It’s been awhile since I’ve let my demons control the content! I have some fun news to share from this past weekend, but first I’m giving my demons a turn at the keyboard. Sometimes I feel better when I just let them run amuck. (Amuck, amuck, amuck!) Tired demons are happy demons, just like puppies.

So I came home today feeling quite grumpy and sorry for myself. I shouldn’t have felt this way. I had a dance lesson after work. We worked on my feet in cha cha and Teacher said I did very well.

I was planning on asking Teacher to work on American smooth during this lesson. I was lucky to get the opportunity to attend a smooth workshop on Sunday, taught by the two owners of my studio. One of them worked on shadow position and movement through the core and ribs in waltz and then the other worked on hips in foxtrot. The few times I’ve been able to take a class with either one of them, I leave feeling a little overwhelmed. Like I was just given a huge pile of gold coins but no bag to carry them, so I feel so lucky but at the same time a little frantic. I try to hold onto every coin (a.k.a. valuable piece of information), but they keep falling out of my arms.

Sunday didn’t fry my brain as much as I expected. It helped that Teacher has covered the same topics during our private lessons. Nevertheless, I tried to switch one of my lessons to Monday so I could go over some lingering questions with Teacher as soon as possible. He wasn’t able to fit me in on Monday, so I wrote some things down to address during today’s lesson.

Then I got into the studio and I was hit with an overwhelming feeling of “what’s the point?” I have no competitions on the calendar. No events of any kind to prepare for. So why spend a lesson dissecting why I was losing balance in one of the shadow figures on Sunday? Or run through our foxtrot to see if I could apply the hip technqiue that was discussed? What was the point of any of it?

Of course, I can come up with good, positive answers, but it’s not my show tonight.

I had about 10-15 minutes before my lesson, so I started doing my warm-up stretches but gave up pretty quickly. Instead I watched Teacher with one of his students who competes at the open level. She was preparing for something, I was sure. She is always preparing for something. Not me. I was preparing for nothing.

When it was my turn, I said nothing about smooth or the workshop. I just asked Teacher what we were going to work on so I could put on the correct shoes. He said cha cha, so we worked on cha cha. It was a good lesson, and Teacher always puts in extra effort to make me laugh when I’m not in a great mood. He did make me smile a few times, but on my way home, during my reflection time, I realized I felt adrift.

Most days, I’m ok. I have enough to focus on to keep me busy (just finished the second book of Dance Diaries!) and it’s fun learning a different style. But today, it wasn’t enough. We’ve been working on rhythm for several weeks now and I barely know the rumba and cha cha routines. We briefly touched on swing one day last week but I had requested it. We haven’t touched mambo or bolero. So I’m not getting the pull from having a competition on the calendar and I’m not getting the push from feeling like I’m making real progress on my alternative goal of learning a new style. Lessons are feeling shorter too. Maybe it’s because we don’t do a lot of actual dancing because I don’t know what I’m doing yet, but 45ish minutes just hasn’t been lasting very long. So again, what’s the point if my progress keeps getting cut short or interrupted by the end of the lesson? Then I always have to backtrack at the next lesson and any possible progress is again cut short.

I’m sure if I was writing this, I would acknowledge that I probably am making more progress than I realize and I have a lot of stress from other aspects of my life that is affecting my outlook. I would renew my determination to not give up and keep looking for new ways to pay for a comp, and I would remind myself that the main answer to “What’s the point?” is “Duh! It makes you happy!”

But I’m not writing tonight, so I’ll just stop there and go to bed. Tomorrow is another day.