You Get What You Give

I’ve decided that I’m going with Mini as a name for my new instructor because I’m tired of typing out “my new instructor”. Why Mini? Because I couldn’t come up with anything creative and if you take the initials MNI, you get close to Mini. Now, don’t think this is a comment on height. In fact, it is kind of like calling a tall person “Shorty” because she’s one of the taller instructors I’ve worked with.

Anyway, she got tasked with teaching the Viennese Waltz group class last night. Since they did away with the Silver group classes, this was for anyone in upper Bronze. I know one guy who has stopped coming for groups once they did away with Silver and I can sort of see his point. I mean there are things you can try to work on but it isn’t always easy.

I love the fast dances like Viennese Waltz. Maybe I was just built for speed but it is the thrill ride of ballroom. Well that and Quickstep as well. Which is also funny because I’m not a thrill ride kind of person. One of the things I’ve picked up on over the years is that a fast dance is all about energy and momentum. It makes me wish I had paid more attention when I was taking physics. But if you can create the energy, the speed isn’t a big of an issue.

The quote I used at the top is close to something Mini said in class. She was speaking about the energy you get out of the dance is going to be based on the energy you put in. For some, their energy was spent figuring out the footwork and you can’t really move until you can trust that your feet are going to do the right thing. For others, it was a simple matter of just not being able to move enough to create any real momentum.

There’s an older gentleman I’ve mentioned before. He’s sort of a semi-serious student but he also kind of likes taking lessons to be around the young lady instructors. Not that he’s a creeper of any sort but I think he enjoys the attention. Well he just can’t move that much. We were doing the pattern on a short wall and he was starting halfway up the wall and I was trying to start as far from him as possible and, more often than not, I had to avoid running into him at the end. (He kind of drifts while dancing so he ended up in my lane a few times).

Had another lady who said you should take smaller steps to stay on time. Sorry, but no. The dance is meant to move. If you take small steps, then it is like driving a race car in first gear all the time. Or like in Ford vs Ferrari where the Ford suits wanted to keep the RPMs down but Matt Damon let his driver cut loose at the end because he knew the car could take it. (Saw that movie on the plane trip as well by the way)

Now I’m not trying to pick on the other dancers. We are all at different points in our dance journey. It is just that there are times when the mix of levels makes a group class a little less fun and that was the case last night.

On our lesson, JoNY and I worked on Swing and Bolero. She said something about working towards Medal Ball at the end of March. I’m going to have to stand up and just tell her I’m not going to Medal Ball. It is nice to be supportive to the other students but they are holding it at a venue that we’ve used many times before. I’m not a fan of the food they serve and I hate having to dance in front of a judge while wearing more formal wear. I mean not really formal but dress pants with a dress shirt and tie. (I refuse to wear a jacket). It just doesn’t feel like me. I need either my business casual stuff or my dance outfits (or a costume). I did one last year to check out of Silver II and I didn’t enjoy it. Why spend extra money for something I’m not going to like.

I’ll just toss in a little about exercise just because. Again, I’ve still got a lot of work to do but it is nice when you see progress. When a weight that used to be tough becomes too easy, that’s a good thing. It is those little things that help make me want to keep going back.

I see lots of people working with trainers. I’ve thought about doing that again just to learn some new things since I’m sticking with a lot of the things I was shown when I did work with the trainers at work. Sometimes, you can’t help but overhear things and some of it sounds familiar. We all had that one exercise we didn’t like and would grumble a bit when the trainer said that’s what we were going to do. But they exist to help push people to discover that they can do more than they thought. It just doesn’t always feel like that when you are in the middle of some tough exercise.

So I did the gym this morning and got my allergy shots and now I’ve banged out this post. So that’s a productive morning. Yesterday, I started on getting my office cleaned out. Not that I’m a hoarder but there is definitely too much stuff in here. I have to do these things in pieces because I tend to lose interest too quickly. I’m thinking about a goal of a certain number of trash bags each week until things are under control. It would feel productive at least.

My real problem is that so much of the “stuff” is either a gift or something I’ve picked up on our travels. So it carries some kind of meaning and I hate tossing stuff that has some meaning. But one must do what must be done.