Cee

10Dance + text posts.

Simple example: I need to shower, eat food, and go to grocery store. I'm hungry and don't have energy to cook, so the easiest food option would be to get a deli item at the grocery store. But I want to shower before leaving the house. But I don't have energy to shower without eating first.

It feels very silly to get stuck on such a minor dilemma for as long as I have! But there are times I've spent hours looping through this list, trying and failing to start it anywhere. And the only way out, I find, is to manually override it: to catch it happening and say, fuck it! I can go to the grocery store stinky! It's fine!!

It could be considered a subset of perfectionism, because the override very much involves hitting yourself with the idea that it's ok to do things suboptimally. But it feels like it comes from a slightly different place. As someone who struggles with executive function, I get myself through a lot of tasks by trying to optimize to the smoothest, lowest-friction way through. The task order that minimizes having to do any step more than once, or having to remember too many things at a time. If I can arrange my tasks just right, sometimes I can get one task to cover part of the work of doing another! And if I can put my tasks in an order that feels natural and ideal, I can lower the energy of activation it takes to get moving. And, sometimes, avoid the choice paralysis of not being able to pick a task out of a list of equal priority.

Except that, obviously, sometimes the optimization process throws up glitches of its own. There's the closed loop I described, and there's also another catching point where a task I have the mental energy and wherewithal to do gets stuck behind a task that's too big/intimidating/difficult to tackle. For example: I just sent some emails I've been procrastinating on for over a month, because I need to set up a new email address, and I was telling myself it'd be better to get that set up before I contacted people, because it would save me the hassle of dragging a bunch of conversations over to a new account when I did get it set up. I still haven't made the other email! But I realized that hypothetical future hassle was not worth the delay of not sending those emails for as long as it's going to take to actually get my brain together to figure out a new email service.

Surprisingly, doing something like this often actually makes the difficult task I was stuck on easier! Another thing I struggle with is a flinch reaction from tasks that are both pressingly important, and unapproachable to do. The more I need to do a task immediately, the more stressed and overwhelmed and self-recriminating I get about the fact that I don't know how to even start doing it. It gets so bad I can't even think about it directly - I think about the general shape of it, flinch, and divert my attention so I don't panic.

And when I've got a minor, pressing task stuck behind a big nebulous scary task, it presses the unapproachable task forward, makes it urgent, and that makes it harder to figure out how to do. If I can get around it, and do the actually pressing task in some contrived way that pushes some miscellaneous messy consequences forward, it takes pressure off the big task. And then I can actually think about it, without panicking, which makes it possible to actually work on doing it.

That last point also often applies to asking for help. I have a weird hangup here: I find it excruciatingly difficult to ask for help if I haven't at least *started* the thing I need help with. Which gets into the same dynamic: I have a big unsorted task I can't think about directly without panicking, or the path of steps to doing it that I've managed to figure out starts with one I can't make myself tackle, so I'm stuck doing nothing with no way in. Asking for help means admitting to someone that there is going to be mess, that I can't tackle the problem in the optimal front-to-back way so there's going to be inconvenient problems generated in some of the steps that will have to be dealt with at other steps, and some of that inconvenience might be to people other than me!! But just managing to say this, to admit this upfront, is sometimes enough to cut the gordion knot of not being able to start anywhere.

right off the bat you are slapped in the face with these two scenes, cementing early on the overall personality of the shinyas. where sugiki is suffocating himself and his partner behind their perfect facade, suzuki is perfectly at home in an unbuttoned shirt (you're going to see lots of those, btw).

during their first 'interaction', suzuki is the one initially wearing a turtleneck. and this is about the only time you see him wearing one during a performance, perhaps indicative of his unwillingness to give his all while dancing, hence why he has that specific outfit on as he denies sugiki's request at first as well. but then, once he changes into his usual outfit, he agrees to walk toe to toe with sugiki. we see that sugiki is now the one sporting a turtleneck, and in my opinion it indicates that though sugiki approached suzuki, he's still very much on guard and eager to use this relationship for professional gain only. not to mention, suzuki explicitly asks whether sugiki will run away without fully investing in their deal.

sugiki hardly changes his practice attire. always the same suffocating prim & proper clothes. suzuki, though? changes quick as lightning. take this for example :

he starts off with a loose buttoned up shirt as he enters this new atmosphere, which comes off entirely once he's in HIS element, and comes back on when they're back to practicing ballroom (though this time it stays unbuttoned as he eases into it).

hah, the most sugiki will let you see is an open collar apparently. also, rare suzuki in turtleneck sighting! why, you ask? because he's adamantly refusing to look at their practice through the eyes of the 'female' position. aaaand would you look at that, once he does, he's back to being half naked in the immediate next shot.

sugiki has his defences high as per usual, but suzuki is on edge too. the completely buttoned up ('neat') look in a place where he's being schooled versus the immediate change once he's in his comfort zone™. no changes in sugiki, though, unfortunately.

once again, an open outfit for suzuki as he explains how he can feel all these emotions while partnered up with sugiki, as he picks up a call from the person in question and asks him to "come back soon", in sharp contrast with sugiki's professional facade in place yet again.

okay, lots of quick and fascinating changes here. so, suzuki shows up with his classic loose shirt, switches to a more covered but still somewhat open one, switches AGAIN to a turtleneck while he's quite literally frowning at their interlocked hands (a denial of feelings?), and then he's back to a mostly open top as he and sugiki have a serious conversation. sugiki, once again, stays in his same old outfit.

and just as i say that sugiki hits me with the open collar while they....do whatever bizzare intimate dancing ritual they're upto this time. the open collar that, in the next scene, is back to usual when he dances with aki. suzuki, interestingly enough, has a turtleneck in both scenes. more denial? jealousy? much to consider. he goes back to the usual though, once he messes up again, but is open to actually asking aki how he can improve this time.

a jacket that's partially zipped up as suzuki sort of reluctantly goes over to sugiki, who's our 'quick changer' of the night. he starts off with that scarf (?) wrapped quite securely around him, which he then sheds as he divulges what he did to fusako, and then he's wearing it again, except this time it's not as tightly wrapped because he's putting some small amount of trust in suzuki by asking him not to mention this incident again. but it's so lame, and once that hits him, what does he do? he throws it away. he sheds his fucking armor before he kisses suzuki.  before he tells suzuki that he's always admired him.

welp. we're back at it again.

suzuki has not only ditched the turtleneck in his performance, his outfit is deliberately MORE exposed. not to mention similar enough that it gives sugiki flashbacks to the first time he saw suzuki, that same 'spark', so to speak. sugiki's wearing the expected turtleneck in the flashback but once he sees suzuki, he pulls at it. his facade is, quite literally, choking him. killing him.

this time it's really done for. suzuki laid himself bare in front of sugiki, and it was not returned. here's what i love most though :

he doesn't hide. he doesn't stuff it back inside. the clothes stay loose. this is the difference, i think, that is highlighted beautifully. the point of this post, if you will. sugiki never FULLY opens up. even when he sheds those turtlenecks or scarves he still has his uptight formal clothes as a shield. on the opposite end, once suzuki is over denying things, he will never pick that shield up again. he'll stay vulnerable, and there's so much strength in that.

϶—T÷h÷a÷t÷s÷A÷G÷o÷o—d—P o

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so it begins.

Come back soon, okay?

🥰🥰

"Do you feel like a princess?"

Machida Keita × Takeuchi Ryoma - 10DANCE Mission