I got my new video of the silver foxtrot routine. And what’s more, I actually feel like I am starting to get the hang of it!
I’m always so grateful for the lessons where things just go well.
But I’ll be frank with you. I think I had something to do with it.
No new questions this week, but I did ask myself a big one while watching videos from my last lesson. So we’ll set “Ask the Girl” aside for now and just explore the deep dark forest that is my brain!
I miss ballroom dancing.
I haven’t completely stopped, but I am doing a lot less. So far in December, I’ve had two private lessons. In mid-November, I had to cut down from two to one per week due to finances. Then Teacher was gone for a week for the Holiday Dance Classic. This past week, we were supposed to return to the normal two, but Teacher cancelled the second one.
Two lessons. Normally, it would have been six by now! Or at least four, if you account for the week Teacher was gone for the competition. And with the holidays coming up, I might have two more lessons before the end of the year.
I miss dancing.
Two is better than none though, right? Am I just being ungrateful?
Today’s Ask the Girl episode was inspired by a conversation I had with the creator of freeballroomlessons.com. He specializes in teaching social-level ballroom dancing, but used to dance competitively. We were talking about how expensive ballroom competitions are, especially for a pro-am student like myself, and about the emotional rollercoasters that competing in ballroom puts me on.
He wondered, with all of the financial and emotional stress involved in competition, why do I do it?
Today is more about writing than ballroom. I am working on my second eBook (yay!) and a lot of the content is based on what I’ve already written. So I copied a bunch of blog posts into a Word document to use as the foundation for this new project. I proceeded to stare at my screen for 15 minutes without a clue of how to proceed. I started to feel like I should just delete everything and start from scratch! But there was good information from my original posts, why waste time rewriting it?
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A year ago, on this Thursday (although it was December 11 in 2014), I was in Las Vegas dancing in my second-ever ballroom competition, the Holiday Dance Classic. I didn’t sleep the night before, made my morning tea with hot water from the bathroom sink because I had no money left after getting myself TO the competition, and had an amazing time dancing.
It’s weird that it was a full year ago! It is cool, however, to look back at the four competitions I’ve danced in and see how far I’ve come.
Holiday also marks what would have been my first repeat comp. What would that have been like?
I get this question a lot when I’m at the studio. I ask this question a lot! It’s a standard “catch up” question among ballroom dancers to find out what event you’re working toward. But it’s also become an awkward question because my answer is “I have no idea.”
I’m slowly figuring out how to cope with not having a real answer to that question. I’m working on setting non-competition dance goals to keep myself busy and motivated (keep an eye out for an article on those!). Teacher doesn’t want me to give up on competition goals though, even if the next one is six months out or more. Usually encouragement and support from Teacher would boost my motivation to find any and all creative solutions to my financial dilemma. That’s how I managed to afford my 2015 comps!
But something is holding me back. And considering I just wrote about why I crave a challenge beyond just dancing, I want to explore why I’m having trouble motivating myself to find a new path to the fuel that feeds my inner fire.
You guys don’t mind me using this platform to psychoanalyze myself, right?
Psycho-what?
Welcome to the second episode of Ask the Girl!
If you have a question or topic that you would like me to address, leave it in the comments or contact me directly. I’m excited to hear from you!
Today’s question comes from Kelly, founder of Lady Boss Lifestyle:
When do you know that enough is enough? Is it totally ok to simply dance without a longterm goal of competing? Or do these types of dancers typically just need a great coach to build up their belief that they can trust their passion and set competition goals?
Such a simple statement but SO hard for me to act on! I’m constantly fighting fears of embarrassment and rejection when I dance, especially when I’m trying to express emotion through my dance.
I try to hold onto those moments when I did manage to break through, live in the moment, and feel free to “just dance,” no matter who was watching.
It can be incredibly frustrating to have memories of those moments but not be able to break free of the fear in the present moment.
But I keep pushing and surround myself with positive, supportive people. And one day, I’ll break free for good.
A friend of mine just started taking a martial arts class, and it’s incredible how many challenges she’s experiencing that mirror my own in learning ballroom. Learning a new activity as an adult, especially a physical one, is SO much fun, but can also be really hard. You’ve gone through school, gotten a job and worked your butt off to get where you are today. You have a pretty good handle on living your life, and when new challenges come, you can rely on your life experience to get you through them. But then you start something completely new and find yourself back in kindergarten learning your A,B,C’s. And you thought you were done with growing pains!
I thought I would put some encouragement out there to anyone just starting a new activity, whether it’s ballroom, martial arts or something else. Don’t worry if you feel like a dunce now, it will get easier!
The Girl with the Tree Tattoo 