To Dance or Not to Dance

Thanksgiving is over even though we still have turkey left. Hard to buy small quantities for two people so we’ll eat it for days.

Now the house has fully transitioned into Christmas. Tree is up. Decorations are up. Lights are up inside and outside. We even did a couple of our traditional Christmas activities this weekend. It was busy.

This is also the time of year when the studio does their semi-annual festival with points awarded for activities and the potential to win fabulous prizes.

It also means that sooner or later, OwnerGuy is going to pull me into the money room to talk about re-upping for another tour and signing on for more lessons.

There is no question that this year has had a fair share of frustration for me and I’ve toyed with the idea of quitting from time to time. With some reflection, I have to acknowledge that there were other things going on that certainly impacted my mood. Ballroom is not a total escape from reality and there is carry over from real life to dance life.

Dealing with my Dad passing and the emotions of cleaning and then selling their house took more of a toll than I probably realized. There is something final about losing both parents. They are always something of an anchor and that anchor is no longer there. It takes time to process.

Then I got COVID in September followed up by a nice upper respiratory thing. And I’ve got my usual dry air sinus crap going on which just means I haven’t felt the greatest which doesn’t help.

But I finally got a good look at my critiques from Showcase last week and I liked a lot of what I read. There is always something to be worked on in Ballroom. You are never a finished product. I use the critiques to see what the judges see and if they start asking you to develop new things, then that is a sign of progress.

The coaching lessons brought that out as well. We do an over sway in the Waltz and the coach was on me to do more. Think extreme oblique crunch cause that’s what it felt like. Her one comment at the end was to stop holding back. With the other coach, it was a series of small tweaks that made big improvements in how things felt.

My one overriding goal has been to continue to do this as long as I felt there was potential for me to do more. As the Showcase experience has sunk in, it now seems clear that there is untapped potential.

The challenge is getting to it. I’ve talked before about practice me vs performance me where practice me sees all the bad stuff and performance me really doesn’t care and just dances. Really need to find a way to bring performance me into lessons.

Quitting now no longer seems like the right thing to do. Yes, I would have left on a high note but there is more to be done. Now I just need to find some more motivational stuff to keep reminding me of that when we get into the grind sometime next year.