Three in a row

Well, I'm 3 days in to my daily hour of practice. I was not feeling particularly enthusiastic about it today. That probably had something to do with my legs being exhausted from last night's class and my random shuffle playing a bunch of lackluster songs.

Tomorrow will be a bit challenging because I'll be touching up the henna on my head, which means by the time 3pm rolls around, I will probably be in the shower trying to rinse all the residue out of my hair. I don't think I can really practice while the dye is setting, because it makes my head SO heavy! Maybe I will move my practice to the evening tomorrow.

Uhm, ow

So today I ran into the first obstacle to my daily hour of practice. I had to take my car in for service and it was expected to be done between 3 and 4! Shoot! That's my dance time! Not to be daunted, I moved my dance time from 1-2 and rushed through my housework before hand. I had a good hour of practice including nearly 10 minutes of chaine turns, and a few minutes of shimmies while petting Daisy the corgi, because she was scared of the thunderstorm.

Then I went to class and had the most physically difficult class ever -- nearly an hour of levels. Oh, my poor quads. By the end, my legs were shaking uncontrollably. And I still had another hour-long class to get through! I'm afraid of the pain tomorrow will bring. But I also feel good, because I love being able to rise to a physical challenge like that, and I did some things that I thought I wouldn't be able to.

An hour a day

About 1 3/4 years ago, I started this blog to chronicle my attempt to dance for half an hour a day for a year. After that year ended, I kept up daily practice for a while but eventually I fell off the wagon, and lately I have not been doing hardly any home practice at all. This is simply Not Acceptable. I work from home and I have plenty of time on my hands, time which I waste on the internet. I could be a much better dancer than I am, if I just practiced harder.

So over the weekend, I was struck with inspiration. It was time to be really strict with myself and set a time for dancing every weekday. Dancing right after I got up just wasn't working... there was too much "Ok, but first I need to..." because sometimes it is hard to dance when the floors need sweeping and the laundry needs doing and the dogs want their breakfast, and the next thing you know, it's two in the afternoon. So fine. I'll dance in the afternoon, from 3-4pm. That gives me plenty of time to get everything else out of the way -- housework, correspondence, listing items on Etsy. And anything that isn't done by 3pm is just going to have to wait.

Today I gave it a try. At 3pm I parked myself in front of my mirror with a glass of iced tea and an oven timer set for one hour. I set my iPod on shuffle and let the songs dictate what I was going to drill. Then I worked on some troupe choreo and my solo for this weekend, a little playtime to a song I'm in love with, and a quick shimmy drill, then spent the last 8 minutes stretching while I was nice and warm -- so, so warm.

As always, once I got started it was easy to keep going. I love to dance, after all! And I let myself play a bit between drilling, if a song didn't strike me as being appropriate for drilling.

Things I learned today:

1. I need a bigger glass of iced tea tomorrow.
2. Doing snake arms for a 6 minute long song really sucks when you spent the previous night doing arm work with fire fans. Ouch.
3. I am actually making progress with chaine turns. In fact, I kept doing them in the silence after the song ended, because I was on such a roll.

I'm looking forward tomorrow!