Blythely Dancing

[I'm using this habit tracker and also year & monthly planner templates from www.atiliay.com] Wow, what a month of accomplishment it has been already! I  obtained my freelance Arbeitsvisum (hooray! I can stay and work!), applied for a tax number so that I can invoice the companies I freelance with, started teaching ballet officially at Tanzschule Tanzraum and Tanzstudio Odenthal , began my Volkshochschule (VHS) A1.1 Deutschkurs, and took yoga classes in German at Yoga Loft. I'm so glad I've already found some dance-loving, hardworking students to teach ballet, and I've learned so much from them already. Ela and I have even started taking West Coast Swing together at Tanzraum. There has been lots of paperwork & bureaucracy, but also lots of growth, and tons of fun! On a personal note, I’ve been building consistency with my yoga and meditation practice, gratitude, writing (morning pages), publication (blog), making new friends, and still cultivating friend...

Last year, when I was just getting to know my girlfriend Ela long-distance having met in Cologne in the summer, she went on a beautiful bicycle journey with her stepdad’s family, the Wassers, and I enviously looked on. Turns out they do a tour every year, rotating the planning to different family members each time, and the destination is a surprise to all but the organizers. Once we officially began dating, I hoped that I would have the opportunity to join in the future, and indeed, I did! The Radtour was as glorious as I had dreamed of, everyone welcoming towards me and the cycling delightful! My “new” bicycle is an 80’s silver Hercules which we got out of the basement, one of Ela’s ex-girlfriends brother’s cycle corpses collected there in years past. We tuned “Herc” up for the mission with a bath, lubed chain, new tires, and a new saddle and she performed beautifully. I got to put my rusty-but-recovering bicycling skills to the test! I do love to ride and this was my...

Somehow Friday the 13th has always been a positive, good-luck day for me. Maybe it’s my anti-superstitious, contrary nature, but I find that good things tend to come on this day. Well, and most days, since I’m also positive by default. But this blog is to uphold my commitment to checking in weekly on my habits and adventures.  How are my habits going? I have tried various methods of tracking this year, including hard copies (pictured) as well as the Coach.me app for a few months, which was convenient, but not as motivating for me.  What I know about making commitments is that life has a way of jumping up to interrupt. In this case, there was the bicycle tour that I was so looking forward to over the weekend, and after that I came up with a cold and then started up with my German course (more on that soon!) as well as my teaching schedule. So a look at my visual tracker is a peek at a profoundly human experience. It isn’t perfect! But it’s still motivating me to get b...

I have always loved Back to School. After a nice relaxing summer holiday of sunshine, reading, artistic input, inspiration, and travel, having taken time to reflect and assess my goals, I look ahead to a productive autumn leading into celebratory holidays and a fresh new year! Reflection is an important part of my process to ready myself for the coming season, and I enjoy checking in at least several times each year: at the New Year, my birthday (conveniently 6 months later), and then in August/September before the final push.  Having completed my teaching credentials in secondary education/dance and English this spring, and moved abroad this summer, this fall I go back to school for the German language as part of my assimilation effort here in Cologne. Of course, I’m always studying many topics and taking steps on various projects. This Autumn, I’m also back to my blog, and the goal is to check-in here once a week, more for myself than public consumption, although...