February Resolutions

I recently decided that January is the worst time to change your life by putting into action all those resolutions that you so hastily made whilst gulping down champagne and puffing on your last cigarette (ever!) at 3 a.m. on New Year's Eve.

It's cold, dark and gloomy, you are broke and you have to go back to work or study after the festive period. Telling yourself you have to start doing something -- or even worse, refrain from doing something -- for the rest of the year, or even for the rest of your life, has got to be just about the most high pressure demand you could make of yourself during a time when small vices may be just what you need to help your get through the most depressing month of the year.

Having just struggled into February myself, I decided it might finally be time to put my good intentions into action, and, just as all my friends were being struck by self-loathing from having given up giving up, I headed off to my local gym to sign my life away with a ridiculously expensive membership, which will probably help me loose weight just by virtue of the fact I won't be able to afford to eat anymore, let alone go out drinking with my friends on the weekends.

Taking it easy

Overwhelmed and slightly intimidated by the mass of machines and fit-looking people loitering around them, I decided to break myself in gently and enrolled in a beginners' aerobics class that evening.

I had been to a few of these in England and found it was a fun way to get fit: An overzealous (usually female) teacher leaping around at the front of the class to frantic pop music, while a sweaty bunch of us (also usually female) try to mimic her but end up in giggles because one or the other had tripped over themselves whilst doing the grapevine.

How wrong was I to assume that this class would be the same? Very wrong indeed, as it turned out.

Men in tights

For starters, it was composed of about 40 percent men, including the teacher, who was wearing some seriously tight, fluorescent orange hot pants. I turned to my neighbor who was a middle-aged man with glasses, a polo shirt tucked into his jeans (in a gym?) and a very serious look on his face.

I mistook his frown for nerves and gave him a "don't worry, I'll show you the ropes" kind of smile, which didn't go down too well, if the following 50 minutes were anything to go by. Twice he told me off for "dancing in his space," which was surprising since I wouldn't have referred to what we were doing, or what I was attempting to do, as dancing.

Nevertheless, I respectfully heeded his warning and "danced" backwards into a very angry woman who scolded me for not taking the whole thing seriously enough. At this point I lost control and burst out laughing, initially at the absurdity of it all, then at the sight of myself in the mirror, from the vantage point of the new position I had been banished to.

Red-faced, "dancing" out of time, but having a great time, I decided if I could put up with my classmates' venom this could just be the perfect way to banish those winter blues.

Faith Dennis was born in Redhill, England, in 1981 and moved to Portugal at the age of eight, where she went to a German school for five years before returning to England to continue her education in Bristol. She has lived and traveled in several European and South American countries and has always enjoyed documenting her travels by means of writing and photography. She is currently studying for an M.A in Interdisciplinary Latin American Studies at Berlin's Freie University.