More Ice Skating!

[Laura]

I've mentioned before that I've very recently taken up ice skating. If you're curious, I've started blogging about it, mainly because I want to remember what it was like for me when I was just starting out. It's been over five years since I was a beginner at anything (and that was Pilates at the time), and over nine years since I was a beginner at ballroom, so being a beginner again is really different and rather fun!

Speaking of ballroom...I've been fighting burnout since 2002 and finally made the decision last weekend to quit. I've spent the past 3 1/2 years thinking that if I could only find the perfect combination of lessons and practice and cross training and diet that I'd start winning things and would be happy. Which kind of sounds reasonable, but when I looked inside that I found a rat's nest of obsessive compulsive behaviors, poor self-image, and a massive need for outside validation. That can't be the right answer for me.

I had a good tryout last week with a guy who would have made a good partner, but I looked deep inside and realized that I just don't have the heart right now to go on with dancesport. I have no idea what is going to happen to me on that front, but I emailed both him and my old partner and told them that I have decided to take an indefinite break. I've just got too much emotional baggage tied up in ballroom, and I need to get some distance from it so I can make a stab at sorting some of it out. Besides, I figure if I wake up one morning and go "wow, why the hell am I not dancing...I want to go to the studio!" then I can. There will always be avenues back to dancesport, if I really want to persue it enough.

My other big hobby is travelling, and I'm planning a few interesting trips with my hubby. We're going to go downhill skiiing this weekend (something I've avoided for years because I was afraid of breaking something and not being able to dance), to Vancouver in June, and possibly to Ireland and Iceland in early July.

I've also started a non-ballgown-related sewing project. I purchased the Season One DVDs from "Project Runway," and will be working through each of the design/construction challenges that they did on the show. I'm doing this because I've sewn basically nothing but ballgowns for the past 7 years, and it seemed like a fun idea to try to do things that were totally out of left field and served no purpose (and no client demands, no deadlines, no judges to impress). Right now I'm just on the first challenge, where the designers had to make a party dress out of $50 worth of materials purchased from a grocery store. I should probably start a blog for this endeavor, too! (After years of resisting, I've gone kind of blog-crazy this year.)

I'm still periphally involved in dancesport, as I'm on the organizing committee for the 2006 Nationals in San Jose. I had to think long and hard about if I could deal with having to work at Nationals without dancing in it, and my gut told me that even though I could dance at Nationals with the guy I just tried out with -- or even with K. if he healed quickly enough -- the deep truth was that I just didn't really even want to make the effort. Sigh. I still have mixed feelings about the whole thing, but I'm okay with that. I'll still be nosing around the boards, too, because you all are my online buddies (and because of Nationals).

 

[waltzgirl]

Wow! For some reason, that really surprises me. You've always seemed so committed--and happy about dancing with K. It does sound like the right decision for you, though.

So I guess this might be a good place to say that I, too, have "retired" from competition for the forseeable future. But not from dancing. Still dancing 4-5 times a week, between my lessons and going social dancing.

Part of my reason for quitting competition was financial. It was just getting too tough to come up with the money for pro-am comps and the amateur partner I thought I'd found flaked out on me. But I would probably have continued scraping the $ together if it hadn't been for issues similar to Laura's. I wasn't having the success I wanted and it was making me feel bad about my dancing. The variability and subjectivity of the judging got me down. Frequently, one judge would mark me in the top three, and the other two in the bottom three. Go figure! And there was no sense of progress. I could work like a dog getting ready, know without a doubt that I was dancing better than at the last comp, and place worse--because of who else happened to show up at that comp or because the judges were different. And I knew I'd never have the money to have a level playing field with some of the pro-am ladies who can afford hours and hours of lessons a week, great costumes, and have much more free time to practice. Finally, it just didn't seem worth the sacrifices I have to make to afford it.

What really surprised me was what I discovered after I made the decision. The first few weeks, I was practically delirious with the pure joy of movement. I realized that, up until then, every move I made on the dance floor was accompanied at some level by an awareness that "This will be judged." Dancing without that mental straightjacket is really wonderful! I'm just as interested in technique--not to do it "right" for someone who's watching, but because the better the technique, the better the dancing feels. And, no surprise, I'm dancing better without that underlying anxiety. I do sort of miss having a goal to work toward. In fact, I will probably do the next studio showcase, for the fun of it, if I can do it without getting into my old comp mentality.

But it's been the right decision for me, too.

 

[latingal]

Laura, I am saddened to hear we will lose you as an active dancer on the ballroom scene; but I am glad that you have the courage to do what's right for you at this time.

It's a big decision to go "on break" from something you've devoted 9 years of you life to, but sometimes you need new challenges...and as you said in your post - if this break brings back a longing to dance again, there is always a way back - and you can return with the knowledge that dance is something you just can't live without.

I am glad you are following your heart Laura, best of luck to you in all your new endeavors...peace.