Si tu n'as pas d'espoir

So, yeah.

You know, I think I know better why Eddie Izzard uses that so much. It's so useful. I hate introductions with a fiery burning passion, they never come out right until you're halfway through what you're writing and then you know better what you're going to do, and you have to go back and redo it. This is an introduction to Courtesan School for Three Weeks for Dreamwidth, because I think Courtesan School is a good thing. A worthy thing. Whether you're doing it with the rest of us apprentice courtesans (no longer babies!) or on your own as some of our friends have mentioned they're doing, it's a good thing.

Courtesan School started two and a half years ago on Christmas Day. I was curled up in my apartment, which wasn't the bad part, I was happy to be there and not inundated by family up on the mountain. I was chatting online with a couple of friends, and we were all bemoaning our current state. Too fat, too lazy, too apathetic, too tired, too out of practice. Too this, too that. Not enough of this, that, or the other. And, like you do, I went "Well, fuck that" and decided I was going to make a change. And since all three of us were bitching at the same time (although not together, as they didn't know each other then) I decided we were all going to do it together. Misery and toil loves company, right? And it has been Scientifically Proven! By Science! that these things work better when you do them with friends. Or something. The point being, I didn't want to do this on my own, and I thought the accountability to other people would help. And so, evidently, did they.

So, over the course of several hours' worth of very punchy and hyperactive discussion, we set up a system. It was a very simple system at its base, though it had a lot of branches. Three questions: What do you want to do? Or be. I wanted to be a superhero. That was, and still is, how I think of it. I wanted to be fast, to be strong. I wanted to kick ass and take names. I spoke four languages already, although one was slipping out of my brain: I wanted to speak two more. And maybe more after that. I wanted to practice all the damn courtesanly skills, history knowledge, music, dancing, languages. To appreciate beauty within and without. The problem is, all these skills and abilities don't come with any sort of generic application plan. Which led to the next question.

What have you tried before, what stopped you? Sort of two questions in one, but the gist is the same. Why didn't this work before? We've all tried it before. Losing weight. Getting smart. I'd tried to study Russian before, but that didn't work out so well, I got a lesson or two in and then slacked off. We discussed this with each other, I think this was the biggest part of the discussion. How had we tried this before? What didn't work, that we knew of? Which leads naturally to question three, How are you going to do better in the future? We had to make adjustments. Figure out what we'd done wrong, and do it better. "Try again, fail again. Fail better." And don't give up.

So we started it. And in the beginning, we did blog about it a lot. Which led to other people going, hey, this sounds like a nifty idea. We should do it too. In the interests of full disclosure I will say, only one other person is still with us now. Either they couldn't spend as much time online as we did (we check in once a week and nudge each other up, help each other, and with ten or twelve people that's a lot of checking in and nudging!) or there were inter-group frictions, or they simply decided the time wasn't right for them. We blogged about it. We flailed around, looking for approaches that worked for us. We made a hell of a lot of mistakes that first year. Most of them, I think, came from trying too much too soon; we thought we could be superheros overnight. One training montage and BAM! You're ready for tights. It doesn't work that way.

The underlying structure we set up, though? That worked. The three questions, what do you want to do or be, why didn't it work before, what are you going to do to change it? all still apply. We do weekly check ins now, instead of when we think we have enough stuff to talk about; weekly check ins force us to evaluate regularly, whether or not we've made any progress, whether or not we feel confident enough to share with the group. It's not about confidence to share with the group, the group is there to help build your confidence. It's about keeping an eye on your progress, and making course corrections as necessary. Negative talk has its place, but no hopelessness. Negative talk happens in light of either a) venting, because we all need it (we have specific posts called "bitching posts" that function as the CS-specific equivalent of Primal Scream Therapy) or b) stating that something is a problem and asking for help with finding solutions. When we find something that works for us, we note it down and hang the hell onto it. Until it doesn't work anymore, which sometimes happens. We remember the baby steps we took initially, and sometimes we have to go back to them. Food logs. Reward points. We try and strip the shame or stigma out of words, actions, anything that it looks like we might need to further our goal. And we keep moving.

And after two and a half years, I think we've gotten pretty far. We've not only lost weight, we've lost the obsession with losing weight, not completely but most of the way. It's been replaced with getting fit and healthy to look and do how we want to look and what we want to do. We've dropped down from picking up all the skills ever that we ever wanted to do and figured out which ones fit us best, not just in terms of talent but also what is emotionally fulfilling for us. We've figured out what exercise patterns work best for us, instead of being a chore all the time. We've learned, most importantly, to pay attention to ourselves. To our surroundings. To be aware of the world both without and within and manipulate it or ride along with it to get to where we want to be. Maybe not as close all the time as we want, but close. A matter of both adjusting our actions and our expectations, balancing between what we can control and what we can only react to.

I said earlier that we didn't have a guidebook: that wasn't entirely true. Once we all settled on the idea of Courtesan School I gave us all a guidebook, a book I'd read years ago. It's called The Book of the Courtesans: A Catalog of their Virtues, and it's about the actual historical courtesans. Women (and a few men) of their ages who commanded attention, respect, and influence in a time when women had very little of it. They were beautiful, they were powerful, and they had strength and will that we aspire to and, hopefully, share.

The virtues this book speaks of are Beauty, Grace, Wit, Charm, Gaiety, Brilliance, and Timing, and we adopted these as our own aspirations. Beauty, because we all wanted to be beautiful. This wasn't just a matter of losing weight and learning how to put on makeup, though; this was a matter of learning what makes us beautiful, what makes us feel beautiful, and enhancing that. Doing more of that. Grace, not just the physical but also the grace to accept what comes our way and work within its flow to meet our goals. Wit, self-explanatory almost, but also the intelligence underneath the wit, to use it to our purpose rather than letting the snark have free reign. Charm, because while we none of us are social creatures we should at least be familiar with social graces whether on a group level or an individual; none of us live in a complete vacuum. Gaiety, because we are not here just to pass through time but to enjoy it. And we aren't making these changes for anything but ourselves. This is for us, for our pleasure because in order to give pleasure you have to be capable of it yourself. Brilliance, because we are all brilliant in our own way. I have a talent with languages and words, my friend has a talent both with crafts and music, and in organizing and managing people and things. And my other friend has a talent for joy, which is rare enough these days. And, of course, Timing. Because all of these virtues are good to have, but knowing when is just as important. When you're at your most active, when is not a good time to do a thinking task, when you need to go to bed, when you need to wake up in the morning, when you need to leave to be on time, when you need to stop and take a moment. When. Ripeness is all.

This isn't everything. The virtues isn't everything, even the method isn't everything, but this is the basic backbone of what we're doing in Courtesan School. The core curriculum, as it were, while we make up our own syllabi tailored to our individual wants and needs. I want to be a superhero. So I'm goddamn well going to put in the practice to become one. What you want to be, well, that's up to you. It's always up to you. That's the beauty of this core curriculum. It gives you the strength to do what you need to do, to be who you want to be, whatever that is. You just have to think about it, pay attention, and make the decisions, and do it. And by all means, keep moving.