It was summer and I was standing outside with a group of people, which my friend Larissa had just met a week ago. She convinced me to go to this party, because he did not want to go alone. I thought about that awkward situation, when that one acquaintance at the party is suddenly talking to someone else, and then the only way to kill the time is to stare at the phone. I didn't want her to go through that, so I dressed up and came by. The people were lovely, and I think while I was locked up at home, working my 60h weeks, I missed a trend.
Apparently, the newest thing is to dance salsa and merengue. I presume it is a way to meet women, there is close body contact, without the whole "can I come a little closer" reasoning behind it. It's all under the topic of "dancing".
The crowd moved from the bar to a more spacious area in town, with grass and some stairs. Someone brought a boom box and a Latin Mix Spotify playlist. Couples start to form and off they go.
I am not a huge fan of Latin dances, because of the pandemic, I feel like being too close to someone I barely know is kind of bizarre. I have rhythm and I know a couple of steps, but if the guy knows what he is doing, then I can sort of keep up. 3 songs in, I am curious, and I ask the tallest guy there, if I could dance with him. We dance, but somehow the steps I learned 10 years ago have changed so much, and now Salsa is a mix between Kizomba and Bachata, at least that's how it looks to me. I have a friend who is very much into Salsa at the moment, and there is this one move which I see her dance quite a bit. The guy takes her shoulders, and with his knee in between her knees, he makes her do a sort of body roll.
My tall dancer, also "made" me do that move. It was bizarre to give someone so much control.
I couldn't help but wonder: How much had I become a boss of myself and everything around me, without even knowing?
At my current job, my boss is male, and unfortunately, I do not have a team. I am the lowest in the food chain (once again, so much for finally shattering that glass ceiling) and I have to do all the tasks my boss doesn't have time to do, or doesn't want to do.
However, every time he asks me to do something, because mostly it is part of my job description, I ask him why, and what it is for. It is always a very purpose driven conversation, in the end I do the task as asked, or sometimes I change it, because I came up with a better way of solving the issue at hand. Never in the past year have I had that feeling of someone is making me do something, and I had nothing to say about it.
This encounter made me realize that in my 30s, I have grown to be a person who thinks for herself, who questions tasks, and proposes alternatives. And it made me proud.
So yes, you can be the boss, even if you don't have subordinates.
Photo by Roberto Nickson
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