Choresonasynphoria: The Camp Hollywood High

Camp Hollywood 2026 just wrapped up, and I am still feeling the high - and the muscle soreness - of it! I thought this was my fourth Camp Hollywood, until a vague recollection surfaced in my brain to remind me that I sort of participated in the virtual Camp Hollywood during the COVID pandemic in 2020, in our tiny ass condo in San Diego. So I guess I can claim this was my fifth one! But the virtual one does not compare - the in-person event is so good, and I already have my tickets for next year's event. 

Quality AND Quantity

I'm not sure if there is an official record of attendees; I imagine it's hard to track because some people will get full weekend passes but not attend many or any classes, and some people may show up for individual dances multiple times. But based on the group photo and data around the number of passes sold, I used my favorite AI chatbot, Gemini, to estimate that there are probably 600 to 1000 active students during the days, spread across 4 to 5 concurrent workshop tracks, and the evening dances (five in total, although the first and last are more sparsely attended) might get as high as 1500+ attendees, with 800 to 1000 people in the main ballroom for dancing at any given time. 

What's more, these dancers are top notch, for the most part. There are beginners to be sure, but many of the best dances I've had have been here at Camp Hollywood. In thinking about it, I related to a sort of dance roulette. There are so many people at the event who you may not have met or seen before, and you have no idea if they are any good. I know sometimes people watch others dance to decide who they want to dance with next, but I think, more often than not, both partners are going in blind, unsure of the others' skill level or abilities, and you just go for it. This requires rapidly learning each other's style and connection and trying to match the energy and styling while also learning to lead or follow with this connection on the fly. And the cool part is that, at least where I'm at now with my ability, it usually works out pretty well and turns into an awesome dance. Like a happy accident, but intentional. It's hard to describe. And there's also a little bit of finality to it, or to borrow a Japanese term I've recently leaned into a bit, "mono no aware" which is about the beautiful sadness of impermanence. In other words, you might have the dance of a lifetime with some random partner, and never see them again or dance with them again. Or, as luck has it sometimes, you see them next on the competition floor, absolutely blowing everyone's minds, and you get a boost of confidence knowing you danced with that top tier competitor.  

The instructors come from all over the world and are some of the best! From legendary pioneers of the Savoy Ballroom days to young, energetic superstars transforming the art form, they are all terrific and bring a lot of variety and interest to the classes. Many of the top dancers and CH veterans I talk to don't take the classes anymore and even sometimes advise against it. That's a shame in my perspective, although I understand the viewpoints based on some of the previous experiences. But for what it's worth, Camp Hollywood seemed to have stepped up the classes a lot in 2026. When I plan my schedule (on my TripIt app - I've been told more than once this weekend how Type A I am), I usually select an option 1 and option 2 class, and sometimes an option 3, so that I can bounce to another class if the one I started isn't doing it for me. I did no bouncing this year. I did choose to sit out and watch for part of a class, from sheer exhaustion and preservation of energy for the upcoming events, but every class I chose as my first option was so engaging and inspiring and all the things, I couldn't help myself. Honestly, well done, CH instructors and organizers! The classes were really well done this year! 

A Study in Happiness, Joy and Fulfillment

I do a lot of reading and considering concepts around happiness, and the intersection of physical health and mental well being. Specifically, I've been learning and practicing shinrin-yoku (forest bathing) of Japan, and hygge from Denmark. 

I think it's especially interesting to study the Danes' way of life, political and economic factors, and their philosophies like hygge, as well as those of the other Scandinavian countries, because they rank so highly on the world happiness studies consistently. From the perspective of an outsider looking in, one might wonder if they're delusional - they suffer terribly cold winters in almost absolute darkness, not seeing the sun for days potentially, have lost every war they've ever fought in, and aren't as productive as, say, the UK or Japan or US. By traditional American benchmarks—constant productivity, hustle, and economic output—they might appear to be underperforming. Yet their robust social safety net provides a baseline security that fosters genuine peace of mind, freeing people from the chronic survival anxieties that keep so many Americans trapped in exhausting circumstances. And their embracing the winter cold by building this hygge philosophy is a way to make lemonade out of lemons. 

Yet the one aspect that I don't like about hygge is that it requires the contrast in order to be most hygge. The example at the beginning of The Little Book of Hygge is a group of friends sitting around drinking hot drinks, and the comment was that it would be more hygge if there was a bad storm outside. Later, when the book talks about Christmas preparations, it says that the burden of hosting a holiday puts pressure and stresses people out leading up to the holiday, at which time a verbal confirmation of hygge is a final relief valve of all that stress. I love the holidays and I don't see why holiday preparations can't be joyful and must be stressful. It seems to me that life will hand us enough negatives naturally; minimizing the negatives within our control shouldn't detract from the positive impact of the highs. 

So coming off the high from Camp Hollywood, I wanted to try to capture what makes this event so special, at least for me. Much like, Las Vegas, New York City, and Disneyland, what you get out of Camp Hollywood is personal depending on what you want to get out of it. CH veterans will advise newcomers not to try to do everything because, while it's not impossible to try to do everything, it is at the physical limits of human beings to go hard the whole time you can. And actually, because there are often multiple interesting classes happening at once, it is impossible to do all the things. 

What struck me last year is that this even is so full of joy, it's like a bubble of positivity, a sanctuary for the love of dance, away from the world of crappy politics, work stress, and the challenges of adulting and doing life. I've searched for a word or phrase that describes this specific feeling, and couldn't find something that fit well, so I'm coining my own term. Based on the title of the blog, you've probably guessed it: Choresonasynphoria. 

I workshopped this with Gemini because I wanted to fully encapsulate the feeling, and while I wished it was a little more concise, brevity has never been a strength of mine, and I think the particles are necessary to get my full meaning. So what's it mean? I started with the feeling I get at Camp Hollywood of unbridled joy resulting from a love of dance. The dance is the joy and the love of dancing for the sake of dancing itself is the point. But it's not just when I'm dancing that I have this feeling. It's being in the room where it happens (wink wink). It's the possibility and opportunity to dance, but also in sharing the love of the dance with others, even without participating in that moment. It's a togetherness, and a joy, and a contagion, all based on dance. It's not the dance itself, the dance is the means. 

So weaved into this one word are four parts: 

• Choreo- (Ancient Greek choreia): The art and spirit of dance. It is active. It can be technically and physically challenging. It is beautiful. So few things in life are all of these things, and those who dance have a love and appreciation for it because of what it is. 

• -resona- (Latin resonare): To echo, ring back, and amplify through a space. This is the contagious nature of the joy and love of dance. 

• -syn- (Ancient Greek -syn-): Together, in unison, united as a community. The swing dance community has always surprised me by how welcoming it is. When having to move to Texas under duress, I found comfort when I found a swing dance community there. 

• -phoria (Ancient Greek phoros/euphoria): Carrying a deep, transcendent state of joy. The pre-existing word I found closest to the feeling of joy I wanted to describe was Eudaimonia from Ancient Greek; Aristotle used the term to describe a deeper state of human flourishing and peak fulfillment. It is the joy that arises from actively engaging your skills, expressing virtue or artistry, and living fully in alignment with what brings you vitality. It's a little like the modern concepts of flow or being in the zone. I thought this was true, but it didn't have the community and contagious effects I also feel, so I wanted to incorporate part of the word while adding those other elements to it. 

A Happiness Spectrum

Writing with the assistance of AI chatbots can be really insightful, and I want to share a question and answer directly, because I thought it was really good. I've been reading and trying to practice and embrace concepts from shinrin-yoku and hygge recently, but was also reminded of the spirit of aloha and Costa Rica's philosophy of pura vida. It struck me that there are some common threads in human anthropology: an underlying drive to anchor ourselves in presence, cultivate gratitude and honor the light precisely because we know the dark exists. Other concepts include Norway's friluftsliv ("free air life"), Japan's wabi-sabi ("imperfection and transience"), ubuntu of Southern Africa, and Finland's sisu. Anyways, the question Gemini asked me was: 

"Hygge is inherently about shelter and sanctuary (retreating indoors from harsh weather or stress), whereas Aloha and Pura Vida are about flow and connection with your surroundings. Where does Choresonasynphoria land on that spectrum—is it an escape from the world, or an exuberant engagement with it?" 

I found this a deeply interesting question with no obvious answer. Instead, I thought about A Wrinkle in Time and imagined folding the proposed spectrum so that both ends meet. My answer, then, was that if the spectrum is sanctuary on one end and flow and connection on the other end, Choresonasynphoria is not in between, it's the extreme of both. The spectrum folds in on itself and it's the best on both extremes. Choresonasynphoria refutes the idea that stress-free sanctuary and high-energy connection are opposites. Like a fold in space time, it brings both extremes together: you are simultaneously in an intense, high-cardio, high-engagement flow and wrapped in a profound sense of communal sanctuary, in a bubble of joy deflecting the outside stressors of life. 

Can You Feel It?

The physical manifestation of Choresonasynphoria, for me, is the soreness in my cheeks. My face physically hurts from smiling so much, and maybe laughing, and sometimes even crying tears of joy and appreciation. The workout of the dance is felt in my feet, knees, quads, calves, glutes (the other cheeks), back, shoulders, neck and arms. The hands and the head may be the only parts of the body that are largely exempt from the physical repercussions of dancing for 50+ hours over the course of 5 days. But the cheeks hurt not because of the dance, but because of the joy, because of the Choresonasynphoria. 

And the joy isn't just from the dance. It's from the community, the togetherness, the fun, the creativity. I love a good theme party, and Camp Hollywood delivers themes in spades. Every year, we are encouraged to embody four themes, which change every year. The Barbie theme from a couple years ago was hilarious because every pink-clad woman greeted one another with, "Hey Barbie!" with a responding, "Hey Barbie!" in return. It never got old. 

This year, both the Star Trek and the Muppets theme nights brought out some very creative interpretations. Since we generally want to be able to dance, full on costumes are usually not ideal, so seeing what people came up with holds entertaining value of its own. 

Stepping up my CH theme game even more this year, I worked really hard on my outfit for the office theme. The official description on the website said, "Tonight we’re back to work at The Office – wear your executive or secretarial gear to dance…" Since I despise the show referenced, I leaned into my infatuation with office supplies (I can't explain why, but I'm like a kid in the candy store when I'm in the office supply aisle or store). I designed a custom repeating pattern on a vintage mint green background, layering paperclips, retro staplers, rolodexes, rotary phones with coiled cords, and classic typewriters. Having no luck finding a seamstress to construct it, I dove headfirst into a sewing challenge that far exceeded my skill level. The end product wasn't boutique-ready, but I was damn proud of it—and even more thrilled to spot another dancer wearing a skirt made from one of my original fabric designs!

And while I love dancing with both old friends and complete strangers, and winning dancer roulette so frequently, taking a break and watching the dancing is just as joyful for me. I think anyone, even without a lot of dance knowledge, can appreciate the spectacle and feel the infectious energy of the dancers and the audience. But there's also a deeper level of appreciation that comes from learning the vocabulary of the dance moves and recognizing when people execute them well or remix them in a surprising way. There are layers of joy in both the dancing and the watching. 

Do It Anyways

When the dancing was all over, I started my recovery with a dip in the hot tub Tuesday morning. I ended up in a deeply engaging conversation with a dancer from New York who dubbed my philosophies a "hot tub TED talk," to my great amusement. He said something, though, that deeply resonated with me because it stirred up something I may have been trying to ignore or overlook: that this event can be a bit cliquey at times. I definitely find this to be true, and maybe I assumed I felt alone in this thinking, which in hindsight is obviously absurd. 

Despite having many people I consider friends coming to the event from California and Arizona, and even some from Texas and elsewhere, I am not so close with them that I am part of their group when making plans or finding roommates. There are benefits of having my own room, to be sure, but the result is that I am often eating alone or feeling like I am imposing on a group's meal. I know I have a tendency to feel ostracized even when it's not intentional, and I love the swing dance community for so rarely creating the feeling of intentional exclusion. But it's not perfect, and I suppose I try to ignore this in order to glorify the event with the level of joy I feel. His comment awakened this reality I had been refusing to acknowledge. 

Nevertheless, I think the point is to not let that stop you. The fear of entry may be high, but it's mostly self-imposed. You can test out waters until you find your people, and I hope you never feel outright picked on in this community. The cliques are real, but they are minor noise compared to the signal of the dance and the fun and the joy. And that joy can be accessed by anyone willing to step by the fear of entry. 

Choresonasynphoria in Daily Life

One book's messaging has stuck with me for a long time; it was Alex Pang's Rest, and part of it talked about good rest not being a couch potato vegging and binge watching TV, but that active activities that engage the body and brain differently than your normal work is more restorative and activates different parts of the brain. Swing dancing, for me, is both a cardio workout but it's also a restorative rest in that it requires a different kind of brain power and learning, and also brings people together for (generally positive) socializing. Almost all studies about happiness and aging well point to relationships with people as a strong contributing factor, and while the relationships formed in swing dance may not be the strongest, they are a different kind of relationship that enriches a life well lived. 

And while it is not sustainable for most of us to go Camp Hollywood-hard all the time, we also don't have to wait a year to experience Choresonasynphoria. Joining dance troupes, practicing a solo jazz routine like Shim Sham or Tranky Doo in a class or group, or just going out dancing regularly can give us doses of the joy throughout the year and give us an active respite from the drama and stress of life. 

Touch Water

The kids these days say they need to "touch grass" which is a new fangled way of saying what ancient people knew - that there is something special, even magical, about getting into nature and experiencing the beauty of plants and animals and landscapes.

I'm deathly allergic to many plants, and especially grass, so touch grass doesn't resonate with me. But when I see an ocean, I can't wait to get my feet into it. I love swimming and snorkeling, too, and boating and cruising, but even if I am without a swimsuit, I am lured to the waters edge to get my feet in, at least. That's my version of touch grass. 

Unfortunately there's not a lot of ocean in Texas, and zero near Fort Worth. So escaping to Hawaii is always a desire, despite the long flight and expense (and I tend to make the latter worse to ease the former vis-a-vis upgrading to first class for the trip). 

I arrived last night on an island new to me - Kauai. It had been my goal to get here ever since I learned I could take a helicopter tour to the waterfalls in Jurassic Park, and I booked the trip while on my solo writing and research trip on Astoria, Oregon, as a way to keep the independent sovereign vibes going. Work has been incredibly busy and stressful on a more personal level - dealing with personnel issues and BS office politics,my least favorite hassles, and this trip couldn't come soon enough. Disconnecting and decompressing is often a struggle for me, and it is especially true today. The trip here was longer than it needed to be due to delays, and it honestly wore me out, although I did manage to read in entirety two books by Andrew Yang! 

After stopping at Target near the airport and then making the trek to the hotel that took close to an hour, during which my energy hit a wall, I crashed hard in bed last night. This morning, I woke up with the threat of a migraine, and the Sunday brunch at the hotel restaurant sounded like exactly what I needed to recharge. I don't usually eat a big breakfast but since I hadn't eaten in several hours before bed last night, I was famished. 

 

While getting ready, I caught a glimpse out my window of two Nene's waddling across my patio. I grabbed my phone and rushed to the door to take a few photos of these rare, endangered birds found only here in Hawaii. A tuxedo cat also graced my patio. Turns out, I needn't have hurried because the Nene's population has apparently made a strong comeback due to the protections put in place for them and they were all over the hotel property! As I ate breakfast on the lanai, several nenes were hanging out by the pool and a mama chicken and her little chicks were wandering around the lanai hunting for charity from the guests. A red-headed cardinal daringly landed on my table and would have eaten right off my plate had I not shooed him away just inches before he got it. He snagged some eggs from the guest at the table next to me, which attracted a flutter of birds. Meanwhile, I watched with amusement as a staff member took a couple pictures of the crowd of Nenes bathing in the pool before attempting to shepherd them away. He got a bunch of them through the beach loungers, towards the open grassy field, before they darted around the chairs and escaped back towards the pool. He quickly turned around and met them on the other side, trying to get between them and the pool, but one by one, they bravely ran past him and he had to start all over again. 

As I paid my bill, I noticed it was time for the feeding at the koi pond, so I found a cozy spot on a beach lounger overlooking the pond and watched as the kids fed the fish for a few minutes. I walked around the hotel property and tried to make it to the beach proclaimed by the "public beach access" but it looked like a muddy mess and I wasn't convinced it would be worth it. So I got in my car, put the top down (at risk, with the overcast sky) and went for a drive. 

On my way to a lookout, I clocked many Nene crossing signs, both formal and improvised, and had the perfect view of five or six flying just above the road. A short distance later there were a huge group of them on the side of the road. 

The lookout was pretty but a bit crowded. I drove down the road in search of a beach but the connection here is bad an I ended in a cul-de-sac so I decided to stop and take in the nature. As I am parked writing this, a fully red cardinal landed on my mirror for a split second before being startled likely by my head movement to look at it. What a cutie, though! I also heard, among the cock-a-doodle-doo's of the chickens and the squeaky songs of some other birds, and knocking sound perhaps of a woodpecker, but it only went off a few times before I stopped hearing it. It's raining now, and that is bringing down my spirits a bit, but I wanted to jot down some thoughts of the special moments and the joy I have in seeing these animals and the beauty of the flowers, so many seem absolutely perfect. I think that's what I need is just nature's perfect and hilarious unexpected wild animals. Enjoying and appreciating them is a special treat, and one I desperately needed. 

I find it funny that so many of my Life List items - which should generally be something of a once in a lifetime event - have turned into a normal, frequent thing. The most predominant example that comes to mind is seeing a show on Broadway. My sister and I saw Wicked when we were in NYC for a wedding. Check! I assumed that was pretty much done. It was awesome! And I'm so grateful we got to do that. Then my boyfriend at the time, Rick, and I planned a trip to NYC. As a gift to me, he wanted to get me tickets to a musical but because he's not really into musicals, he chose the one he felt was most approachable - Wicked. So I saw it on Broadway again. I definitely didn't mind! Later in life, while I was dating Jaiman, we made the tough decision to move to Connecticut with my job. The biggest benefit of living there was the proximity to NYC, and especially Broadway, and we made the most of it. In the year we lived there, we went to more than 10 Broadway shows, including Hamilton (twice), and a handful of off-Broadway hits as well (Spamilton s hilarious!). Moving away didn't end our Broadway attendance. Shortly after we moved, I learned that an alum of my high school whom I vaguely knew was preforming in Chicago! I figured I'd have to go see him sometime. Then COVID happened and I followed his story on social media about how, with the theaters closed, he moved back in with his parents. I bought cookies from him. When Broadway reopened post-pandemic, I wasn't going to procrastinate. He shared dates he'd be performing and I booked a trip. Never mind that it was in January, arguably the worst time to venture to NYC, we were going! We made it in just before a snow storm, and upon landing learned our departing flight was cancelled and we had to rebook for later. Ah well, guess we'll add another show to our trip! We used the opportunity to go to Hadestown. So a once in a lifetime Life List things had been done in spades. 

I'm drawing that parallel to this trip, because another life list thing was too photograph an endangered species. As we were hiking Haleakala on Maui a few years ago, my nephew, David, and I spotted the endangered Nene. Our photos were blurry but it was definitely then! Check! Now to be on this island and see so many Nenes and take literally dozens of pictures of different ones - it's almost ordinary if I didn't know how extraordinary it actually is. 

Let me never take from granted this extraordinary life, and let me perpetually grateful for this extraordinary world. 

Oh, and I did finally touch water.

Book Review: "The Meaning of Your Life"

As a lifelong "striver" and a career people manager, I have read countless books on mindfulness, philosophy, and psychology. Many of them offer a single "silver bullet" solution—rest, balance, or mindset. In his most recent book, Dr. Arthur C. Brooks has done something much more courageous here: he has written an all-encompassing masterpiece that weaves these threads into a logical, structured model for a meaningful life. You can read my official review on Goodreads here and get more info about the book. This book was so timely and so meaningful to me, I felt compelled to write to the author. So I thought I'd share my letter here.  

Mr. Brooks, 

I just finished listening to your new book, "The Meaning of Your Life," although, of course, listening is hardly all I did. I heard about your book while listening to the Andrew Yang Podcast (what a guy, right?) and I knew instantly that I needed to give it a go. I am still processing it all, and probably will be for a while, which is one of the ways I know it was good. As a regular seeker of purpose, meaning, love, and happiness, I have read countless books on mindfulness and longevity and philosophy and psychology. I've taken a lot from each of those books, and continue to piece together what makes sense to me for my life, while challenging myself to grow and be better. I am probably a very typical striver as you would expect of your readership, and I describe my particular type as a problem solver. My career, romantic life, friendships and personal pursuits often boil down to chasing down problems, and ideating and executing solutions (obviously bad for romantic relationships - which I've started to untangle). As a people manager for many years now, I have counseled my mentees and future leaders that people are complex, and that's what drives me as a manager; optimization problems of math and statistics can be solved, but how to create movement and growth within other people is an ever-changing, unsolvable challenge that requires vigilant nurturing, personal growth and adjustments, and courage. You could say that exemplifying good management and leadership is my calling - it's at least part of what gives my professional work purpose. 

Speaking of courage, I first and foremost want to thank you for yours. As an avid reader of many similar books, I have found that many dive deep into only one area, which would be okay if they acknowledged the limited scope. But instead, I find they tend to sell their ideas as the only thing that matters, and then show different angles and examples to reinforce that one, central concept. This has left me trying to piece these things together in perhaps an unstructured method. "Ah ha! The key to life is rest! No, it's balance. No, it's a growth mindset." This has also left me aching for models to put it all together, and trying to piece it together myself. As a hobbyist writer, this has also discouraged me, as a part of me would love to author a masterpiece of a book that is all encompassing; but seeing that niche books sell, I've wondered if our world is too shallow to absorb multiple concepts in a single book. Yours was a true masterpiece, I think. It weaves in a lot of those ideas I've explored in other reading, but provides structure that speaks to the left-sided need for logic, while giving a vocabulary for the things we cannot explain with a formula. So thank you for having the courage to tackle such a monster topic and to do it so eloquently, without excessive elaboration or salesmanship. 

Secondly, I wanted to thank you for highlighting a few things that really resonated with me. Even though I am a rigorous planner, with my life's budget planned until I'm 100 years old, and vacations planned decades in advance, I've learned, through an admittedly privileged version of suffering, that life will throw curveballs and that we need to sometimes be okay with not knowing all of the answers. When the company I worked for announced it was relocating its North American headquarters across the country, and almost all of my colleagues and I would be receiving offers to relocate, we were devastated by the difficult choice and the change we'd face either way - either we'd have to pick up our lives and the lives of our families and move to an unfamiliar area with a very different way of life, or we'd have to find a new job to stay put. While many knew their decisions quickly - they had to stay for their partners' jobs or their kids - it was uneasy for everyone. Around that time, I found this quote, and shared it on social media, which was comforting to many of my colleagues and friends. 

"Have patience with everything that remains unsolved in your heart.  Try to love the questions themselves, like locked rooms and like books written in a foreign language. Do not now look for the answers.  They cannot now be given to you because you could not live them.  it is a question of experiencing everything.  At present you need to live the question.  Perhaps you will gradually, without even noticing it, find yourself experiencing the answer, some distant day." 

    ― Rainer Maria Rilke

    
Your book reminded me that having outstanding, unanswered questions, is sometimes a part of life, and perhaps, a lot of where growth happens. If the answers could all be googled, then the meaning of life is null. It's a hard thing for a problem solving striver to accept, but an important reminder for that same reason. 

Another concept I've been focusing in on as part of my New Year's Resolutions (yes, I do those, so typical) is to re-wire my brain to consider exercise and getting outdoors as not just a necessary evil or a mandatory sometimes-thing, but that it gives me more pleasure than idly doomscrolling or playing games on my phone, which, like an addict, I could tell was starting to taking too much time in my life but also wasn't willing to quit cold turkey or apply other effective strategies. Your book didn't, to my recollection at least, hit on this point a lot, but it did talk about various ways in which going through the motions helps illuminate the meaning and purpose, and I felt like that was very similar to my re-wiring my brain concept. Your discernment exercise was especially helpful in evaluating and adjusting my focus and reasons. 

I am a strong believer that Andrew Yang is right about the shift in our world that's coming as a result of technology and AI. I love tech, use it in my work and personal life to a further extent than most, which is why is part of the reason I am so convinced that a lot of people are going to have a hard time finding meaningful or even livable jobs in the future. At the same time, I often grapple with the depression that seems to be growing in our society and a lot of examples in my personal circles. Someone once put the idea in my head that my boyfriend at the time was using video games as a form of escapism - he wasn't successful in real life but he could achieve in his virtual world. It has stuck with me as a watchout of gamers as romantic partners in general, but also for my own wellbeing - when I may choose to play again, I wonder if I'm trying to escape the failures or inadequate progress in my real life. What I couldn't quite make sense of was why this was so bad, until your book explained it. When we fill our time with distractions - and even if not gaming, I am very guilty of filling my time with different forms of "productive" activity and even multitasking by listening to an audio book while I walk or do chores - we don’t give ourselves the freedom to be bored and to ponder the big stuff. This is really important, I think, for our society to hear. Say it louder for those in the back! 

I may be a "mean boss" with my "traditional" thinking that we should be going to work most days, so I require my team at work 3 days a week, with one work from home day (we work 4/10s). I may be a bit biased, but I perceive my very small team to be outperforming teams ten times the size, and I attribute much of that to the cross-talk, in-person collaboration and relationship building, and focus that comes from being in the office. My teams also tend to have a lot of satisfaction in their work and profess enjoyment of the challenging problems and the social aspect of working with really smart and talented people. Maybe I'm just lucky, but since I've built a few teams now, I think there's something to it. The headlines about return to office mandates and initiatives are so baffling to me, and the cynical assumptions about manager's motives in doing so are completely misguided, in my estimation. I may be unpopular when I say this, but I believe depression and work from home have a correlation, and that return to office mandates are good for society. So shoot me! Adversaries point out the time savings of not having to commute, or in some cases, even showering and getting ready for work, the cost savings in gas, and the benefits of "focus" by not being disturbed. In our world that is constantly vying for attention, I am guilty of not having as much focus on the occasions I work from home, and I assume I'm not the outlier. Your book has given me another thought: maybe even the commute is a good thing. Whether we're listening to music, which could be therapeutic, using the commute to listen to an audio book or podcast - a time strictly dedicated to personal development - or zoning out, being intentional not to have a screen in our faces, maybe its merits are greater than the perceived cost of lost time and expensive gas. 

Anyways, this has already been a longer note than I intended, so I'll bring it to a close while I keep processing the good stuff in your book. But I was moved to write to you to let you know that I deeply appreciate the wisdom, science, philosophy and vocabulary you poured into this book. It truly is a masterpiece, and one I will strongly recommend to, well, just about anyone. I plan to explore some of your earlier work, and I hope you continue to explore these topics and the dynamically shifting atmosphere of our simulated lives. I'm no longer a practicing Christian, but this is more like God's work than most of what I saw in many years of religious practice. It is really important to be grappling with these huge topics and helping others to find meaning but also to sit with the questions that trigger their own grappling of these topics. 

With love and gratitude,
Laura

Perseverance and Joy

Last night I had a vivid dream of meeting a young man whose legs had been amputated due to deformities from birth.  We were in my fictitious dream-land basement, myself, Jaiman, this young man and his brother.  They lived across the street.  The young man was essentially wrapped in a blanket, completely covering his body including his head and face.  He was situated on my sofa like a lump.  

When I sat down next to him, he started kicking my back incessantly.  His brother assured me he was trying to hurt me, he was trying to sit up straight.  I couldn't fathom why his head and face were covered - he had deformities in his legs, so maybe his face is so grotesquely deformed that he keeps it covered up.  But his brother didn't mention anything about his face, just the legs.  It was a puzzle, and I wanted to see his face, but he kept kicking me.  Finally, I couldn't take it anymore and I stood up and faced the sofa.  

Jaiman offered to help the young man, and his brother suggested we put on his "stilts" as he called them, the artificial limbs designed to help the young man walk.  I encouraged Jaiman to sit next to the young man, and we freed one leg in order to attach the artificial limb, and then the other.  All the while, he was kicking, wiggling, moving his legs in a desperate effort to sit up, get up, or run away completely.  It made me sad, but more so, it struck me as almost inhuman, and primitive, the way he kept at it even when there was nobody there to push off against, even when it seemed hopeless.  

The dream skipped what happened next, or I forgot it, but I never did see him walk or see his face.  But later that day, I was peering out my window, and I saw the young man and his mother, playing in their basement, a view only visible to my unique perspective.  The young man's face was no longer covered.  I've heard that the brain is incapable of inventing new human faces in our dreams, so this is why we usually don't see distinct faces, or the brain uses faces we've encountered recently or in the distant past, when we dream.  While I have seen many faces troubled with all sorts of deformities, the young man in my dream took on the face of an autistic child I had known growing up - a child who had been severely picked on in school, but was so incredibly brilliant, he went on to do amazing things in his life.  Dreams are funny things - because they are inventions of your mind so you have a sense of knowing things even when they aren't apparent, and I think sometimes you can even steer them.  In my dream, when I saw his face, the face of the child I once knew (and still keep in touch with), it was as I expected.  Not ugly or terribly deformed, not beautiful either, but troubled, a little wild with thoughts and aspirations, and kind.  

What excited me more, though, in my dream, is not that his face was fine, but what he was doing with his mom.  He was dancing!  It was awkward, and untrained, as you would expect, but he and his mom danced with such fervor, it filled me with happiness and peace just sitting there watching them, a view reserved only for me.  He wasn't dancing like nobody was watching, as the saying goes.  He was dancing like people who loved him were watching.  He had the confidence, knowing that if he started to fall, he would be caught.  He trusted that it didn't matter how silly he looked, he was loved.  And he was exuding joy.  

As dreams often do, it got weird.  I looked to his mom, a heavy-set woman in bright colors and typical mom clothes.  I looked back at him, and he had morphed into a middle-aged woman, like a girlfriend of his mom's, as if they were out at a bar dancing, reliving their 20's.  Then I saw Jaiman was there, and he was dancing too, dancing ridiculously, and he also morphed into a middle-aged woman.  And the three girlfriends danced like it was the last night they could.  They morphed in and out of these forms as I watched, not quite sure what to make of it.  But no matter what form they were in, they exuded joy.  

I thought back to the boy, huddled under covers on my sofa, kicking, and wiggling and trying to get up, and realized that he wasn't trying to sit up, or even to walk.  He wanted to dance.  His perseverance had seemed incomprehensible to me; I had thought of it as primitive.  

My dreams come in all shapes and forms.  I often dream about mundane tasks at work, especially when I'm feeling overwhelmed about how much there is to do.  I wake up from those nights feeling like I've already worked for 8 hours, because in my head, I have.  I have recurring mild nightmares reliving my high school days, being late to band practice, forgetting my shoes, not knowing where my trumpet is, missing the bus that is heading for a competition; those are just strange to me because I was a responsible band member, a section leader 3 of the 4 years, so I really don't know where they come from. Some dreams are just strange concoctions of things I'm involved with (Pokemon being the lasted leisurely activity looped into my dreams) and some dreams I'm a criminal, evading the law.  Some dreams I can only chalk up to being premonitions, their keen, spot-on analysis somehow predicting my immediate future.  

This dream was different from all of those, and not like what I usually dream about.  When I awoke, I drew immediate inspiration from it, believing that this boy came to me in my dreams to show me how lazy I've been, how I need to do better, how I need to keep kicking and fighting.  Life is not just about standing or walking.  It's about joy and love, and finding joy in doing what you love.  It's about dancing, whatever that means to each of us.  I needed to kick up my perseverance to an inhuman level to fight for what I want.  I cannot be dissuaded by the illusion of hopelessness.  Only then can I experience abundant joy like what I saw in the boy's dancing.