Viennese Ball 2023, and a story about finding peace in silence

Been three years since the last one (https://ddrkirbyisq.blogspot.com/2020/02/viennese-ball-2020.html).  It was interesting reading over the report from 2020 and realizing that my experience this year was both similar and different at the same time.  I'm also surprised to see just how vocal I was in my 2020 blog; somehow I had remembered beginning to be more self-conscious with my writing by then, but perhaps I was mistaken.

Last time around I wrote that Viennese Ball seemed not to be a time for me to catch up with a bunch of people.  That ended up being a complete 180 this year, as I feel like I went to the Ball with almost the sole intention of simply hanging out and catching up with people -- with a special pretense to look my best and, oh, I guess do a bit of dancing too.

The ball this year was in a different, smaller location than usual, which caused an interesting set of issues.  VBall is always a crowded and nonideal dance floor in general but it seemed particularly so this year as it seemed like there was just as many if not more people, yet smaller ballrooms as well as a less-open dance area.

Surprisingly (at least, from what I can remember), the ambient noise level actually grew to be a significant problem over the first half of the ball.  Thankfully, I had my musician's earplugs with me, but I don't know what I what have done otherwise; the combination of loud (sometimes distorting?) music and a great deal of people talking in a crowded space was overwhelming and dare I say hazardous.  I probably would have been incentivized to leave early if I had not been properly prepared.

There was a bit of "line-con"-esque waiting once I got there, which somehow seemed slower than last time, but maybe I'm actually just remembering wrong.  The first half of the ball in general was a rough start for me as I began to wonder what I was even gaining from being there, but it all worked out and smoothed out over the course of the night as I saw various friends, said hi, shared some dances here and there.

This was perhaps the first VBall that I've remembered where I spent a good amount of time thoughtfully observing other people dance; the various contests were a fantastic opportunity for me to do so.  I've spoken to a handful of people already about this, but I have not been very happy or satisfied with my dancing in recent days, for a number of reasons.  You could chalk it up to simply being rusty after the Covid-era of no social dance events, but honestly it's not that; more that things just don't feel right to me, in multiple ways.  I'm a little lost in how to approach it, how to live up to my ideals of grace and elegance and dance with a "quiet smile", to carry myself in a paradoxically confident yet unassuming way.  How to approach people yet avoid speaking too much.  How to regain that feeling of flying across the dance floor but at the same time avoid pushing my partner to travel at all.

I can't say I found any deep-seated answers to my spiritual quandaries as I watched these couples dancing in the ballroom(s), but I was able to contemplate a number of things.  How people looked when they danced and what I felt about it.  How Sayuri might look if she were here, dancing.  What I look for when I evaluate dancing.  What feels "cringe" versus "authentic" to me.  And where the line blurs between "flawed" and "stylistic".  Perhaps most importantly, I feel like I reclaimed a little bit of myself, sitting on the ledge of the stage and quietly watching everyone pass by.  It made me remember, just a little bit, of what it is like to feel peace, how it is to calmly play the role of a wallflower.

.....

People often talk about "Fear Of Missing Out".  It's a feeling that can compel us to step outside of our inhibitions, to make a claim, to be vulnerable, and to express our hearts, despite everything.  When I really think about it, I've had a complicated relationship with this feeling.

I had developed an ingrained fear of making mistakes from an early age.  The entire family chided negative results; it was simply a natural way of being.  One year in elementary school, well into the school year, I received a task from the teacher to put a batch of folders into their place.  I had never done the job before, nor had I been curious to observe when anyone else had.  The teacher sighed and made fun of me to another student that "Timmy doesn't even know where to put them, still".  I silently made a note to myself, that I should try to escape and run away from these situations whenever I could.  Being asked to do things I didn't know how to was scary.

I was a straight-A student at the time.

Later, in middle school, I was once in the gymnasium with a certain hated substitute teacher (who harbored a grudge against me) and, attempting to get me to work on the volume of my voice for an upcoming play, he told me that he wanted me shout as loud as loud as I could, right then and there.

I didn't really know what to do.  I felt uncomfortable.  I opened my mouth, swallowed, repeated it a few times.  I felt uncomfortable.  I did not speak.  Finally the moment was over and I was able to leave because someone else had arrived.

Fast forward to high school.  I had learned through interacting with my peers in marching band that yelling loudly was...surprisingly, an exhilarating experience.  Perhaps, simply because breaking expectations by defying my established role as a quiet person.  Perhaps, because I had really always been a bit of a showoff all along.  Whatever the reason, good or bad, I learned to lean into that feeling, that maybe you should take a chance and do something.

Two years later I became a student leader in marching band -- what I still refer to as the most stressful job in my life.  Time and time again I was confronted with the -- sometimes god-awful -- choice of saying and doing something, or saying and doing nothing.  The further I fell into things, the more I felt pressured into doing something.  It was my =job= to do something, to say something.  But...truth be told, it was more than that -- it was my job to do the =right= thing.  To say only the =right= thing.  The weight of that responsibility bored into my shoulders, sticking to me for longer than I would ever realize at the time.  I felt incredibly alone and stressed, but ignored my negative feelings out of necessity.  I pushed forward and did what I needed to in order to succeed.

I still have nightmares of that time, of being expected to do the right thing, and of what happened when I didn't.

I'm in college now and I lie on the carpeted floor of a friend's dorm room with my eyes open.  I don't know how long I've been silent for, only that I am keenly aware of my own internal thoughts, and also that I somehow cannot speak.  If I was a normal person, I would excuse myself so that I could leave.  I would say something.  But I say nothing, until I'm approached.  I've become paralyzed.

It happens again, multiple times, in different situations.  My other friend once asks me, "What's wrong?"  "Can you talk?"  I manage, at one point, to plead to them, "please....get...me...to say....something".  I can't explain to them why I become locked inside of myself, only that it gets worse over time.  The more I am trapped inside of my own self, the harder it is to finally break out and say something, to say anything.  Like the feeling of forgetting a friend's name, and feeling more and more awkward about asking them for it again as you continue to interact with them more and more.

I realize that I'm incredibly sad, but also that I've forgotten how to cry.  I would fail to do so, for several years.

I try my hand at academic research one year.  In the midst of realizing that I had been struggling with pyschosomatic pain from the built-up stress in my life, I struggled to confront situations in which I didn't know the answer.  But I remembered the lesson I had learned over the course of my life from my family, from my elementary school teacher, from my middle school teacher, from my high school teacher -- asking for help was the same thing as asking to be chided.  In a casual conversation to myself and another person, my assigned mentor makes a joke at my expense, referring offhandedly to something that I had written in a report I turned in to him.  "Yeah, it would be really ridiculous to do something like [xyz] for a report, that doesn't make any sense."  I laugh quietly along with the group and say nothing.  I decided that I wouldn't pursue research anymore.

After graduating and becoming a so-called adult, I reach a new and different phase in my struggle with self-expression.  I'm easily overtaken with emotion.  I start into tears randomly, sometimes from happiness, more often from sadness or pain.  As if all of the blocked tears from the past how-many-years have been backed up in the queue.  I still struggle to say what's on my mind.  I know, better than anyone, that I could end up saying the wrong thing.  The safest way, is to say nothing.  But at the very least, I've learned how to cry again.  Maybe a little too well...but I guess the sadness all had to go somewhere eventually.

In the meantime, I find a kindred spirit -- sometimes more like an idol -- in Sayuri.  She, too, cries a lot.  But she also has something that I never before had -- the courage to be silent, and to be at peace with it.

It is, in many ways, a new concept to me, as many other things were in my relationship with Sayuri.   Like many things I learned from my time in her shoes, it was the opposite of everything I had been told all of my life.  But it also felt natural.  All along everyone had been telling me that I needed to speak more loudly.  To voice my thoughts.  To give the right answer.  To be confident, to raise my chin and straighten my back.  But in her gentle presence Sayuri taught me that I did not need to do any of those things.  That it was okay to say nothing at all.

Sayuri, told me, in her own way, that it was okay to "miss out".  And over the years, I started learning to ask myself a different question: What if that "Fear Of Missing Out" was the real prison all along?

What if true peace comes not from having the courage to do anything, but from accepting that it's okay to do nothing?

In my time at college, I had become a de-facto stand-in for leading my taichi club in various practices,  such as standing meditation exercises.  I still remember the feeling of trying to focus, at once, both on my own breathing, but also on the timing of the practices.  Should I move onto the next position?  Or was it too soon?  Should I say something after my next breath?  After my next two breaths?  What should I say?

After I graduate I begin to practice on my own.  I realize that I still sometimes have the same thoughts, despite not being responsible for leading a group.  "Is this long enough for my meditation?"  "Am I getting distracted?"  "I should keep going until I can feel more focused."  Again, my attention is stolen by a focus on "doing the right thing".  But as I grow as a person, I begin to have a different thought.  That the important thing is not what you should do, but what feels right.  That maybe either way is okay.  That you should just breathe for as long as you feel like it, and stop whenever you'd like.

Back on the dance floor, a song ends and I sense a familiar feeling beginning to take root in my mind.  People all around me look around and attempt to lock eyes.  Couples start to pair off and take to the center of the floor.  Some are more direct with their approach, shouting someone's name and asking them for the next dance.  Others just sheepishly extend a hand to a stranger of the assumed opposite gender, sometimes one who is engaged in a conversation.  There is no acknowledgement given by the newcomer to the third person, or to the interrupted moment.

The next song starts and I recognize it instantly as a rotary waltz from my seat at the front of the room.  A couple nearby stands with an open handhold, tilting their heads and wondering out loud "What kind of dance is this?"  From a distant corner in my mind, I recall a parent-teacher conference from elementary school, where my teacher spoke of my performance. "He knows all of the answers, right?  Just doesn't want to raise his hand so that he can give them."

I look around the room again at the people beginning to dance together in front of me.  I find my eyes wandering the room too, wondering who is paired off already, and who isn't yet.  Ah.  There it is again.  "Fear Of Missing Out", they call it.  It's a feeling that never quite goes away, not even once you get used to it.  Out of the corner of my eye I notice someone pacing around the room, looking for -- I can only assume, someone else of the assumed opposite gender who isn't already dancing.

"Maybe a few more deep breaths is okay."

I quietly fold my hands in my lap as I turn my attention back to the other couples dancing across the floor.  I realize that I'm slouching a bit, but decide not to do anything about it.  I think back to the closest friend I ever made through dance -- how I would often wave to her and then stand next to her wordlessly as the music played.  Not asking her to dance, nor asking her how her day was, but simply sharing a silence by her side, and being okay with it.  Another couple crosses in front of me as I'm lost in my thoughts, laughing as they awkwardly recover from an experimental figure.

I say nothing.  And I smile.

What do you do?  After you realized that "perfect" isn't an option.

There was a a point when I realized that I would never be my "perfect" self.  I had to decide, what I wanted to do, with myself.  With "what was left".  Although I am still exploring what I wish to make of myself, I think that exploration has up until this point largely been positive and successful.

There was a point when I realized that I would never be "good enough".  That it didn't matter how hard I tried or even what I became, because none of that actually made a difference, or mattered.  That realization, of a hope, turned to dream, turned to illusion, and then vanishing.  I had to decide what to do with my leftover feelings.  Perhaps I still am.  There are certain things that trigger those feelings.  Remind me of what I could never achieve, not in a million years.

Again, life always poses the question, "what will you do, with these pieces?"  Which parts of the picture will you attempt to fill in, and how?  Will you stumble and fall?  Will you pick yourself up and move forward?  Or will you simply sit quietly, in the corner?  Ah, well, I guess that last one usually sounds the best, to me.  What am I worth, after all, if I cannot even accomplish the simple act of silence?

What am I worth, if not for that?  If not for "perfect"?

Managed to get around to penny modding my LTEK metal pads for DDR (after finally accumulating enough pennies, lol) and it's been great!  They were already more or less "fine" for singles play but for doubles the increased sensitivity really helps a lot, you don't have to land squarely in the middle of the pads to register steps anymore.  I had one or two really enjoyable sessions since then, and also discovered to my surprise that DDR A has some pretty nice tracks and doubles charts.  It looks like over time the Konami charts decided to introduce more complex stepping patterns and crossovers in their doubles charts (maybe their singles charts as well?), some of which I was initially skeptical of but I'm finding that I'm actually enjoying them a fair bit.

Find that I've been playing quite well in Pokemon Unite lately, dunno what it is, maybe I've just landed on some pokemon recently that are easy to push a ton of damage and carry teams with, but that's been rather rewarding as well.  I'm a bit rusty in my rando play though...

Had an initial half-assed attempt at conquering Lugdunum in Caesar 3 and...yeah, I'm going to have to try that one again.  Money is tight so it's important that you set up an industry relatively quickly, but employment is also a big issue since it takes so long for people to immigrate.  I started with trying to make settlements on the cliffs with the farmland, but I think that's the wrong strategy and I should instead focus on the island with the farmland instead, as it's much closer.  Setting up trade with the natives is also probably going to be important (although a new trade route for marble/pottery also apparently opens up 2 years in, that should help a lot).  We'll see how my next attempt goes...

I've got an errand to run down in the South Bay on Monday so I'll stop by Dancebreak probably to dance with the Stanford kids, but I realized recently that because of Austria Fortnight it'll actually only be 1 hour of dancing after their lesson ends.  I was initially a little bummed out but now realize I can just plan to go early and do some solo practice by myself since it's been a while since I worked on my freestyle.  That will be good to try and improve at again...

In the meantime, VBall is coming up again, which should be interesting to go to again.  I feel oddly...confident?  In knowing how I feel about certain things relating to the event (maybe not in the way you might think).

I did a good job finishing out level 5-1 for Rhythm Quest but I need to make sure I don't get complacent and try to complete a draft for level 5-2 if I can next week, that would be ideal...

Things have been good.  I had a little trouble some days making sure I got enough sleep, but good nonetheless.

We won Ludum Dare, somewhat unexpectedly (for me at least).  Really quite nice to see that people appreciated our game and what we were able to put into it.  I think the ratings reflect less on the overall quality of our work and more on what people were excited about and found enjoyable (and at the same time what flaws they were willing to overlook).

I think I was able to make a new friend, recently, too.  Perhaps more than the Ludum Dare win, that is something that gives me a little bit of a rekindling of my faith (I'm tempted to use "soul gem" imagery but that's definitely a too-morbid metaphor here, haha).  Recently I've been wondering if / how I could find people who seem "of my tribe".  It's not that I don'[t already know people like that exist, but I think having those people actually be present in my life is something that I have missed at times.

Social dance has been an interesting thing, lately, still.  The social aspect went well for me recently (oddly?), probably just good luck and a fortuitous attitude on my part.  I struggle now, still, to figure out what makes my dancing enjoyable for myself...or rather, how I should be dancing, in order for it to "feel right".  I've gotten a few clues into what it could be; maybe it's about focusing on my breathing, maybe it's about traveling more, further, and more smoothly.  Maybe it's simply about dancing with the right people, I'm not sure.  Something that's intriguing is that I don't know if I appreciate the same things in partner dance as I do in solo dance.  I mean, sure, there are broad similarities, but I don't think the smooth "pulling forward" motions are something that I appreciate in my solo dance.  I'm not really sure what that says about me, if anything.  I know that after I practice tai chi, I feel really pleasant.  Slightly exerted, but it's a pleasant feeling.  It feels like I ought to feel the same way after dancing well, too, but I'm not.

Rhythm Quest continues to roll along steadily.  I managed to put together the music for level 5-1, so that's one big hump (the intimidation of starting on a new world) gone.  Now I've just got to finalize that and start putting together the backdrops for that stage as well...and then force myself to remember how fun making the music is for these levels, so hopefully I don't drag my feet, and instead keep a good pace for them.

The next mission I have coming up in Caesar 3 is the infamous "Lugdunum", one of the biggest challenges in the entire campaign.  It's a peaceful mission where your farmland lies awkwardly on the top of raised plateaus, and the immigration/emigration points are separated from the rest of the map by an awkwardly long access point.  There's a lack of great open areas for your housing blocks (much less villa/palace housing), but I think the food distribution problem is the main issue really.  I haven't started trying to tackle this map yet, but I'm sure I'll probably have to restart it once or twice (unless I'm lucky) as I learn how to best approach it.

I've slowed down on progress through Triangle Strategy -- now approaching the final chapters of my new game+ playthrough.  I think the enjoyment is slowing down a bit for sure since there's not a ton more stuff to unlock and I'm reaching the level cap, plus story-wise it's a ton of retreading already-seen ground.  If anything I =might= try new game ++ on hard mode and go for the so-called "golden route", but I don't think I'm going to end up trying to recruit all the different characters (takes 4 playthroughs??) so I will probably pass on the 2 bandit characters.

I have an overseas trip coming up in under two months!  I've been doing some planning and such for that, which is kind of exciting, it should be a good trip and hopefully fun while also not being too stressful.  Really odd that despite purportedly "not enjoying travel that much" I seem to travel more often than several others around me.  The half/full day of travel part is a little rough but at the same time probably not =that= rough for me.  I'm sure I can find ways to make nice use of my time (I dunno, play through Mother 3 or something) but the layover (which I foolishly could have avoided, apparently) and physical effects of the flight and such might be draining.  Still, it's something that will probably be a lot of fun.

Tomorrow is the start of another week...hopefully another good one.