(no subject)

[Background: I called a Scottish Ceilidh at Boskone today, as part of their first-ever dance and movement track. I consistently had about 12 dancers on the floor, probably 20 total across the event. We did six dances in 90 minutes, with a group including several total beginners.]

I am really good at teaching and calling Scottish dance, especially to beginners.

This is my perception while I'm doing it ("as I look around, I see people having a good job and doing things mostly correctly") but also consistently and repeatedly the feedback I get: from people I've never met and from those who've known me for ages, from beginners to the experienced, from the folk taking my class and those sitting out and watching. I am good at this.

Importantly, it's also a thing I enjoy doing. It's a thing I enjoy so much that I will put up with all the exhaustion and bullshit and snobbery and pretension that comes with the hobby sometimes. Do I enjoy it enough to stop being ADHD and start my own class? Gods above, I'm trying to get there. But I enjoy this dance form enough to continue to put up with the dysphoria, with the assumptions, with the knife-in-chest-feeling of being called "she".

I love getting to facilitate other people dancing. I love myself dancing too, alone or with others, but any chance I get to help bring other people onto the dance floor and smiling and goofy and joyful...this is The Life's Work in a way nothing else ever has been.

And when I word it like that, and when I think about these two reasons (I love it and I am good at it)...why the fuck am I doing anything else with my life?

(Capitalism.)

I talk with my therapist sometimes about intentionality, about how to do things on purpose, because I want to do them, and not just because I'm stuck distracting myself.

I light up when I do this. I am endlessly _terribly_ anxious in the leadup, I procrastinate then rush and stress about every detail I can find, but when I step onto the floor, when I find myself Between The Music And The Dance, that is the space where everything falls into place and all is right with the world.

(And everything else goes away.)

I am lucky enough that there are some people in the world who see my skill and joy, and allow me the space to perform it, but I don't have to wait. I can start my own space, and bring into it anyone and everyone I goddamn can.

But I gotta do it. And the path to what I want is scary. I meant it when I said every detail I can find, I am fully capable of worrying about too many and too few dancers in the same breath.

I am not designed to do these parts. I am not practiced. Slow and sustained self-discipline and organization over time is not compatible with the parts of me I call Nightmare Childe.

But gods, if I am going to be intentional about how I spend my time, I have to find ways to make it work. Because I am good at this. And I love it. And I need to be able to do the things I am good at and love.

So written, so true.

~Sor
MOOP!