So, after telling the trolls of the world that they couldn’t stop me from dancing, I spent the past week not really dancing. I mean, I went to class and troupe practice like a good li’l troupe member, but I have not been dancing at home. I could try to blame it on a variety of reasons — it’s too hot in this house, I hurt my arm, Chris left a table in the middle of the living room floor, I had to write a million things this week — but mainly it is that I am still feeling incredibly uninspired.

But those are all just excuses. No matter what, I could have at least carved a little space out of my living room and done some drills and then taken a shower to cool off. The truth is I haven’t felt like dancing, not emotionally anyway, so I didn’t dance. Every single day I would say to myself “I should practice today” and every single day I would grab onto every excuse not to. I even considered skipping class!

Today I broke free of the excuses and danced. I wanted to work on my Open Stage solo and on the solo I am going to audition for an upcoming Plaza show. Well, ok, I didn’t WANT to work on them (I wanted to sit here looking at much prettier, better dancers on Pinterest), but I knew that if I didn’t I would have no one but myself to blame when I looked like a dope on stage tonight and made an awful audition video.

So I put on my music and I started dancing, and I surprised myself. I felt connected to my music. Timing that I had been struggling with in my audition piece suddenly snapped into place. I feel really, really good about the practice I just had. I expected it to feel forced and awkward, but instead it felt inspired.

I need to remember times like this when I just do not feel like dancing. Maybe some days it won’t be like this. But if the inspiration doesn’t come, I can at least drill. There’s no excuse for laziness. Life is too short to not practice.