Powfag
a vocab word that’s a habit of mine
Our vocab word of the week is not something you’d see in a sound effect bubble in a homophobic Batman comic, as much as I can’t think of anything else when I look at it. No, instead it’s an oldey-timey word for something I do all. The. Time.
I think too hard and stress myself out silly about money, kind of constantly, of course. That’s just the way things go when one has to do so much crisis planning and contingently hanging by a thread. And it’s quite a familiar feeling for many, many people these days, in this economy in this country in this etc., isn’t it. As much as things are remarkably better in that area of my world since: first, living alone, and then especially, after my latest big life change (counterintuitively, quitting one of my precariate academic jobs actually alleviated it just a little bit, believe it or not). Not that it solved anything, necessarily. Still.
But living precariously is not the kind of thing that allows for much relaxation of thought, in fact overthinking and exhausting oneself in doing so is kind of the lay of the land when in this sort of socioeconomic position. I suppose if I’m exporting all my brain power on my own personal survival and tiring myself out on same, I don’t have enough elbow room, capital, or creative energy to revolt, right? That’s how we’re kept, it seems. As my Dad would say, only part ironically, “That’s why you gotta burn the motha down…”*
I overthink everything to do with my work, too, even separately from thinking too hard about money, which can’t really be entirely separated I guess, if I think about it. Which I already do too much. But. The work overthinking is both good and bad, really, except when it stresses me out too much, which it often does. It’s good that I have many jobs that require use of my brain so much, but that very fact does lead to overwhelm every so often. I’m also trying to get more new jobs outside of academia, that’ll actually pay me, which means I’m daily overthinking applications and rejection emails. I overthink my organization role at Blue Dime Cabaret, though I don’t tend to overburden my own choreography with overthinking. At least, not nearly as much. Not so far.
And industry gigs, when I get them? They are (or at least I perceive they are) more high-stakes, in that I feel like I need to prove myself a lot more potently there than in a theatrical or an academic setting. I’m sure that has to do with where my comfort zone is, and I should pick up one of the textbooks of the class I’m currently teaching at DU: Amy Cuddy’s Presence, and get a pep talk or two from her. The class is called ‘Visual and Physical Communication’, and I believe most students that take it are in the Leadership degree program. It’s all online. And. Actually, this week my students are (probably even at this moment) discussing Cuddy’s ‘fake it till you become it’ concept, and hey what do you know, isn’t that just smack dab in the center of my musings on powfag? Okay, Cuddy, I’m on it—I’ll listen to the serendipity…
*Clarification Note: My Dad is a pacifist and an agéd hippie—he’s not really wanting to burn any motha down. It’s just a refrain from much of the revolutionary ‘60s folk rock Dad loves, and from his own rough background in Chicago. But he’s a passionate pacifist at heart, most at home up in the mountains in walking meditation amid the aspens. He told me once recently that that was one important thing to remember about him, that when he first moved out here the mountains changed the way he thought, and changed his life. He’s a great lover of beauty and of peace, is Dad.
Having said that, do NOT mess with anyone he loves. Trust me.
When I teach my body language seminar (the in-person version), the central phase of the course consists of walking around and around the room whilst going through various exploratory exercises having to do with noticing one’s habitual body language. One of these explorations includes leading your walk with various body parts. Like: imagine your nose is being pulled by a leash, leading you along as you walk—imagine your nose is the first thing that enters a room. That sort of thing. What this does is make you more aware of what you do naturally. Also, when you exaggerate leading with a body part, it makes you into a sort of caricature of a character; it actually changes your inner world. When you walk with your chest leading the way, you feel very different emotionally, etc. than when you’re leading with, say, your knees. Try it. Leading with your chin will make you feel very different than leading with your groin.
When walking people through (!) this exercise, I tend to have students start at the top of the body and make our way down till everybody’s leading with their toes. So I usually begin with the forehead. I tell my students that I tend to walk like this naturally, since I’m a very cerebral thinker and a very big and constant thinker and so most of the time I walk around my regular world leading the way with my cranium. This is apparent if you ever catch me in the wild. When I first started learning stage combat, the instructors used to call this habit ‘turtle head’, and it affected my ability to learn the very upright Japanese martial arts I would go on to learn later. It causes a turkey wattle under my jaw and also neck pain, when I don’t pay attention to and correct it.
But then again, I’m probably just thinking too hard. And I’m tired out…
