Yes, this is the next time I'm going to sleep since the last post.

This comes from the middle of a Boston Globe article about the disappearance of dancing

Levitin, the neuroscientist, draws a parallel between people's dancing inhibitions and their discomfort with public singing. In the 1950s, he points out, "people would sit around and sing songs with a piano player. Now there's been a professionalization of singing as well." He suggests that is why we enjoy the first week of "American Idol" so much, because we can laugh at people who don't abide the new social norm: You don't perform in public unless you're really good. Increasingly, he said, we've come to think that way about all social entertainment.

I find the note about the professionalizing of past pastimes to be very much on the nose. And it makes me sad! So sad I bought Men Without Hats's "Saftey Dance" on iTunes instead of finding a way to get it free, like I normally would. (There was a pun/comment in the article that referenced it.)

This feeling that singing and dancing are a practice lost to the current generation fits neatly into my own striving for meaningful personal connections. Sitting around a piano with friends and loved ones, singing the songs that have been sung by families for generations doesn't sound like the beginning of a bad memory, nor does connecting to music and each other by moving to rhythms together.

These things are important to me, and I believe that this is a case in which I can be the change I want to see in the world. Maybe, along with my aspirations to be a successful writer/artist and competent yoga teacher, somewhere in there I'll gain the skills to give free dance lessons. And master Japanese. And French. And live in Iceland.

That list sounds a little over optimistic to be writing at the end of a day I didn't draw anything. Drawing is still at the top of my list. Too much of today was spent reading and sleeping. Reading good things that give me good thoughts, but still absorbing instead of producing (more than notes in my sketchbook).

I eternally ask myself, "When will you take the next step?" The reply usually comes, "What is the next step?"

The next step probably isn't building myself a study program of Japanese characters and Art History flashcards, but I'm doing that anyway.

The next step is definitely going to sleep.