Somehow it’s June already. I was so impatient for May to get here so I could do all the awesome things I had planned, and now it’s behind me and I’ve got the gaping, fiery abyss of an Arizona summer ahead of me.
It looks kind of like this.
Well, all joking aside, I do have some good stuff to look forward to this summer. There’s Fusion Day on June 21st and Beat the Heat on July 11-13th and Hafla-Con on August 2nd and at some point I’ll go to NY to visit my in-laws and it will be slightly cooler and much more humid there. But it’s hard to feel motivated to prepare for all of those events when the forecast calls of highs around 108 from here to Friday, with it cooling down to a chilly 100 for the weekend. Remind me again why I live here?
Every year I struggle to keep dancing through the summer. It’s hard to want to drive over to the dance studio at 4pm when there’s a heat advisory until 7pm, and it’s hard to want to do anything at home except sit around with a glass of iced tea and binge-watch TV shows on DVD. But I need to get motivated because I have not been living up to my plan to treat dance like a full-time job. I’ve been spending way too much time futzing around on Facebook and Pinterest and not enough time dancing, costuming, listening to music, journaling, reading dance reference material, going to class, cross-training and planning.
Well, it’s time to get my booty into gear, so here are some goals for June:
1. Restart the Raq Steady program on Datura Online and do it twice a week for the rest of the month.
2. Start and (barring any unforseen disasters) complete my nude rhinestone bra-belt set. I had the bra almost done and then realized it DIDN’T FIT so I had to sell it to a troupemate and start over, and the supplies are trickling in via USPS.
3. Get back into classes at BreakOut Studios. Ballet at least once a week, Open Hip-Hop before troupe practice, and DJ Dance Cardio and Rejuvenating Stretch on Saturdays that I’m home, and that’s at a minimum.
4. Drill locks all the time because I want them to be really clean for a solo I’m working on.
5. Go through my music and find some new stuff to work on so I can stop recycling the same few solos for every event. I’d like to bring something new to Fusion Day.
6. Put away all this stuff I bought at Tribal Fest. And all the costume stuff just lying around. Side note: I may have to knock out some walls to expand my costume closet.
7. Do makeup at least 2x a week and get back to weekly beauty blog posts on Friday.
There’s more that I’d like to do, but I worry that if I set too many goals I’ll overwhelm myself and fail at a few and then start a chain reaction that ends with me right back on the couch with that iced tea and Game of Thrones DVDs. I’ll see how I do for the first couple of weeks and then see if I can add a few more things to my plate or if I have to save them for July.
How about you, readers? Do you struggle to stay motivated during the summer? What are your goals for June?