2011 and 2012

I didn't really make New Year's resolutions - or, as it seems to be fashionable to call them just now - annual goals for 2011.  I felt like 2010 had been a very full and challenging year, in particular with finally making a much-anticipated career change, and that I deserved a break.  In 2011, I wanted to just be.

So I was.  And, actually, the year was far from empty.  Here are some highlights:

• Work.  I got settled into my (not-so-) new (anymore) job.  This is the first time I've had a job that didn't have a pre-ordained expiration date, and the first time I've worked outside of academia, so it's been a big adjustment.
• Running.  I did a fair amount of it, including a half-marathon PR in Brooklyn in May and finishing the 2011 ING New York City marathon.  I'm still very slow and very weak, but I'm hella stubborn.  
• Travel.  I went to Costa Rica and took a cycling trip in Ireland.  I also visited family in San Diego and went to a wedding in Nebraska. 
• Social life.  I was a bit worried, at the end of 2010, that with the career change I'd drift apart from old friends and not make new ones.  And, yes, I did drift apart from some friends, but other friendships remained intact or even strengthened, and I've met some great new people. 

It's certainly not the massive list of accomplishments that some people post, but I don't think it's half bad.  This year I have some goals in these areas, as well as some new goals:

• Work.  The goal here is, really, to figure out what my goals are.
• Running.  I don't plan on running another marathon this year; it's such a massive investment of time and energy that I can't see doing it without severely compromising other objectives, which means not doing it all that often.  But I do plan on running several half-marathons, and I'd like to work on whittling down my time.  Not to be really fast - I doubt that's possible for me - but just to be, well, less slow.  If I were just 10-20% faster, I'd be able to run with (some of) my friends without holding them back, and go on group runs without worrying about keeping up, and my long runs would take less time, and I wouldn't be slower than practically every other person who runs in Central Park.  So I've been doing tempo runs and hills and giving (almost) every workout a purpose.  I've also signed up for weekly running classes specifically designed to target speed.  I realize I'll never be a speed demon (in fact, so far all the extra work seems to be making me slower and weaker), but I think it's worth investing some energy trying to improve myself in this department.
• Travel.  I haven't fully hammered this out yet.  I may go to Turkey in the spring.  I may visit friends in other cities.  I may visit friends in other cities to run half marathons with them. 
• Social life.  This year I want to focus on strengthening my connections.  When friends are just people you talk to once in a while, it's easy to drift apart.  When they're people you do things with, you have a more vibrant bond.  I have lots of friends in other cities - including some very cool cities, and I'd like to visit some of them.  I also plan to do more running with friends and in groups, which is part of why I'd like to be less slow.  And I'll look for other opportunities to build relationships based on something other than a shared affinity for wine / gossip / cupcakes.
• Cultural engagement.  There's only so much time in the week, and - especially in the last six months, as running and social engagements took up more of my time - I've had to drop some things.  I've been doing a lot of theater-going, which is good.  I'd like to resume attendance at the semi-serious book club of which I'm a delinquent member, which means acquiring and reading the books in a timely manner.  I'd like to go to the ballet several times and the opera occasionally.  I'd like to be less lazy in the things I read and watch at home, too - it's easy for me to come home and queue up the next episode of DS9 or scroll through the new posts in my Google Reader, and there's nothing wrong with that, but I want to make more time to engage with longer things - serious movies and books that aren't mindless-metro-chick-lit downloaded for a dollar.  In the last couple weeks I read Richard Russo's Bridge of Sighs, which I thought was only okay (it was hard to get a bead on the main character, and it didn't really come together in the end), but it was nice to have something to sink my teeth into.  This afternoon I'm watching Waitress, which is not as fluffy as I thought it would be; in fact it's a little bit scary and depressing, but that's probably the point
• Writing.  This is the final and most frightening goal.  I have a lot of resistance to writing properly.  It's easy to hammer out a blog post every so often - at times I've written them every day (not here, obviously).  It's harder to write - and revise! - something of substance.  But I want to do it, or more accurately I want to stick with it.  Especially with the emergence of Kindle self-publishing, it's easy for this sort of project to have an actual end goal.  There's some good stuff out there, and some real dreck, and there's no reason my writing shouldn't join all the other writing out in the world.

The (middling incoherent) Nutcracker Before Christmas

I saw The Nutcracker twice this year.  On Wednesday I went to Lincoln Center to see the Balanchine-choreographed New York City Ballet production, and earlier this evening I trekked to BAM for the American Ballet Theater version.

I like ballet, and I love Christmas, so The Nutcracker is one of my favorite annual traditions.  I've seen the Balanchine version every year since I came to the city.  I always enjoy it, and this year it was even better than usual because I had good company.  The production is full of familiar music and beloved characters and transcendent moments, and every year I notice different little details.  I was engrossed by the first act and thrilled by the second act and buzzing with happiness by the time I left.

The ABT version had a couple of strikes against it from the beginning: I had to go to Brooklyn, my theater companion was unavoidably detained, and the theater was full of young children and, worse, overtalkative hipsters.  Still, I was excited to see a familiar ballet in a new incarnation.

The first act was odd, but interesting.  Everything was a little bit more different than I thought it would be.  I knew the choreography would be totally different, and the costumes and sets.  I didn't realize, though, just how much of the story is open to interpretation.  In the NYCB version, Clara (the princess) and Fritz (her brother) are young children - maybe six or seven - and their antics read as playful gamboling.  In the ABT production, they're preteens - at least ten, possibly older - and their furious insistence on more and more gifts and rough fighting over the presents they receive is ... well, possibly it's social commentary, but also it's disturbing.

There were other disturbing things about the first act.  The godfather, always a bit of a menace, is a much more sinister presence.  I'd always read the family as bourgeois in a comfortable, homey way, but in this production they come off as rich.  Their house is more imposing, their servants more numerous and submissive.  The parents interact with their children less.  Everyone's costumes are very bright.  The godfather's son, who later becomes the Nutcracker and then the Prince, doesn't exist.  And the whole first scene is replaced.  In the NYCB production, Clara and Fritz are napping together while their parents decorate the tree in the other room.  They wake up and took through the keyhole, excitedly watching the tree come to life.  Their parents discover them and let them look at the tree before herding them off to dress for the party.  This presents an idea of family affection and togetherness which makes the conflict that follows less unpleasant.  

But in the ABT version, the first act starts with Clara and Fritz fighting and wreaking havoc with the cooks' party preparations, continues with the discovery of a mouse in the kitchen, and culminates with a troop of mice taking over the whole stage after the humans have left.  These mice - who play an important part in the plot - are not the harmless, comical, paunchy mice of the NYCB version.  They're adult-seeming, they wear suits, they dance like soldiers, and they are scary.

So the first act was not what I expected.  There were interesting things the NYCB version doesn't have - the first scene was actually quite well done, the godfather is a much clearer figure, and there's a very nice effect involving an oversized chair - but it was a bit disconcerting.  Still, I figured the second act has no plot and little action - it's just dancing - so it wouldn't be too much changed to an untrained eye like mine.

I was wrong.  Everything was changed.  There were some characters I hadn't seen before, and some familiar characters were changed almost beyond recognition.  The costumes were different, which I expected, but I mean they were *really* different.  They were... satirical.  The order of the dances was changed around.  But worst of all, the Sugar Plum Fairy - who in the NYCB version is a sort of fairy godmother - and her cavalier are, in the ABT version, a sort of future incarnation of Clara and the Prince.  They seem to actually become these creatures, who are both in love with each other and trapped in a land that doesn't really exist.  And then, when the play ends - this is the most heartbreaking moment - what is suppose to happen is that all the fairies have danced, and the Sugar Plum Fairy gives them her special blessing, and they fly away on a sled drawn by reindeer, back home where it is Christmas morning.  But what happens in this version is that Sugar Plum Clara and the grown-up Prince dance their sad duet, and then Clara wakes up in bed, alone, and the Nutcracker is just a doll, and it was all a dream, and Herr Whatever His Name Is looks through the window and laughs as Clara sobs into her pillow, and you forget that actually it's Christmas morning.

I don't want to say I didn't like this production.  It was interesting and well-executed and never boring.  It was probably very smart, too.  I'm told ABT productions are.  But I felt like it was, well, *too* smart.  It seemed to be taking the piss out of the real (by which I mean Balanchine) Nutcracker story, and even more of Christmas itself.  I know as a Jewish person I have limited knowledge of what Christmas is about, but I'm pretty sure it's not about taking the piss out of things.  In fact, to me Christmas *is* the Balanchine Nutcracker - joy and family and, yes, consumerism, lights and snow and pretty colors and uncritical wonderment.  The fantasy that the world is, underneath, beautiful and magical, that there's a part of reality where everyone is special and loved, that every little girl can access this reality, and that when the world seems most terrifying - the tree grows, the mice stage a battle against you and your toys - you're just one brave act (throwing a shoe, in this case) away from discovering the hidden beauty of everything.  But the ABT version seems to be exactly the opposite: life may seem to be harmless parties and present-giving, but beneath this is a roiling terror of class warfare and undisciplined fears and unknown hatreds; sexual maturity and the attendant politics are inevitable; even your fantasies can provide no escape.  All of this is perhaps true, and in some ways it's very impressive what ABT has done, how terrifying they've made a ballet that I always thought was delicate and childlike.  It's not a bad show.  But it's not a good Nutcracker.

On not winning Nanowrimo

I have written 26,241 words of a novel this month.  In order to "win", I have to get to 50,000 by midnight on Wednesday, a pace of nearly 4,000 words per day.  This is most likely not possible because in the next six days I have commitments with family and friends and my job, so I most likely will not win.  Except that I'll have written 30,000 words that I wouldn't have written otherwise, and found a story I didn't know I had.

The nanowrimo website has a little graphic showing you how many words you wrote each day, and that graphic is highly informative in my case.  The daily goal for nanowrimo is 1,667 words.  There were days I wrote 3,000 or 4,000 words.  There were days I wrote 1,000 or 2,000 words.  There were days - stretches of them, five or ten in a row - in which I wrote 0 words, and those days were what got me behind.  I would look at my goal up to that point - 26667 words for example - and my progress - say 18741 - and I would see a gulf too big to be crossed, and I wouldn't pick up the (metaphorical) pen.  And then the next day the goal would be 28333 words and my progress would still be 18741, and the gulf would be even bigger.

Writing 1667 words a day can be tough.  I can do it in an hour if I put my mind to it, but I don't always have an hour, especially an hour when I'm wide awake and undistracted.  But 500 words a day is easier, it would only take 15 or 20 minutes and they might be higher-quality words.  If I did that every day, I'd get 15,000 words a month - about half what I'll probably do in November - and I could write a novel in a year.

thankful thursday, thanksgiving edition

1. I'm thankful that I could take time off work - paid vacation during which I don't have to even check my work email - to visit my family.
2. I'm thankful I had some time alone with my parents before my brother and his girlfriend came.  I like them and was happy to see them, but sometimes it's nice not to have to share.  My father went out for several hours yesterday and my mother and I had a bonding-and-giggle-fest.
3. I'm thankful that I wasn't seriously injured running the marathon, and that I'm a basically healthy and fit person.  Running has been hard for me the past couple of weeks, but I had a short run yesterday and another short run today and I'm starting to feel pretty decent.
4. I'm thankful I don't have any food allergies or dietary restrictions and can enjoy a meal prepared by other people without asking what's in everything.
5. I'm thankful I live in a city so awesome that everyone watches it on TV every Thanksgiving morning.
6. I'm thankful I have a good job in that city, and good friends.
7. I'm thankful for all the great theater I've gotten to see this fall, and for my upcoming plans to see The Nutcracker twice.

This week I went to see two plays, Man and Boy and All-American.  Both were good and worth seeing (the former a bit more so).  It was nice, although I'm getting a tiny bit burned out on two plays a week (which is fine, since I don't think I have any more theater tickets for the immediate future).

Today I attempted to do my long run.  I'd been doing okay with the active recovery thing, I guess.  Saturday I did yoga, on the grounds that it is good for you.  Monday I attempted to run on the treadmill, and did not die, although I did have to take a long break to lift weights in the middle of my three mile run, which I thought was fairly pathetic.  Wednesday I went to spin class.  Thursday I did more yoga.  Friday I went to another running club workout, which was amazing.  The guy in charge of it is borderline-scary.  We did a progression run (= torture instrument) and then ran up and down Cat Hill, which is a largeish hill in Central Park, and by some miracle I did not faint or die.  Today I wanted to do a long run.  The guy in charge of running club said I should do an easy run, and I said I wanted to run six miles, and he said I would probably not be able to, and I thought (very stupidly) "of course I will be able to!".  This morning I felt pretty bad - my legs did not actively hurt the way they did on Saturday but they were not thrilled with the concept of standing up - but I set out for the run anyway.  Somehow in my (stupid) mind I had decided I would run eight miles rather than six (stupid, stupid) and also that I would run an out and back rather than a loop.  This seemed like a good idea in that it would force me to not bail out anytime after the halfway point.

The run started out rough, and did not improve.  It was warmer than I'd thought, and all the water fountains in the park were turned off for the winter, which I hadn't foreseen.  By 2.5 miles in, I was suffering.  I felt bad but not horrible at the turnaround, but I was struggling by the time I got to the 5.5-mile mark.  At this point I bought some water, which I thought would revive me and help me finish strong, but did not.  I resumed running, but my speed at this point was dismal - really, I'd gone from "very slow run" to "fast but highly inefficient walk" to "not very fast but highly inefficient walk".  I had no energy.  All of a sudden a grassy spot appeared and, without even thinking about it, I collapsed in a heap.

I decided it would not be a good idea to resume running after that.  Generally speaking, if I feel that I need to lie down, it probably means that my body is done running for the day.  Of course, I still had to get home, which was about a two-mile walk at that point - luckily the weather was nice, but my legs were pretty beat up (from what?  sleeping all morning?).  Worse, I felt terrible emotionally. True, I ran about six miles, which was the originally-planned length of the run, and which the much-smarter-about-running-than-me running club guy said I wouldn't be able to do.  But it's not a nice feeling to bail out in the middle of something, even if it was something I probably shouldn't have attempted.  And I'm supposed to be running a 15k in four weeks - I'd been hoping to be fully recovered and working on upping my speed by then, but now it's looking like I'll be very lucky if I can get in one proper long run before that.  I know I need to be patient, and that the 15k isn't really important, especially relative to recovering fully, but it's hard.  Plus, I've felt sick and yucky the whole rest of the day, not capable of doing much besides lying on my couch and being pissed off at how stupid television is.

Maybe my legs will be all fixed and ready for a nice long run tomorrow?

This week I have mostly attended plays and thought about running.

The first play was Suicide Incorporated, which was not very good for a Roundabout production, although that still puts it in about the 75th percentile of all theater. It was very well-acted and there were some funny parts and some affecting parts, but there were also a lot of places where it reminded me of something I would have seen, or written, in college.  The second play was Venus in Fur, which was very good.  Supposedly it has a lot to say about power in relationships, although mostly I thought it was very absorbing and featured some phenomenal voice work.  Also I ate at Maoz, which is rapidly becoming my new obsession now that I have run out of people willing to be dragged to Balade.

I didn't run much.  Apparently one is supposed to take some time to recover after the marathon.  I have opted for "active recovery", which means I walked two miles Monday (I could not run; in fact, walking was a challenge), did yoga at home on Tuesday, went to spin class on Wednesday, did no exercise on Thursday, went to running club (more on that below) Friday, and went to yoga class today.  My legs actually feel pretty good (although I think  I am a bit congested in the nose-and-throat region), which suggests I did not run hard enough in the marathon.

About running club.  So, I am filled with ideas about how to become a better runner: get a Garmin, take Jackrabbit classes, run twice a day, etc.  There is a running club at my office that meets Fridays, and I had not been going because (a) it requires leaving before my usual time, (b) I'd have to plan ahead and bring running clothes to work, (c) everyone else is a faster runner than me, and (d) I am a wimp.  Yesterday I decided those were bad reasons, and I went.  Everyone was really nice, even though I was the slowest runner there (albeit only out of six).  The guy who runs the club is an incredible athlete and longtime 3-hour marathoner who seems to really enjoy helping other runners improve.  He gave me lots of advice, some of which (about speedwork and hills and so forth) I will take, and some of which (about becoming a twig so that I can run faster, or something) I will ignore.  We ran about five miles, plus did some drills.  I've never done drills before, and apparently this shows in my form, as I don't pick up my knees, which means it is basically impossible for me to run at a reasonable pace.  I did the meat of the workout (the 3.4 miles in between warmup and drills) at about an 11-minute mile pace, which is by no means fast, but is pretty close to my normal running-in-the-hilly-park pace.  I can feel it in my legs today, probably more than I would if I hadn't just run the marathon, but I'm still pretty pleased about my recovery.

last week

1. Drinks at Ayza.  Actually, wine and cheese and chocolate-covered strawberries at Ayza.  The Girls' Night Out deal is amazing - you get a free chocolate-covered strawberry and a free shot of chocolate martini each, which was a great deal (free is always a great deal, especially when it's free chocolate) and also accomplished the presumed goal of making me want to go back and buy a whole chocolate martini.  Also they gave us coupons for more free chocolate at their new location in the West Village.
2. Dinner at Bianca, a tiny, noisy Italian restaurant downtown.  Good food at very reasonable prices.  But I don't think I'd go back - it's far away, and while the food was good, the wine was bad, and the chocolate dessert was overly sweet and not sufficiently chocolatey (and I'm not one of those 80% dark chocolate freaks... it was a* dessert even a boy would like).
3. Brunch at Josie's with the parental units.  Turns out an organic diner on the Upper West Side is a very odd place to eat with parents. 
   
4. The ING NEW YORK CITY MARATHON.  This is the most awesome race ever.  Or at least I thought it was for the first half.  The level of enthusiasm at the start is astounding - the sheer size of the race, the fact that you're starting on this huge amazing bridge, the people around you who came from all over the world to participate in the event.  And then there's singing about America (they only do the anthem for the first start, I assume), and then the announcer says, "Marathoners, the city awaits you.  The world awaits you."  Which any New Yorker knows is two repetitions of the exact same thing.  And the gun goes off, and they play "New York, New York", and you're not moving yet because there are ten thousand people in front of you, but everyone's singing and dancing and just fidgeting to be off.  The first half of the race - entirely in Brooklyn - was just incredible.  I had no trouble with speed - in fact, I was so distracted by the scenery and the spectators that the miles just flew by - and the runners were all going at the same pace.  I hit the half at 2:30:19.  Then I had to make a pit stop and wait in a long line right around the halfway point, and that kind of broke the spell (and caused my muscles to tighten up).  I walked on the uphill of the bridge to Queens, and Queens itself felt kind of sloggy, and then I ran up the hill of the Queensborough bridge but when I got to the top I felt very unhappy.  Coming down the hill into Manhattan was supposed (according to others) to be the highlight of the race, but I was mostly filled with a sense of exhaustion and desolation.  First Avenue is really wide, and it seemed like this endless desert that I was going to have to run on for a zillion miles (actually only about four), and then run around in the Bronx, and then run all the way back.  This is where my mental game slipped, and around mile 17 or 18 I started taking longer and more frequent walk breaks.  Up until then I'd only been walking at water stations and the one bridge, but I took a few unscheduled walk breaks of varying lengths, and when I was running I was not running fast.  The worst part about all of this was really my attitude - I was not happy about the walking, and that made me unhappy about the race, and that made me feel more tired and want to walk more.  And then we got to the Bronx, which is basically just two bridges connected by a narrow stretch of featureless asphalt (seriously, I remember almost nothing about that borough, even though I think we were in it for two miles), and then back into the city.  I was toddling along, not happily but anyway not really getting any slower (at this point I was at a 14-15 mile pace, which is amazing because I was actually running about 3/4 of the time, which means my run was basically a very fast and inefficient walk).  Finally I got to the 23-mile mark, where a friend was waiting for me (all my other spectating friends had long ago gone home) and told me that, actually, I was not going to die on the course.  This gave me the energy to continue running, and from then on I didn't take any walk breaks except at the 24-mile water station.  In fact, I picked up my pace significantly for the last 1.5 miles (at least, it felt significant... in fact, I ran the last 1.2 miles in around 14 minutes so I was not exactly a speedster, but I'll take it) and finished feeling strong.  My chip time was 5:33:00, which is actually about two minutes faster than my long-ago Raleigh marathon time.  The most bizarre thing is, one day later, barely able to walk, I'm already planning my next race.