But unlike many dance students, I allowed that rigid form of self-discipline to metastasize[5] to other areas of my life. I sadly counted calories—so automatically that, after a time, anytime food went in, a number instantly flashed in my mind. Once I went off to college, I counted the days until vacation, when I could see my boyfriend from high school again, thinking “25½, 25½, 25½” as I walked across the quad, sometimes even drawing half a line through the calendar back in my dorm room once it was one o’clock in the afternoon—pretty much the opposite of the then popular mantra “Be here now.”[6]
Occasionally this counting worked to my advantage. I calculated my GPA and counted my semesters on the dean’s list, using the numbers to spur me on to greater things.[7] But I sweated far too much if a grade fell below a certain standard, and thus keeping track devolved[8] into self-punishment. When my husband and I first set out to start a family, and had more than a few bumps in the beginning, I became a mathematician of self-torture.[9] Months gone by, years gone by. My friends with children, their children’s ages. My own age creeping upward.
Some time after my daughter was finally born, I realized I had to try to stop counting. Counting had become close to impossible at a time when I could barely manage simple tasks, like showering and sleeping and getting a newborn—or myself—dressed and out of the house. Moreover, life was getting gummed up by my perpetual equations: Was a gym membership worth it, I wondered, if I could get there only one day a week instead of my usual five?[10] If I didn’t write for four hours a day, was I abandoning my career as a novelist? (Even if I was now spending those four blessed hours with my beautiful child.) My attempts to quantify[11] everything weren’t serving me or my work or my baby.
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