I blame it all on Ethan Levy.

I’d noted Dork Dancing with approval a few times, driving along the beach road between 5 and 6 on my way to or from this or that.  The freedom of it, the abandon, the abnegation of that self-conscious restraint so deeply imprinted upon the psyche of most of us humans that we’re barely ever conscious enough of it to examine it, I admired what those dorks were exemplifying.  But stop and participate?  Naw.  I’m good.

Then, somewhere somehow, I stumbled across and read Ethan’s blog.  The why of it.  The mission behind it.  The backstory.  It connected, hard and deep.

And then I ran into him again.  Some music or art event, I don’t even remember.  I saw him standing with a couple friends of mine, and I walked up to him.  He stuck out his hand and I ignored it and I grabbed him in a completely autonomic bear hug.  I heard my friends giggle as the air whooshed out of his lungs, and I let him go, and I knew in that instant that I could tell this man anything.  

So I did.  We sat down and I gave him my own [necessarily] abbreviated account of my own life-long battle with anxiety and depression.  He just listened.  He does that.  Like no-one else you’ve ever met, he does that.  

I told him I’d see him at Dork Dancing.  

I was fortunate.  I have a 6-year old daughter.  Perfect justification for doing something completely unfamiliar and awkward and goofy.  I took her with me.  We danced, on the wide sidewalk along the beach, completely sober in broad daylight, we danced.  Damn if it wasn’t kind of fun.  Fun enough that we went back again, and then again.  We became Dork Dancers.  

The effects were subtle at first.  I can’t imagine doing it even once without being struck by the realization that the chains of normative, conventional social behavior are imaginary.  Turns out that you can dance on a sidewalk in the daytime if you feel like it.  If you’re the type that’s predisposed to think a little too much, you might follow the implications of that in your mind for a bit.  But it’s the doing that does.  And it builds.  

Session after session, as I danced with my new dork compatriots, something about shedding those normative chains, just putting them down for a little while and dancing without concern for anybody’s opinion on it, something about that activity that I’m not sure that I’ve fully analyzed in my own thoughts [and for sure don’t really need to], began to impact me in a way that wasn’t at first articulable, but was soon undeniable.  

It was odd.  The howling interminable gale of my social anxiety eased up a little.  The constant daily barrage of viciously negative self-talk I’ve lived with for most of my life began to fade.  As I write this, I realize I haven’t said a single nasty thing to myself about myself today.  Which is, in the subjective context, utterly bizarre.  But I guess the connection between dancing in happy oblivion to the world’s opinion and a developing sense of self-acceptance isn’t that difficult to draw.

Then one day, I caught myself asking someone close to me for specific help in support of my mental health.  I had, and have, no specific recollection of that ever happening before.  It was an arresting moment, a happy shock.  Maybe a turning point.  And I knew, without any doubt, that it wouldn’t have happened without Dork Dancing.  

I have more fun now, going to music shows in Da Nang’s extraordinary music scene and dancing.  I can be the only one in the bar dancing, I couldn’t care less.  How ya like me now?  Look at my butt.  LOOK AT IT.  Or don’t.  You do you.  I’m here.  Doing me.

At times I feel a strange sensation, some somatic control relinquishing its hold and my body moving as my body moves.  I suspect I’ve gotten a glimmer of what I’ve heard called “ecstatic dance”.  I know to a certainty that I got that glimmer due to Dork Dancing.  And I know to a certainty that the journey is only beginning.  

 “I’m a junior Dork, but a profoundly grateful one.  This practice has impacted me in a profoundly positive way, and I had no expectations of any kind when I began it.  I can’t explain it with any precision or fullness.  All I can do is offer you my personal and very sincere invitation:  do yourself a favor.  Come Dork Dancing.” 

To learn more about Quinn’s story, where he advocates openly for others and mental health, read his piece “Anhedonia”

(highly recommended)