I'm back, or am I?

Wow! Apparently it's been close to a year since my last post. They don't kid when they say time flies when you're having fun or even otherwise.

Before you decide to rubbish my excuses for not posting (I'm optimistically assuming that there is at least one person who checks this blog for updates), I think you might feel sympathetic when you hear what I've been doing with all that time.

I moved to Austin in 2006, and spent the better part of that year getting used to a new person, a new life and a new job. Needless to say, I didn't have much of a social life. Towards the end of that year, I decided that it was high time to build a social circle for myself, and begin my life in the US in earnest. I'm not one of those people who can make endless small talk, neither am I a fan of large groups.

After much thought I decided the best way to meet new people would be to take a class of some sort. But what? After going through a number of options in my head, I decided to go with something I was familiar with, and so began my effort to learn Bharatanatyam at the ripe age of 26. I have to admit I almost gave up every month, and would probably have thrown in the towel if not for my wonderful teacher, and a lovely Ivorian woman. Many aching limbs later, I began to see some progress and was encouraged to continue. Time went by and the adult class grew in strength. I now knew at least 6 wonderful people that I could call friends. My teacher created multiple opportunities for us to perform what we learned in class, so that we would be motivated to practice and get rid of our self-consciousness. The many practices resulted in all of us becoming a pretty close group.

Cut to 2010, I had fallen in love with art form, and wanted to make faster progress. I am most motivated by goals and so I decided that the only way I would put in the effort to get to a good standard was if I had to train for a performance, and approached my teacher with the idea of doing my Arangetram. She was incredibly supportive and so the end of 2010 and a better part of 2011 were spent training for the recital. (You wondered where I was going with this story, didn't you?). Anyway, I had my Arangetram on the 31^st of July in India, and my teacher was happy, so I'm happy!

In addition to this, I had also signed myself up for a theater production in 2010 where I had to look like this - poster, center. My mother was upset, my grandmothers horrified, and my father amused. This face didn't do great things for my marriage, but one simply cannot have it all. It also didn't do great things for a 5 year old who was petrified when I was on stage. Then, his father came to the conclusion that if he showed his boy that I was a real, normal person under the mask, all would be well. BIG mistake. When he was brought backstage, he erupted into a hysterical bout of crying until I begged his parent to take him away. I think I understand why my marriage was strained for a while there.

So, factor in rehearsals 3 days a week for the production, 5 days a week for my recital, throw in a healthy dose of work, housework and trying to appease the spouse for all the time I wasn't spending with him. Now tell me that I should also have blogged.