This morning, as planned, I dragged myself out of bed at 7:30 a.m. with the express purpose of torturing myself. Having long since abandoned my running but still in need of some kind of physical exercise, I decided to give ballet a try again.

I danced all through high school - even torturing my toes and hips and knees with pointe shoes for a little while - but gave it up in college in favor of music, a performing art in which I had an outside chance of earning a degree. It's not that I was a bad dancer so much as a lazy one. I knew I had no hope of ever becoming a professional. I didn't even want to go pro. But I did want to get good enough to dance on pointe and once I'd gotten that far - and discovered that it was, in fact, painful and therefore not actually very much fun - I gave it up.

There was also a time element there too. I was going to school full time, working part time and pretty much spending any other spare time I had in the practice room with the flute and/or piano if I wasn't sleeping. Money was an object too: when I was in college, ballet classes cost a minimum of $12 for 90 minutes. By contrast, sitting around on your ass eating Cheetos Puffs cost only $2.39 for a large bag that lasted roughly two days if full-on binging was not taking place. And in a very dire situation, I could take them with me to the practice room and nibble on a Cheeto in between scales. I'm sure the school's piano technicians wondered why the keys were often orange.

I've gone back to dance class on and off over the years since leaving high school but, by and large, I've not really been very dedicated. But after deciding that I simply didn't feel like running ever again, I sat myself down and said, "Zee, you've GOT to do something else, if only to stave off the boredom and/or depression that will no doubt ensue from spending your days working from home and doing endless online schoolwork." I really did say "and/or."