Dance struggles

Ahh, Irish dance.  Right now, I am in quite the love/hate relationship with you. I love you, because I love to dance. I love that feeling of learning something new, being able to remember little things and feeling the power and grace that I don't feel every single day. Especially the grace part, because really, where did the bruise come from?
But I hate you.  I hate that I am such a competitive person and am placing so horribly at competitions. I hate that its such a subjectively judged sport. I hate that I love it so much that even when I am placing last (seriously, what is going on) that instead of thinking about giving it up - I am just continuously beating myself up for what I am doing wrong.

Sigh.

Yesterday we had a feis.  I wasn't feeling overly confident about competing, but I didn't feel awful.  But awful is about how well I can describe how I did. Before even seeing the final results, I know I placed last or second to last. How do I know this? I can do math. Ha! Seriously though, when we have 7 dancers in a competition (Reels for example) and the score sheet thats posted places the top 5 and I am not on there, guess what? I placed in the bottom two. Not something to be overly proud of.

So what do I do? I have recorded myself dancing and can see what I need to work on. But... my teachers don't make it to competitions to see what I am doing wrong or what I need to work on. Do I look for new teachers? Do I just keep plugging along? The frustration is weighing me down.

hey look, I'm smiling! Before finding out how badly I placed.

On top of this, we have our big, annual dance show this coming Saturday.  Every year I over-extend myself to help out, herd the kiddos, do make-up and hair, dance in every number that needs bodies or sound. Every year. This year I told myself I was not going to do that. If anything, maybe I would skip doing the show altogether. Haha.  I wasn't given a choice. Seriously. It was - oh yea, we already put you in such and such numbers, so you have to sign up. Well ok then.

So for the next week, my life is going to be consumed by dance. Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, all day Saturday.

Let you know how it all goes!