Although, I would like to have kept everyone a little more frequently updated, I will say, I am pretty grateful for the reason that I haven't put up a post in a long time...I'm BUSY!!! Not just busy doing any old thing either. I'm busy doing things that I really love to do! First of all, I have a job teaching modern and tap dance to kids and adults at a small studio. Secondly, through a few different connections, I have been invited to be a part of a collaborative theater and dance project that will be performed at an arts festival here in Kigali. With all of this going on, I have had so many thoughts on my mind that I have been itching to write about, but the awesome thing is, even within the things that I'm doing, I'm getting to think creatively and share my creative thoughts with people who also are passionate about being creative on a regular basis! This is my drug, you guys! The funny thing is, even when all of this had just begun, over a month ago, I was already so inspired by what was to come that I had already written (almost) an entire post...but I got busy!
Here's what I had written:
It’s a Tuesday night, I am on a moto, trailing behind another which is toting my husband, and I am a little tipsy. As I reflect on everything that had just happened that day, I find myself smiling. I’m finally here. Not here as in Rwanda, but here as in that place in my mind where I feel like I am confidently taking the steps toward doing the thing I love the most and feeling like those steps will actually accomplish something that I can be proud of. Just weeks ago I was terrified that I would never get to feel that feeling.
So here’s the backstory. I graduated from college almost two years ago with a bachelor’s degree in dance. Those four years happened in such a flash, it was almost like I just let it happen to me. For as long as I can remember I have been interested in a wide array of things. In middle school I loved math and cool buildings so I decided I was going to be an architect. in high school I enjoyed math and chemistry and decided I would be a chemical engineer. Now and again I got hardcore into some craft or another so I thought I might one day open a business selling crafts or something along that line. But throughout the whole time the one love that was always a constant was dance. My relationship with dance is like that of a parent or a sibling. You forget on occasion just how vital to your life they are, but when you feel it, you feel it hard. When that relationship is threatened, suddenly it's all that matters.
So when it came down to choosing what I was going to do in college, there was no question in my mind that I would find out some way to keep dancing (and NOT by teaching because I was afraid of children). I toyed with the idea of majoring in one thing and minoring in dance, but somehow the planets aligned and there had recently emerged a Bachelors program in dance at a University in my hometown. So many details came together that it was almost a no brainer at that point. I hadn't intended to only focus on dance throughout my entire college career, but so far that was the one thing I knew I wanted to do.
Fast forward four and half or so years later, and dance (and a little theater) had been what I had spent all of my time and energy on. But I suddenly felt as though dance was not the love that I used to know. It had become a competition. It had become the fear that I couldn’t measure up enough to be taken seriously. It became the thing for which I would have to give up the person I had fallen in love with, or do without. And worst of all, it had become the thing that reminded me constantly of my biggest flaws.
Since then I had been filling in the time, trying to figure out how to redirect. I was teaching (like I never wanted to do) because it was an easy job to get with my degree. I had become a member a multilevel marketing company…don’t judge! I seriously considered going back to school to study something else. I was tap dancing in a performing company and doing workshops with them, but as fun as it was, it still reminded me how much I felt like I never fit in with that crowd. I don’t know much about clinical depression, but I definitely felt like I was on the road to that point. I was lost.
But in the most unlikely of places in the most unlikely of circumstances, dance has found me.
...And that's where I left off. I don't feel the need to add much else other than this last observation: It's strange how you can feel meant for something, but the harder you work for it, doors seem to keep closing and the road signs seem point in the exact opposite direction...sometimes to the point that you question everything about who you are. But even when you have managed to wander down so many random paths and have ended up smack in the middle of Africa, who you are still catches up to you, and you realize that you can't really be anything else but that.
Comments
Post a Comment