Listen. I did a thing today that I want to tell you about.

I took a singing lesson. For the first time in 20 years. I like to sing. I’m a pretty good singer. (THREAD)

I took a lot of lessons in high school and college and I was a singing waitress for awhile and did some semi professional musical theater in Portland, Oregon.

So there’s an argument that I did not need a singing lesson and that is the argument I’ve gone with for the last couple of decades. But now there’s a pandemic and I often find myself wavering between intense anxiety and depression and despair.

When I get too anxious, I can’t write well or parent well so I am actively looking for things that help to counter the brain chemicals that cause me pain.

There’s a lot of neuroscience around singing releasing helpful brain chemicals. So I took a singing lesson.

The teacher asked me what I hoped to accomplish and I told him I’ve never been able to belt and I did not believe that he would be able to help me belt so I didn’t really have a goal except to sing.

And he told me about a whole new technique that has been invented since the time when I was last taking singing lessons.

And I am here to tell you that inside that one hour lesson I managed to belt like I never ever thought I could belt.

I very nearly burst into tears. I didn’t let myself because I wanted to keep going with the lesson and I worried I would scare the teacher. But my eyes were wet with tears of joy and wonder. And I have been joyful bordering on giddy ever since.

It’s the brain chemicals. And it’s the feeling of accomplishment. And it’s the feeling of having been brave enough to try something new and risk failure. And the feeling of having successfully harnessed joy for even a little while amidst the insanity of this moment in history.

And I’m sharing this with you because there is so much messaging in the world that suggests that we should just feel miserable all the time because people are dying.

But our misery does not help the people who are dying & it does not help the people who are trying to save the people who are dying. Doing things that lift us out of despair so that we can continue to be productive members of society and help and support each other does help.

So give money where you can and give time where you can and help everywhere and everyone that you can.

AND

Give yourself permission to sing. Or dance. Or learn something new.

There are all sorts of lessons for free all over the Internet. I hope you do something fun and new or something you love and haven’t done in a while and I hope you tell me about it on this thread. That’s it. That’s my frivolous, giddy thread.