Focus

So I was kind of throwing myself a little pity party again (when will I ever learn to stop that?) -- an old youth group acquaintance just got a huge break into the industry he's been dreaming of for years, my sister is getting her stage script read by a local theatre producer, and a friend of mine got some of her artwork published (it was a fairly small scale, but published nonetheless).

And me... I was just kind of sitting and listening to the same fifteen seconds of the same song over and over and over trying to come up with the next sequence. Like I have for the past year.

Separately, those were all genuine 'congratulations that's awesome!' moments, but all of them in the same week had me reeling a little. Why are they getting results that have people going 'wow, good for you' and I continue to just sit here and be criticised for not having a 'real' job?

Then last night while looking through a drawer in my filing cabinet I found a pink piece of paper with my writing on it -- a list of steps I needed to take to draw me closer to my dancing goal. I remember writing that list -- it was probably only about four to six months ago.

As I read it, I realised I could already check off three things. Things that had seemed insurmountable then. So I did. I literally got out my trusty pencil and checked them off.

Then I started thinking about what I do have going for me now. I have a dance teacher who is totally excited about the fact that I'm so interested in choreography (she let me borrow one book she had on Benesh notation and just this week gave me another booklet she had that talks about it). I have one dance right now that's been absolutely on fire since I picked it up again after NaNoWriMo. In just ten and a half months, I've choreographed eleven dances -- over forty minutes' worth. That's well on the way to being enough for a respectable concert. I now have enough foundational tap that I can begin to experiment -- to choreograph (to say nothing of the fact that I now have tap shoes with which to do it).

I had none of this a year ago.

It may not feel like it, but I am moving closer, closer, closer to the dream...

So I keep working, keep practicing.