I stopped baking...

I read your blog. What's going on?


Oh I only completely and totally lost control for a second there. No big. 


I'm back in any case. So that's good.


And in talking to people, they keep reiterating that this will be over soon and I can take it off my plate, relax a little. I don't want this to be over. This has become way too important to me to just drop it because I'm no longer being graded on it. I think that was my intention. I needed to get attached to it, and I did. And the truth is, this isn't what's stressing me out. This is the glue that's holding my many pieces together.


So I appreciate the sympathy, but I won't be putting this aside any time soon.


Something huge occurred to me today. This is important. Not just to me. We were talking about dance scholarship today in senior seminar, and although it should have been obvious and already evident to me, I finally realized that this is dance scholarship. I am leaving a trail of research, for myself and others. I have questions and I'm exploring them. Some of them are being answered, and some are leading to deeper questions. But all of it is a legitimate process, and brings me back to when Joellen was telling me that it seemed as though I was developing a new way of working as well as a piece...perhaps more-so than the piece itself.


As for the rest of my day, it was spent being massively frustrated by the low morale that can be found in my ballet class. My head was not there this morning - being distracted by fears of the show this weekend. Even so, I appeared to care 100x's more than most people in there. I get it. It's 8am ballet. Most of you have no interest. But I can promise that I had little interest in that 9am Saturday morning African class I took, and I still tried my hardest. This isn't a life that you can just not care about. If you aren't going to put your everything into it, I don't know how you're going to do it.


Then modern class. I approached him after to thank him. He told me good job, and he meant it, and seemed surprised when "Really?" slipped out of my mouth. Again...notorious for saying stupid things. He told me I was looking calmer and integrating my center, that my musicality was great and appreciated. And then the strangest thing happened. He told me he was just scared of my back, scared that I would hurt myself. And I played a quick game of "Do I tell him or not?" and I don't know if I stopped thinking for a second or what happened...but I told him. "I've been debating whether or not I would tell you because I like to play games with this...but I guess maybe I should tell you. I have scoliosis and lumbar lordosis. I won't hurt myself. I'm just like that and working on looking like everyone else."


Why wouldn't you tell me? I'm not auditioning you. I'm your teacher. I'm here to help.


For a second, I couldn't remember why I didn't tell people. What he said was so not what I anticipated. I expected the, "...so?" or the "...and?" but not, "let me help you, why would you hide that?" Sometimes I think there is something fundamentally wrong with the way I think. And then I told him that I just like to play the game and see how long I can go without my teachers noticing that something's amiss. That I use it to gauge how I'm doing dealing with it, and that since he apparently noticed right away, I guessed I wasn't doing so good. He chuckled and told me that he sees everything, and we'd work on it. 


I have never been that upfront with a teacher that I wasn't very close with, that hasn't known me for a while. I don't know why I was so honest with him, or why it wasn't a big deal. Scratch that, why it wasn't a big deal in the negative way I was expecting it to be. He turned it around on me, and I wasn't ready for that. 


Overall, I feel hopeful today. The show's...interesting, but it's going to be fine. I feel more like I belong in that group of people now, which makes it easier.


I feel calmer. I have no reason to. I have so much to do. I can't keep track of it all. But it doesn't seem to matter right now. I'm back in my body. And it is what it is. I have to wear an awful unitard, but we can all laugh about it at least. I get to see my family this weekend. I get to see Joshua's smile and hug my parents. I get to go to brunch...soon.  And before I know it, college is going to be over, and I'm going to look back and wish I'd enjoyed this time more. So, I'm going to try to do that, so I don't have to look back and make too many wishes.