And all through the house, not a creature was stirring…

Except for me. I’m not quite ready to sleep. But I think it’s ok, since Santa has already come and gone. I hope all of my readers who celebrate Christmas had a wonderful holiday!

I’m just going to openly ponder some things while I wait for my eyelids to get heavy.

I’ve been documenting my frustrations at not being able to compete, and then not being able to dance as much as I normally would, due to insufficient funds. Well, several forces seem to be coming together that may actually possibly, maybe, perhaps allow me to enter a competition much sooner than expected or even hoped for!

Normally, in circumstances like these, I wouldn’t say anything for fear of jinxing my luck. But I find myself so emotionally disconnected that the superstition doesn’t affect me.

It’s odd. I have been frustrated and depressed as I watched comp after comp pass me by this fall and winter. I wanted to be there! I wanted to dance! It’s not fair! And now that the odds seem to be turning back in my favor?

I hesitate.

A path may be opening up that is heading back toward where I want to be, back to the challenge that really sparks the passion in me to life. And I am reluctant to take a step.

Why?

I think one reason is I don’t trust that it’s real. I can run the projected numbers all I want to show myself how I can afford at least a round or two at competition, but they are projected, not current. There are always unknown future variables. Life can throw in a new challenge at any moment. It doesn’t matter how much or how long I plan. Maybe after I actually have enough money in my bank account plus enough to cover living expenses, then it will feel like a real possibility.

But then there is the fear of disappointment. I could gather the money, be ready to go, and it all gets cancelled. Again. I think I’ve mentioned before how extremely sensitive I am to disappointment. I wasn’t always this way, but in more recent years, when something I’m excited about or care about deeply goes awry, it is devastating. So I calculate risk carefully when I consider getting my hopes up about something.

Apparently, my strong sense of self-preservation has made me detach emotionally from my desire to compete. Otherwise, as soon as I realized it was a real possibility, I would have started crunching numbers immediately and looking up what days I would need to request off from work. Instead, I just thought “we’ll see.”

Of course, if I let my fear control my life, I would never do anything that made me excited or happy because I would be too afraid that it wouldn’t work out to even try. But that is no way to live. If ballroom dancing has taught me anything (besides dancing), it’s that I can work past fears successfully.

It is difficult to motivate yourself when you are staying guarded from emotional pain because it also means you are blocking out positive emotions like joy and excitement. An emotional wall is built up over time and can’t be brought down overnight. So for now, the only thing for me to do is proceed with caution. Take that step forward on the newly opened path, but also acknowledge my demons who are telling me that I’ll just be writing about another disappointment in a couple of months and what’s the point. But like I wrote in Missing Something That Isn’t Really Gone, if I don’t do anything, I will definitely feel disappointed as I watch another comp pass me by. But if I try to take advantage of changing circumstances, then there is a chance I will get to where I want to go.

I guess we’ll see what happens!