Yes, money has got me stressed. My scholarship has long run out, soon my tuition fees will start accruing, and budget cuts have meant that on the rare occasion where casual work does pop up at my research centre, there's about 20 post grad students scrambling to do it. Being told to "hurry up and finish" my thesis isn't exactly helpful when I'm worrying about how to pay the next month's rent. All of which is complicated by my being an international student, meaning, I have to pay a fuckload more for everything and have a fuckload fewer resources available to me. I don't regret coming here, at all, but it is a lot harder than I ever expected it to be.
My life at the moment is like a game of Tetris. I'm doing my best to put the pieces together and clear the lines, but they keep coming, faster and faster. Money, uni, work, visas, health, friends, family, lovers... All coming at me in weird angles, forming complex shapes and piling up in debris around me instead of steadily building into coherent lines that are easily cleared from the screen. And like in Tetris, I am taking risks, putting pieces in where they don't necessarily fit in the hopes of creating a line that can be cleared later on. Am I doing a good job of it? I don't know. But I'm still in the game, and that's what counts!
You know what it's like? It's like walking a tight rope while juggling 3 balls, when you don't know how to do either. I walked a tight rope recently...not while juggling, but I did that recently too. At the end of last year I finally decided that I would join up with the Women's Circus. I started the New Women's program in January. It is - without a doubt - the best decision I have made all year!
I was fortunate enough to end up in a class with the most amazingly friendly, supportive and fun women! And not only have I made some awesome new friends, but I've made them while doing the most ridiculously cool stuff! The kinds of stuff that you just don't get to do as an adult. But the best thing about circus is: for two hours every week the stress of the Tetris game goes away. For two hours every week all the complexities and worries are gone, and in their place is fits of giggling, goofing off, learning new skills, and just having fun!
The New Women's program isn't focused on any one circus skill, but covers a wide range of different skills, and involves playing a lot of fun/silly games. Like 'tiggy tag' or 'freeze tag' as we'd call it in Canada, and 'chuck the chook' (I don't know what we'd call that one in Canada, but it involves a rubber chicken). My all time favourite game was one where we were in groups of 4, we lined up single file, hands on the person in front's shoulders, and only the back person was allowed to have her eyes open. It was her job to steer the rest of us in a human locomotive. I liked being one of the people with their eyes closed best. I couldn't stop laughing!! And when I was at the front of our train, I started doing some dance moves that had our conductor in hysterics. Our trainers (who are INCREDIBLE) kept telling us to try and keep it a relatively silent activity...which wasn't exactly happening due to my hyperventilating from laughing too much.
Every week we do something different, and we usually have no idea what we'll be doing until we're already in the class. I like the surprise of each week. It makes me extra reluctant to miss class! And I like that we get to try so many different things: aerials, acrobalance, clowning, stilts, tight rope walking, tumbling, trampolene, juggling, hula hooping... You just never know what's coming next!
Funny story about that: we do a lot of activities that involve being up close and personal with each other. You get used to having someone you've just met touching you in ways people don't normally touch you. So one day, after doing some warm up games stuff, when one of our trainers announced what we were going to be doing next I heard 'group pooping'. Everyone in the class began to cheer and get visibly excited, meanwhile, I had a look of complete horror on my face and was like "Wait, what? We're doing what? Please tell me I did NOT hear that right!!!" And no, I did not hear her right. She said we were doing hula hooping, not group pooping. I was only slightly relieved.
Much to my surprise, I do not enjoy hula hooping! It's awesome to watch people who are good at it do their thing, sure. But I am not one of those people! I am terrible at hula hooping! I just do not understand how my body is meant to move in order to make the hoop not fall to the ground. And it apparently doesn't matter which part of my body I attempt to spin a hula hoop from: it ain't happening! I'm OK with this though. There are many other things that I am good at, and many other things that I am terrible at but that I deeply enjoy anyways. Hula hooping is just not for me. Juggling, on the other hand... I am pretty crap at juggling, but also much to my surprise, it is pretty much my favourite thing to do. Go figure!
Tumbling is another activity that I'm surprised to find myself loving! Up until a few months ago, I had never, in all my life, done a somersault. Even as a kid, I just couldn't figure it out. I could do backwards ones for some reason, but forward rolls alluded me. But then one day we did them at circus. The trainers took us through the process of doing a forward roll step by step and got us onto this wedge mat to make it easier for us. When my turn came to attempt the forward roll I expected to end up heaving over sideways. But, I bent over, bit my bum, and HUZZAH! Over I went, in a relatively straight line! By the end of the class I was doing them on the floor without any assistance. Tumbling is decidedly awesome!
Then there's aerials: things like trapeze, ropes, tissue, and the cloud swing. I struggle with aerials. I don't have the upper body strength to pull myself up onto the equipment, which can be a challenge. But, as I recently found out, it's not really an excuse for not giving it a go anyways! We did a bunch of aerials stuff a few weeks back, when I happened to be in the most foulest of foul moods. I was feeling particularly sensitive about the decline in my fitness - thank you thesis stress for that! - and was determined that I wouldn't be able to get into any of the aerials equipment, and was not particularly interested in trying.
But... no matter how grumpy I was, the group I was working in wasn't giving my bad mood any energy. They hoisted me up onto the equipment anyways! I still wasn't feeling up to the challenge of actually doing anything once I got up there, but, I was pretty damn happy to be there! I probably will be more brave in the future when we do aerials stuff, as just getting up into the equipment - even with a lot of help - was a huge confidence booster!
When I started up with the Women's Circus I thought that I'd be pretty awesome at acrobalance, and particularly at basing. It has proved more challenging than I had anticipated! But also, very rewarding. I've discovered that some of my dodgy bits can make acrobalance quite hard. One of my shoulders is a lot weaker than the other (something I have recently come to suspect is a result of my skiing accident 20 years ago) so holding somebody's weight over my head can be difficult. I've also got an exposed nerve on one of my hips which can make having someone stand on me really painful, though it's totally fine if they're not putting pressure on the nerve. Due to a dodgy knee I have trouble holding my legs straight, which can make leg basing tricky.
I have actually found it easier to be a flyer than a base, though I generally prefer basing to flying. It is mentally challenging to bring myself to let someone much smaller than me base me, thought the women in my class certainly have been perfectly capable of doing so!! It is a bit funny though, trying to step up onto someone teeny tiny, just because there's not a lot of surface area on which to stand. You kinda just have to go for it and trust that they'll let you know if it's not working. I like basing when we do standing poses, or anything where we move around. Last week we did this cat on cat stuff...it was like when you're a kid and someone gives you a pony ride, only the person on top is actually balancing on the base's back. I'd be quite happy to move people around a properly padded surface in this way any time!
There's all sorts of different classes that focus on different skills run by the Women's Circus. When you join, you can't do any other classes until your second term of New Women's - which I'm in now - and while you only have to do two terms of New Women's, you're encouraged to do a full year. There were a few classes I was interested in this term, but I decided not to sign up for any more as I didn't feel I had the money or the time. But you know what? Circus provides me with so much respite from all the other crap in my life that next term - even though I will very likely be back in Canada for part of it - I plan to take a second class. After all, what's a bit of money for a whole lot of happiness?
