Maybe next year!

My mother's acquaintances are not keeping it a secret that they believe New York deserves to crumble from a plague—because of the dirty way we live and because we're all in debt and because we think we're better than everyone else even though we're dirty and in debt. Hard to agree, exactly, but I do think we're better than everyone else. 

I would say "just kidding," but I'm not!

I mean, in general. About me, specifically, I am kidding. I would be nothing without New York and I don't believe I am contributing to it in kind. I recently spent an entire day in bed watching Vince Vaughn movies and eating blood oranges my friend Julia mailed me from California the day before she lost her job. I joined a mutual aid Slack group and then asked 100 questions instead of reading the easy-to-find on-boarding documents. I took a free enneagram test that said I act altruistically so that other people will notice and say "you're a good person," but pretty much all I do is rewatch Vanderpump Rules. I'm also reading Dune because a boy asked me to. And who knows how long that will last—it's definitely easier to read a book when you already know who's going to play the main characters in the movie, but it also seems like it's going to be about religion.

The only thing I'm doing with what you could call intent and joy is listening to Meredith Rogers, of PilatesAnytime.Com, which I do almost every day. 

Here's the deal with Meredith.

I signed up for a free trial of PilatesAnytime.Com the day most people in New York stopped going anywhere. Three days later, I was having a mental breakdown in a Comfort Inn in Reno, having failed to work up the nerve to cancel a reporting trip and having chosen to lock myself in my hotel room with a gas station sandwich and a Stella Artois tallboy as soon as my interview was over. I sent 25 texts to each person I knew, then laid several bath towels down on the floor, searched for a video that required no equipment at all, and found her: Meredith Rogers of PilatesAnytime.Com. She told me some things to do with my body for 45 minutes and then I was able to stop crying long enough to Slack my editor in a normal way. It is very easy for me to develop a bond.

Not to be gross, but I have yet to watch a single video made by any of the other instructors on the site—of which there are dozens—and I also don't watch the videos in which Meredith is joined by other people. I only watch Meredith alone. Is this scary for Meredith? I don't imagine she reads blogs!

Meredith is fantastic. Meredith will tell you to do something and then say "That doesn't make any sense." Or she'll do something complicated with her body and then say "I'll give you a second to make sure your pants are pulled up." Sometimes, when Meredith is teaching Pilates alone in a large, clean room in California, the Amtrak Pacific Surfliner train—which runs between San Diego and San Luis Obispo—will cross in the window behind her. I learned from a PilatesAnytime.Com interview that Meredith's favorite movie is Stand By Me, which is a very insane choice, which I love. She plays the violin and the fiddle and she speaks like a kindergarten teacher who is embarrassed to be experimenting with ASMR. She is also super good at Pilates and extremely strong. She loves to jack-knife, which I don't care for, but always attempt to do anyway. For six weeks, every time Meredith has asked me to jack-knife, I've been like okay, I will try, even though I know this will not work, and it is not my fault that your body is good at Pilates and mine is not. But just a few hours ago I walked over to my old apartment to chat with Stephanie at a huge distance and I said, "I love Meredith but she's always making me jack-knife," and Stephanie said "what's that?" and I laid down on the cement and jack-knifed basically perfectly. This is what Meredith can do. 

One of my favorite Meredith videos is the one she uploaded on New Year's Day, which begins with her saying "I don't know all of you or where you are in your lives. What I do know to be true is that we are here together with the opportunity to move our bodies." After I watched that one too many times I started watching the video that she posted on New Year's Day last year, which was such a horrible day for me that I actually briefly succeeded in turning it into an urban legend. 

In that one, Meredith is younger, obviously, and her hair is darker. She stares directly into the camera and says "If you're watching this right now, then we've made it to the New Year." It's really strange, since we actually did that almost 15 months ago and I had no idea about Meredith at the time. "Last year was a doozy," she says, referring to 2018, which happened to someone else entirely and not me, the person typing this. "There was tragedy and then there were so many blessings." She is not aware of 2020, while she is speaking. Then she lays down and starts doing some Pilates stuff and breathing deliberately and says some more great things, like "I could promise that in the New Year I would be a better counter.... but I just don't think that that's a realistic expectation for me to make on myself.... so I'm not going to promise that." 

(I don't really believe in forgiving ourselves for all of our flaws in the name of self-care, but I do obviously think it's okay to be bad at counting.)

I have to admit, the I first time I did this class I got a little irritated because Meredith asked us to lift our hip up and twist our arm under it on the right side, but then forgot to do the same on the left side. This was right after she'd told us "I'm endeavoring to have a little compassion for myself in my body today, which isn't perfect. You could do the same if you wanted." So, I felt bad for noticing and for being annoyed, and I sought relief by checking the comment section to see if anyone had been rude about it. Everyone loves Meredith, so the comments were almost all compliments of her movement, voice, personality, and general grace. There was just one critical note by someone named Iveta, who wrote, "Nice mat class, but I've noticed you forgot lifting hips on the elbows with arm twist on the other side..." Meredith saw this comment, among hundreds, and she replied: "Shoot, Iveta! Thanks for letting me know. I hope you added them in for yourself anyway. Still working on perfection.... maybe next year." 

2021, that is. Which will come! And in 2021 when I watch "New Year's Mat 2019" and Meredith says "last year was a doozy," I'll be like, Meredith... You nailed it.