which threw me into a strange self-consciousness.

I was totally fine (and healthy) before and never fully thought about weight before beyond noticing if I was a little softer or defined than my default at a given time. Genetically, I tend towards long and lanky. But my size in 2019 was because I had been going through such a hard time mentally. And then I also got a lot of peace and security from exercise. I hadn’t really thought about my weight until other people expressed thoughts about it to me, for better or for worse.

On that note, it's also just distantly strange to understand how many people will gossip about you or something about you, but never reach out upon noticing you might be in trouble. (From the other side, I empathize: anything eating-related is so very delicate, and seeking help for friends struggling has always been tricky. Maybe it's not my place, but I have tried in the past to help friends with clear EDs, and I do actively try to be helpful to anyone feeling alone if I know about it.) I have been very, very blessed about the people who have reached out, both in 2019 and this year, when dealing with my own size concerns.

Looking back on photos from that period can be a little scary depending on the moment depicted, because I did get very small. What's unfortunate, though, is that those are actually some of the photos I like the best; I'm not sure what that says about me, or whether that's technically mentally healthy, but.

I don't really consider myself a hot person (I don't not think I'm hot either—as someone obsessed with aesthetics and psychology, I just know that attraction is so much about the eye of the beholder and social networks!) but I do know that this the most liked, shared, screenshotted, etc,. photo of me I've ever posted, and I still have friends from college bring it up. This is the photo of me probably. After posting it, I had specific friend groups follow me all at once—one from a fraternity, and another group of girls so I knew it had landed in some group message for dissection, which was just very obvious. (There's a whole separate conversation to be had about how often we screenshot and why.)

Anyway, I was not doing well on the trip when this photo was taken. I'd been mourning my breakup with my best friend of multiple years, hadn't been invited on my sorority's spring break trip (I was kind of a downer at the time, lol), had lost a wild amount of weight in a very short amount of time, was failing at everything I tried because I couldn't focus, generally felt I had no friends on campus...and a lot else. Nowadays, it's a special trip in my memory because one of the friends on it who was cheering me up passed away later that fall.

During that time, I did have friends battling bona-fide eating disorders which caused significant health issues. My weight loss was just because my appetite completely disappeared when I was lonely or when stressed or when I encountered certain people; on a small campus during the thick of my darkest period, that limited my ability to actually finish normal, properly-portioned meals for a while. That, and I was really, really appreciating the role of exercise in my life to make me happy. Not good, for sure, but definitely not conscious.

I taught a lot of dance classes then!! I loved teaching.

Still, that instinct to compliment my size or correlate it strictly to my athleticism made it a little tough once I did gain the weight back later because it suddenly attached confusing judgment to my size. It made me self-conscious in a way I'd never been about my body or size before.

To this day, I maintain that I've never had an eating disorder, but I have been aware of my specific patterns. My appetite really is always the first to go when really anxious or stressed because I'll get really nauseous instead. But now I'm also aware of our cultural tendency to praise weight loss without examining nuanced causes, or how I care more than I did before when my body composition does get softer/changes because of all the comments made to me when at my smallest, etc,.

In June 2024, I was particularly, suddenly lonely (thanks, book!) and dropped some weight, which also dovetailed with taking Adderall daily for ADHD (which has helped me a ton—but you do have to be careful.) I eventually gained some of it back. Also, I have way more muscle than I did in 2019 because I've focused more on strengthening—so it looks and feels different than it did five years ago.

I also realized that sometimes, the loss of appetite is connected to the need to punish myself for not living up to my standards, which I've obviously gotten kinder to myself about. And then as a mechanism to control the feeling of invisibility to others—a subtle and perhaps unconscious way of wanting people to notice how bad I might be feeling without having to say so. It’s not fair to test others, but it is an impulse in myself I’ve noticed sometimes and work to correct. I’m not normally a lonely person (I’m terribly independent), but just really reached the end of my rope for a bit.

In November, I really plummeted mentally again because I was so, so tired of working so hard and plateau-ing. All in all, I’ve lost about 25 pounds over the last few months, but this time, I knew my instincts and how to rewire them. I recently finished Grit and it reminded me that the fear of weakness and actual weakness are not the same thing; failure’s not the problem. It’s how you react to it. Feeling “bad” had nothing to do with how effectively I handled my mental load. I’m very obnoxiously proud of scoring in the 99th percentile for grit, because I know I can genuinely withstand anything and never give up—but more on that in my (eventual) review.

The plan to correct this time: Eat whatever I felt like, even if we’d normally judge it for stupid reasons. I couldn’t eat for a couple days, but told a friend what sounded good and we made it happen. Had whatever I wanted at whatever time of day without worrying too much about routines or usuals. I was transparent about it to others—which I could only do with a good community I knew cared for me—and a doctor prescribed me sleep medication that would boost my appetite (and basically gave me the munchies.)

Admittedly, it was nice over the holidays to just inhale whatever and not fall subject to the usual (terrible, irrational, bad) guilt-laden language we often toss around. On my most recent press trip, I devoured a steak the size of my head and got a round of applause from the table. Still, I’m a little nervous to weigh myself upon return just because nowadays, I'm just more aware.

I like being in shape! It makes me really confident, and I do have an aesthetic appreciation for my genetics allowing physical hard work to appear on my body, which is not the case for everyone. And I'm not sure I can ever fully detach the idea of unseen muscle from visible muscle within my own figure, but for now, I'm okay knowing I'm aware it's a slippery slope. (Also, again, this musing is totally about the mind-body bit for myself, not sociological factors of beauty and size amongst others.)

At camp during orientation, we are so compassionate about our bodies. We're told as counselors to never comment disparagingly about our weight, mirror, appearance, etc,. because the young girls really pick up on it and internalize it. For that reason, camp was a very food-neutral and comfortable place, and I do think that a lot of girls felt very relaxed and at peace with moving, operating normally, focusing on food as fuel because the days were long and you wanted energy to be able to maximize your fun during activities and programming. It felt, to me, like the healthiest possible environment for that.

Within my book MOUNTAIN SOUNDS, I specifically gave one character an eating disorder so I could explore the dynamic within an all-girls' camp, because it's just so common. Many girls you know have probably struggled by default. In fact, I think anorexia might be the number one cause of death still?

excerpt

A lot of our ideas about eating, etc,. are picked up by our families too. It's also really easy for a quest for wellness to turn into an obsession with eating in a way that's tough to discard. (See: The Wellness Trap.)

Similarly, I picked up on a lot of eating-centric and body-centric language while dating a wrestler who was so devoted to and incredible at his sport, because his and his team's sensitivity to each topic were so tied to their ability to excel. I don't necessarily consider it as consciously harmful to me, but I did think more about that correlation when at my skinniest because I wondered if that had subconsciously influenced my new consciousness about it. There's a balance between prioritizing athleticism and tracking, and getting obsessed with optimization, and I'm forever aware of that line as someone hoping to dismantle perfectionism in all "categories" of my lifestyle.

Dysmorphia's a whole other topic outside the parameters of my mind/body problem — I'm speaking more about movement and personal presence, or lack thereof, and how it impacts your perception — but there are phenomenal writers reporting on our morphed beauty standards, the blur of Instagram face, etc,. Also whole separate conversation: visibility, narcissism, how we choose to focus on ourselves vs. the world. This is more just about the line of when you're in your head versus when you're in your body, without a focus on how it affects your focus on and connection to others.

The Self-Portrait Is the Classic Art Final

For our figure drawing final—which sparked a lot of these reflections, of course—we each took a specific angle in our work, and of course, shrouded ourselves appropriately.

I made myself into the winged Nike of Samothrace, which has always been so gorgeous to me. Nike is the goddess of victory, but I’ve always loved the beheaded statue for its romantic, Hellenistic detail. Plus, I’ve always loved Greek mythology.

Of course, I left my head on. But I gave myself wings. I set out all the materials across my floor. I attempted to bolster myself to take the nude (tripod, gulping swallows of wine—believe it or not, not something I’d done before!) and thanked my lucky stars that my roommates were not around. At any given time, my legs were covered in charcoal and ink and artist tape.

When COVID canceled school, we had 24 hours to go to the art studios and get all our supplies. I remember being teary on my professor’s couch and how visiting the art building was my hardest campus goodbye. (I got to visit in spring 2024 and it was so bittersweet.) Even then, I didn’t retrieve everything; there’s absolutely a sketchbook of mine floating around the studio, one of the many remnants of previous students, and the signature feels like the emotional equivalent of signing a bunk bed at a summer camp. I loved that class, and those people, and the studio, and that’s informed so much of my creativity post-grad.

(My figure drawing class actually reunited when living in Manhattan for a session at Happy Medium Art Cafe (which is such a lovely venue) and it was so special. For one, it was such a tribute to the atmosphere of our college, how welcoming the class was, and how tight our arts program—across studio art, art history, you name it—was. Everyone was so grateful and welcoming, and I still feel so close to everyone I took drawing with. Similarly, I'm actually tinkering with a satire project with one friend from drawing, which got me out of my comfort zone creatively!)

Of course, nobody ever saw the reference photo. I took a tip from a photographer friend I’d modeled for and pulled up a YouTube video of constant red light, which softens the overall effect.

During that year, I spent a lot of time being photographed in portraits, whereas normally I'm the one behind the camera; I started viewing being a subject as something necessary for the art too. It did make me realize that a lot of body awareness and perceived attractiveness are entirely about angles: how you saw yourself, you presented yourself visibly based on that, and then also how you presented yourself to others in a network. I’m really fond of a lot of the energy I’m radiating throughout a lot of those portraits.

Photo Credit / Lexi Priest

I haven’t really “modeled” like that since 2020, but loved the depiction of it. I tried to look up figure drawing opportunities on island, but haven’t encountered any. I’m not sure what ever happened to that final portrait—and technically, it was made of many different pieces of paper, so I think I disassembled it and stuffed it in a closet somewhere—but it was a good exercise, and one I appreciated. It did change the way I thought about myself and my externalization. Oh God, the horror of being perceived!

Still, which traits do you allow to be visible? Which ones do you think are most “you”?

Dancing Serves a Very Similar Function for Me

For me, dancing has always been another activity affecting my self-awareness and thoughts of my body versus mind.

Physically and psychologically, there are lots of reasons why dancing is good for us. It’s a glue for social cohesion (which is why it’s a mechanism for cult recruiting á la Cultish), it’s a flow state you can get a little lost in, it’s personalizable and constantly dynamic, etc,. When I’m in a dance class, I am so totally gone. I am not thinking of anything outside of it.

Before becoming a dancer so thoroughly, I wouldn't have registered or appreciated how the same choreography looks different on different bodies by default, and how that changes and intensifies even further based on creative choices and vocabularies that each person uses to develop their musicality, land "in the pocket", and emphasize a certain interpretation of each routine. Every artist is different, and so every dance is different. And then in certain domains—like in concerts and music videos—synchronicity is crucial and its own polished skill. Amazing.

And dancing is one of those pursuits in which you can visibly see time as its own ingredient in the development of someone's talent. You can see how the same motion has developed over months of perfection, even if it's as simple as the fluidity of a shoulder rolling during a specific type of musical phrase. You can see the speed of their listening, and I just think that’s absolutely gorgeous. In reading Grit, there's a whole conversation/chapter on how mastery means seeing nuance as novelty rather than always chasing novelty in larger items, and how that feeds expertise. What a stunning idea, and one that defines me as a person, but that's a conversation for that book too. I can get into the details of anything because I will never stop being so curious about how to deepen your experience and understanding of things, ideas, places, people...

I only recently made the connection between figure-drawing and dancing too. Dancers spend a lot of time in front of the mirror. There’s a vocabulary of lines and expression and texture. It reminds me that not all forms of thinking are verbal. Maybe the twin spatiality helps here too—understanding that how it looks to others and how it feels to you are both crucial ingredients in what the dancing is saying. Plus, you know, endorphins.

Getting Back into Dancing

When I sat down to write about this today, it was mostly because I was mulling over my love for dancing and how much I miss it.

I should have gotten into it more when in NYC. I had no excuse, really. When I lived in town (Honolulu), it didn't have the vibrant studio culture it has now. So it's a little unfortunate that I moved an hour away right when dance studios started really beefing up their communities and schedule offerings.

Nowadays, I get tired thinking about rush hour traffic, or am still working at home by the time I should leave. Or most dance classes I want to go tend to be scheduled later in the evenings—say 8 p.m. or so—so I know that by the time I go for an hour-plus, wrap, drive home, shower, refuel, and wind-down, it'll probably be midnight and I'll still be buzzing with adrenaline and tanking my preferred morning-person work schedule. The book came first for a long time.

Right now, there are a few studios on-island that I love (or love the idea of):

• fam.ily in Honolulu — so welcoming, amazing with femme and jazz funk, which is my preferred.
• Danceforce 24/7 in Kaneohe — produces the most incredible dancers in all styles. If you’ve seen a Hawai’ian dancer on the mainland, they probably trained here.
• Hawaii Ballet in Honolulu — obviously best at ballet, but I think I'd probably prefer to join a studio that would also allow me to build a community among plenty of styles.

When I lived on island in 2021, I went and took a class at Treasure Box in Mililani which has since closed down. A lot of dancers on-island seem to be studio-agnostic, meaning they're running around to different areas of the island depending on who's teaching and what the choreography is. I'll still definitely pick based on the song and the movement, but have been a little shy and tired about fully immersing myself in the scene. I need to!

If you scroll very far down on Instagram, there is a video of me dancing to 'Pony' — but I had no idea it was from Magic Mike, promise!

Previously, here are a few studios I've danced at:

• New Level Dance Company in Tampa — the formation of my teen experience
• Millennium Dance Complex in Nashville — the first studio "in adulthood" that immersed me in the new styles and vocabulary of modern dance, and sparked the obsession. I never lived in Nashville, but I feel like I made friends here and really started to understand my personal style.
• Millenium Dance Complex in LA — the OG for dance videos. Try to keep up.
• Playground LA in LA— similar, cult-favorite. I love the emphasis on heels, femme, and hip hop.
• Underground Dance Centre in Toronto — like the Nashville location of Millennium, the perfect size combining offering, community, variation, etc,. I try to take a class here every summer.
• Broadway Dance Center in Manhattan — Similarly, I try to pop in here when in the city because it's such a hub. But usually, I'm just in the city for a day or two and have a packed schedule! May break my neck in a Miles Keeney class.

My love for figure drawing and dancing aren't exactly surprising, in combination. It pulls from the same appreciation for aesthetics, the same sensory awareness and curiosity about when you're in your mind vs. your body.

The summer I spent dancing was also the summer I started being the subject in photographer friends' photos.

“Valuing interior experience is vital to developing a sense of self, and how we reveal ourselves to the outside world has everything to do with how we stay out of view when we need to. — How to Disappear by Akiko Busch”

Credit / Lexi Priest

It was really good for me to see a different visual side of myself, to see a personality come across that wasn't necessarily visible in-person unless someone knew me really well.

It’s not like those photos were isolated. They were one of many factors that changed my personality and how I saw myself that year. (Another is the labels I gave myself, but that’s another topic for Drunk Tank Pink and labeling—I’ll touch on it below in calling myself “dancer” or not.) I don’t necessarily like the idea that people can decide to be better or worse to you depending on how cool or not they think your identifier is, but whatever.

But it was strange to return to campus in fall 2019 and see a distinctive difference in how people treated me. My levels of personality had always been there, but a different side of myself was on display, and that awareness also helped me be more conscious about shifting into a different version of myself when I noticed the shy, introspective self weighing me down at a given time. I got more confident in everything—my style, my attitude, my ability.

Meant for the 2024 wrap-up post, but whatever: this year, I've been thinking a lot about how I've gotten way, way, way more comfortable with people getting me wrong. Not everyone will know you, try to, or give you a fair shot in expressing yourself, but their limited understanding is not my problem. But this was one of my first "reveals" of sorts that illuminated that for me.

Similarly, if I'm being honest, my personal fashion style is probably a little promiscuous—likely thanks to dancing and figure drawing too! I like to dance, prefer not to get too warm (especially in Hawai'i), and just like that that body-conscious clothing boosts my confidence. It's more about an aesthetic appreciation for my personal styling rather than some end point to the night (because I will still go home alone at the end of the night. Not a take-home-the-stranger kind of girl, unfortunately!) Being comfortable with my body doesn’t affect my desire to share it. The two choices have nothing to do with each other. A conversation with my mother:

MOM: Can you send me a picture of your Halloween costume?

ME: I'm going to be honest—it was pretty slutty.

MOM: (Sighs.) I wish you wouldn't.

Whoops!

It also drives me batty when comments on a dance video relate to someone revealing their body or not, because when dancers are stripping down, it's not for the viewer; it's because you've been running a cardio-heavy routine nonstop for ninety minutes in a crowded room, are breathless and dripping sweat, and the choreographer doesn't even give you ten seconds before replaying the song because the best way to learn and internalize your choreography is just to keep doing it and force your body to remember what to do unconsciously, without the assistance of your memory. It's forcible and feels almost violent, but it works. At the end of a class, I am gross and red and shaky.

Some people use dancing or figure drawing as a way to process their own sexual identity (which is sort of the plot of Girls in Pants or the Ready or Not sequel by Meg Cabot) but for me, my body awareness is purely aesthetic. I will never ever talk about sexuality in anything other than an academic sense on the Internet, but props to people who do. Certain domains of mine will always, always, always be private. Again, that's sort of a separate interpretation of this type of aesthetic body freedom.

I also think it led me to being way more comfortable in my own skin! I could tell you exactly what right now what my least favorite physical traits are about myself and not really feel it impact me or my confidence because I've seen how—through drawing—traits can be sort of flattened into an emotionless presentation of aesthetic features.

Being in-my-body, and being aware of it, was actually a really good thing in shifting from being too in-my-head to zooming out and snapping past it. It's prime for self-reflection amidst the flow. You're embodied in yourself and your body, yeah—but you're lost in the group and the movement and the music, which is so beautiful. So dancing, for me, is probably the most resonant of so-called here-and-now activities that makes me feel both connected and individually significant. It's not the hobby I'm best at, but it just might be my favorite?

I’ll write about this specifically in my The Molecule of More review, but the book itself was life-changing for me in understanding why I’ve championed “sensory variation” (in the book: here-and-now processing) as being so transformative to my happiness and well-being and sense of self.

The quick and dirty summary is that dopamine is the wanting transmitter. It tells you to want more and not be satisfied. When you win or reach the highest level, dopamine tells your brain that’s not good enough. You get trapped within the structure, even. You even become more afraid of loss and more sensitive to time, which is why "winning" sometimes doesn't feel good. I knew my philosophy on sensory detail long before I knew the why, but I clearly understand why my dancing mode makes me better at detaching from outcomes and has helped me be more at peace with letting everything unfold and being more “in the moment” both in class and outside of it.

As I enter 2025, I’m most afraid of being fixated on the outcome of wanting a book deal. That's literally why I started therapy and had all these separate, related revelations about who I am and how I operate. I told them I was afraid of getting a Pyhrric victory and wanted to do whatever I could to stop basing myself so much on (obnoxious to say) achieving excellence.

I think I’ve done so much work on this and have gotten so much stronger—and if it doesn’t happen, I’ll write my next and do it again, hopefully in less time—but I needed the realizations of 2024 to prepare me for embracing uncertainty. I’ve always been resilient, but now I have the mechanisms to be gritty while also being happier about it too. I fundamentally believe that I can and will do and achieve whatever I want, no matter how long it takes, but I also want to relish the process a little more.

Before ballet in Paris.

So in 2025, I absolutely need to make dancing in a studio again a priority. In Paris, I bought a new leotard and tights for ballet class (my last new leo was purchased maybe in 8th grade) and got excited about layering up and getting better posture again. I've resigned myself to going to Honolulu or Kaneohe on certain evenings for class instead of oh-so-lovingly staying on the North Shore during most of the workweek.

Breaking! Girl Actually Wears Heels to Heels Class!

And I don’t have to just do studios, either. There’s line-dancing in Aiea, salsa classes in Pupukea, hula in Waialua, and dance floors to boot. (I think every friend who’s seen me lose my mind on a dance floor would attest that I become an entirely different person, visibly. Depending on how good the DJ is. I’m thriving, even if I look like an idiot. Completely different skill than choreography, and even then, I'm not phenomenal at that either.)

For safety, I won't share my exact schedule, but I have certain classes I know I'll head to on certain nights. For at least January, I’m making the commitment to go and show up and become a literal, active dancer again now that I have the time to again. And also, I need to start calling myself a dancer again. Not an ex-dancer. Plus, endorphins, catharsis, confidence, etc,.

Side note: it’s cool to see how much I process indirectly via books, and dancing for me serves a similar function.

The Writing Tie-In: Need to 'Know What It Feels Like' While Observing an Activity—Method Writing, etc,.

Studies show that we're more activated by videos of activities we ourselves know, which is why previous athletes can be better commentators than experts who never played the sport in question. Knowing how the activity feels is crucial (and more accurate in prediction) according to The Mind in Motion.

That’s also why I'm very persistent on needing to do certain activities or undergo specific experiences in order to write about them.

My book research very much involves me literally putting myself in my characters' shoes, and for that reason, I do think I absorb certain qualities of my narrators (I write in first-person and probably will forever unless I want to challenge my comfort zone) when immersed in their story.

For that reason, each of my passions or focuses — journalism, reading, authorship, hobbies, traveling, aesthetics — feeds and intensifies every other. Like in acting, I'm a method writer.

While writing Tatum, I was more introverted and nostagic. While writing Blair (the narrator of SUN GUILT), I know I'm a little bolder and in-the-moment. Of course, there's a gradient here in effect when you take on identification with a personality trait or role or label. (See: Me, Myself, and Us—and I really will write about self-identification soon.)

We’re malleable and porous, constantly changing and shifting within the boundaries on the self based on who we’re around, what we’re exposed to, etc,. Which is partly why I’m so passionate about aesthetics and their impact.

When dancing, I'm taking on some personality of the song. You're absorbing the movement and the song and the meaning, and pulling out the aesthetic to build out an entire experience—for you and the viewer. (Oh, and getting into an analysis of how dancers dress for specific classes based on genre is so rich and fabulous and perfect. Sociologically, dance studios are hubs and microcosms of culture. My wardrobe definitely changes depending on the style/song/vibe, and personalizing my look genuinely makes me a better dancer during class. Sort of a form of manifesting. Dancing meshes multiple senses, which is partly why we love it so much on an evolutionary level.)

In my opinion, writing is largely the ability to absorb and observe reality (a favorite, curiosity, an endless hunger for learning) plus the ability to organize and translate your thoughts and insights about them. Two separate but significant skills to what makes a writer "good." You then exaggerate, style, and shape accordingly for the aesthetic effect (and therefore, emotional resonance) you want, whether consciously or unconsciously. It’s both universal, and specific to each individual. A similar process to dancing, for sure. I am a good writer or dancer because I'm fundamentally observant and curious, and then the formatting and translation is where the high standards of skill development and execution kicks in most.

All in all, I've gotten a lot of my fix by the thrill of watching dance videos again. I can imagine myself in their shoes. I can admire the choices they're making in improvisation. Whenever I'm on a long walk in my neighborhood, I'm literally just listening to dance music and daydreaming that I'm in a routine. (If you ever see me and my hands are twitching, it's because I can't stop myself from marking choreography as I walk.) Often, I'll catch myself absentmindedly ron de jambe-ing in the kitchen just in the midst of cleaning or cooking or talking with others.

It's still built into me, somehow. Now to go back to channeling it.

Some Favorite Dance Videos I Go Back to Often

I definitely plan on writing about my 2024 Spotify Wrapped—and there are so many dance-related songs on there—so won’t get into it too much, but some favorite dance videos of late that can spur your own rabbit hole. I'll vary in whether I'm obsessing over contemporary, hip hop, heels/femme/jazz funk (what I'm best at), ballet, etc,.

PS. I’m asking my developer to install footnotes (and video embeds, at some point) so I can more effectively link the studies and books I’m talking about as they appear, so I’m about to go ham. But I hope this peek into my brain was at least interesting, albeit messy. Like I said, I don't really edit at WLS. It's just me chatting and synthesizing my reading/living and loving it.

For now, here's a highlight of some favorites.

Some of the Related Pictures & Notes I Love

I'll have to do a separate post with some of my favorite figure drawing pieces from my portfolio!

Chaotic watercolor bleeds.

Pretty sure I captioned this 'happy little dancing bean' in 2019

A picture of Hannah I love.

dance floor moment