Slow progress

Day 141 of practice.

So, I have this character flaw (actually, I have a lot of them, but this one is relevant to dancing). I only like to do things that I'm naturally good at. I don't like to struggle with things. Ideally I'd like to be the best at everything I do, but I long ago learned that if there's anything that I'm exceptional at, I haven't found it yet, so I have to settle for doing my personal best.

There are some parts of belly dance that I naturally took to, which is good because if not I never would have done it. In fact, my dance journey was delayed because the DVDs that I first tried to learn from had some isolations that I couldn't do right away so I got discouraged and gave up until I had a real live teacher to help me locate the right muscles and build up to it.

The thing about taking belly dance classes and being serious about it is that I can't just say "Oh well, I can't do a hip drop so I'm not going to." If I want to keep up with the class, and be the best dancer I can be, I have to work on the things that don't come naturally to me. And that's what a lot of today's practice was -- shimmies on the down, lower ab tucks, and working up to belly flutters (which is not something I HAVE to learn, but I decided to challenge myself with). There should have been some Arabic shimmy practice, too, but I didn't get around to that. Also, there was some fun dancing to music while I cleaned, because dancing makes dealing with clutter so much more fun.

I'm not at all sore from yesterday's workout, by the way, so clearly I did not work out hard enough. I'll have to be more vigorous on Monday. Tomorrow I have a date with some yardwork, which is a workout enough in and of itself, but I may go for a jog with my husband and the corgis if the weather is still nice.