Episode 45: On Perfectionism

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:04

Welcome to The Aerial Alchemist, where movement transforms into magic and stories take flight. I'm Fallon, dancer, aerialist, and storyteller, inviting you into a world where circus and dance meet creativity, resilience, and community. Whether you're here to be inspired, to learn, or to simply dream a little bigger, you found your place. I'm glad you're here. Welcome to the Arial Alchemist episode number 45. We're here. Can you believe? That's wild thought. Welcome today. Before we get started, one little announcement. This weekend is Circ and Spook. So if you're in the Denver area, please join us. It's gonna be such a good time. Uh we just posted all of the auction packages, not all of them, a smattering of them. There's so many of them on the Instagrams. I'll link that reel if you want to peek at it. We have so many good, good things that you're gonna get for like a fraction of the cost if you go and you bid. There's both silent and live auctions, and all of the proceeds go to funding our end-of-season show in just a few months. So we'd love to see you there. There's also ambient and spotlight performances, seven spotlighted performances to be exact on just about every apparatus you could think of, and probably some that you wouldn't think of. So that'll be fun. The Savoy in Denver has a fantastic bar, so there'll be great drinks. My beautiful mother-in-law is catering at the event, and uh she is a half Italian and half Irish, and this woman can cook. I don't know what she's making. I told her light bites. We're gonna find out what it is. It will be delicious. Uh, there'll be that there for you. And yeah, we're just gonna have a good time. It's gonna be a great time. So join us. Link is in the show notes. If you can't come, spread the word. If you can't come and you want to donate, people have asked about that. Thank you. Oh my gosh, that's amazing. You can I'll put links also to this in the show notes, but you can Venmo uh us at in the wings Ariel or you can sell us at in the wings aerial at gmail.com. And if you don't feel comfy about that, I get that. If I get my act together, I'm gonna get together a give butter campaign. But that takes fees from us. So, you know, if you feel comfortable just sending me the Venmo, I will make sure it goes right to the show and uh and it'll be great, right to the artists. So that's all I have to say about that. We're gonna jump in today. This is gonna be a short episode. I have had a lot on my plate with circum spook and bite coming up, lots of things, lots of lots of balls in the air, juggling a lot of things, and and I'm still, you know, working part-time as a nurse. In fact, today I had a 6 30 a.m. start, which meant that I had to leave my house by 5 45. So yeah, I was up at 5 a.m. And uh you still gotta get the workout in, so I went to work all day. I worked out after work and then got home at like seven. So it's a long day, and I wasn't able to record the podcast yet this week, and I thought about not. I thought about skipping a week. I've also thought about maybe I make this a season-based podcast. I can do whatever I want, it's mine. And and I don't want to do that. I like the idea of little snippets every week, and I enjoy doing it. And will there may be a time that it needs to change the format? Maybe. But I wasn't quite ready to do that just yet. Especially with no announcement. That seems like not nice. So I thought, well, we're just gonna record something, and my brain has been ping-ponging around with 80 million things, uh, with different podcast episodes, but then also like I hate all of them, but also I'm doing not really. Maybe I'm just not ready to like really expand on it yet. So then I thought, what are we gonna talk about today? And what are we gonna do? And I thought I made it up that this has to be a certain length of time. No one, no one cares. I mean, people care, but like I put that pressure on myself to make it at least 20 minutes, and it doesn't need to be. And so this one won't be because I don't have that much time. And so what we're talking about today is perfectionism and breaking that apart, as I've continued to do over the last several years as a recovering perfectionist. And I think maybe a lot of people can't relate to that. And I noticed it this weekend. We had our first rehearsals in the Boulder Circus Center. We loaded into the Boulder Circus Center. This is the closest we're going to get to the way the rigging will be for the show and the space on the floor that we need and the type of floor that it's on. We had been on like carpet for a while and then and then carpet again, and then we had access to a dance type floor, but it was quite hard. And I a lot of my choreography has rolling in it, and it's just not nice on a concrete ground to roll. So now we're like as close as we're gonna be to what we will be in the theater, which is great. So now we can really piece everything together that we've been doing for the last eight months and and start seeing the show come together. But the thing about when you come into a new space and you're a little frazzled because the rigging's different and the space is different, and which way is my front? And now the thing that I used to rely on visually, like I know that I see this wall or this mirror or this door, is no longer there. It's different, kind of throws your brain for a loop, or at least mine, and I think several other dancers. Also, we uh meet on Friday evenings after a long work week for a lot of us, and our brains are a little mushy by the time we get there. So we had that working against us. So the way that I approach this uh for myself, and then I just tell it to my dancers too, is we're gonna I had I had them asking. We're I I went in, we're like, we're gonna run each piece twice. We're gonna stop for questions in between, and then we're gonna go. And I had several people like, can we do a walk and talk first? And as badly as I wanted to say, yes, we can do a walk and talk. No, we cannot. We do not have time for a walk and talk. Walk and talks are done. We are going to run and fuck it up. And that's what we did. And it is hard, it is hard as a perfectionist to go into it and be like, I'm not gonna be perfect this run. But that's what rehearsal is. We have to remember that. Is it there to mess it up so that you get the right thing in your body. And that's what we did. And it went swimmingly, even though there were so many uncomfortable bits for so many of us. But that first run of each piece was a hot mess. Every single one of them. And the second run, not a hot mess at all. Little blips here and there, and we still have work to do, and we still have three months. But I'm like, wow, guys, you see this? Anyways, I got to thinking about that, and there was something about taking the pressure off. Taking the pressure off. Let it be bad, let it be what it is. It's not that serious in what we're doing as a performer in rehearsal. It is not that serious to mess it up. And honestly, in the show, it's not that serious either. So long as you keep going and pretend like nothing happened and that it was on purpose, no one will know. I promise you that. Sometimes it looks even better. There are happy accidents that happen. And I think a couple of those happened. I don't even remember, but there were a few happy accidents that were like, that was awesome. Keep it. Do it again, even though it wasn't on purpose this time. Do it on purpose again. Yeah. So I was thinking about that in regards to rehearsals of letting it be what it is, let it be bad. And then in other areas of our life. Right now I feel like I'm struggling to keep up with everything. So this podcast does not need to be perfect in the way that I imagine it being perfect. I'm recording at night. It's 8 30 p.m. This is going live in like four hours. And that means it is dark in the room that I am in, and I usually don't like that because the lighting is poor. So for those of you who are on Patreon watching it, it's it's shitty lighting. There's gonna be swearing in this episode too. Here we are. And that's okay. It's okay. If it's not perfect. So there is something as I've started breaking down this for myself, that there's something freeing about letting things be not perfect and letting them be what they are. And what happens is you start calling back some of your energy that you then can put towards more and other and different things where it needs to go. And sometimes that's right back into that thing. And so that the next one can be, the next part of it is better. There's also something to say for the imperfections. The imperfections can make it even more enjoyable, whatever it is, whatever you're talking about in life, your whole life. I think when we think about ourselves and our imperfections and the things we don't like about ourselves, when we talk to people who love us and care about us, those are the things that they love. And so I just think it's an interesting thing to think about and maybe internalize for yourself if you're someone who struggles with perfectionism. And what I did today was I just had to make it be enough for me. And for me, that was get to the 10-minute mark. And I am at 11 and a half minutes now. And so I'm gonna be done. That was just a teeny little tidbit. I hope you enjoy it. I hope you take something away resonates with you a little bit, and maybe you can break down your perfectionism a little bit. You don't have to be perfect in breaking down the perfectionism either. That's also a thing. We just do a little bit every day. So I hope I'll see some of you at the gala this weekend. It's gonna be delightful. And if you have requests for future episodes, please hit me up, slide into my DMs. I am at In the Wings Aerial on all the social medias. You can find me, and on Patreon at In the Wings Ariel. And speaking of Patreon, thank you, thank you, thank you to my patrons. I could not do this without you. Your support means the world to me. Thank you for standing with me, even when I show up imperfect. I hope you have a beautiful week, and I'll see you next week. This has been the Ariel Alchemist. Now go create some magic of your own. Happy flying.