Beach boy

It started with a book by Joe Dispenza. Apparently, by 35, your personality is basically a set of habits on repeat. Pauline did the maths in dog years. She’d been on autopilot for years. This is bad.

Determined to fire old neurons and wire new ones, Pauline decided to become a completely different dog.

She bought a tutu, a water bottle that said Becoming Her, and signed up for twelve weeks of ballet. Her first class confirmed several things. She couldn’t balance, couldn’t bend, and had no particular interest in improving either. Discomfort meant growth, so she kept showing up. Before long, she was starting sentences with “As a dancer…” and “I’m learning to listen to my body.” Her body, meanwhile, had been saying no since the warm-up.

Her enthusiasm for her new identity grew by the week. Her enthusiasm for ballet did not. One question kept coming back: Do I have commitment issues, or do I just fucking hate ballet? She genuinely couldn’t tell. Her intuition and resistance were using identical language.

After twelve weeks, her instructor asked if she’d like to continue. Pauline took a week to overthink it. After reading several books about fear of commitment, she signed up for another twelve weeks—and a six-week course on learning to trust her intuition.

Pauline is fully committed to finding out whether she has commitment issues.