In addition to being an author, I have a few day jobs: I’m the copy editor of a local magazine, as well as a freelance editor and writer.
A few months ago, I was editing a chapter for a book about leveraging time and resources in a business setting. During COVID, the entrepreneur who wrote this chapter started teaching group piano lessons online. He found it was a good way to leverage his teaching time. He was, of course, able to teach more people at once and found that the group format created a strong community amongst his students.
What made this chapter interesting to me, though, wasn’t the idea of leverage. It was he idea behind his ideal clients.
This man began playing piano when he was a child. He loved it and continued playing into adulthood. Over the years though—years filled with lots of formal training, performing, and his own insecurities—he lost the joy, the sense of fun, and the sense of accomplishment he had as a child.
Once he realized he’d lost those things, he made the conscious decision to get them back. Now, he teaches adult students who want to rediscover the joy and connection with playing piano.
I worked on this chapter several months ago, but only recently did I realize its connection with my own life.
Throughout my childhood, I danced. I was on what you probably know now as a dance team.
I’m the girl on the far left – a practical giant compared to my partner.
From the time I was 12 until I graduated high school, I was at the studio six days a week, taking ballet, tap, jazz, gymnastics, and even sometimes special acting classes. We’d go there straight from school, someone would bring us food mid-evening, and we’d get done at 9 p.m. My mom saved my dinner for me, and I ate while doing homework. We went to competitions and conventions and performed often. Dance was my life. The members of my dance team were my main friend group, and their parents were like bonus parents. We had so many great experiences, including a trip to Australia, running dance competitions, traveling around and performing together, and performing in the Nutcracker, just to name a few.
Although I loved dance, I always dealt with my own insecurities around it. When we were all about 12, I grew so fast that I was a giant compared to most of the other kids (as pictured above). I felt awkward and gangly. I didn’t have the confidence some of the other kids had, and I never felt like I was quite as good a dancer as the girls who were my best friends. I was content to be the supportive one, the funny one, the academic one, the sarcastic one … but I never felt like I deserved to be in that spotlight for my dance ability. Also, as things do in life, it became the status quo. It was just what I did. I took all the special things (great friendships, experiences, lessons, etc.) for granted.
At the weekend-long conventions we went to, the instructors would hold auditions on Sunday afternoons. Dancers tried out for a summer scholarship at a fancy Los Angeles dance studio. Our own dance teachers “made us” go to these auditions. I always danced horribly – because I was so nervous! I knew I wouldn’t get a scholarship and felt auditioning was pointless even though the adults in my life said it was good practice (picture the teenage version of me, rolling my eyes). I hated auditioning. I felt like it was just another way for the world to see how much worse I was than my friends (sounds silly now, but this was my teenage brain).
Somewhere along the way, I stopped really enjoying dance. I still loved it. I loved my friends and my teachers. But I didn’t experience the same joy I had when I was younger.
I don’t think I ever even realized it.
I went off to college and stopped dancing, cold turkey. That was more than 20 years ago! Although I continued to tap dance around the house, I didn’t set foot in a studio again until a few years ago when my daughter decided she wanted to try dance classes. At the studio where she goes, there’s an adult class.
I watched the women perform and thought it looked so fun. But I kept telling myself I couldn’t fit it into the schedule with all the kids’ sports and activities and all the carpooling.
Then, a couple of years ago, I went to a one-off event there, called Tappy Hour. It was a tap class where we learned a combination (another name for a routine) and then had snacks and drinks.
I wore my 20-year-old tap shoes.
I had the best time. I LOVED it. I felt so much joy. My steps were far from perfect, but my body remembered everything.
When the next dance session opened, I signed up for the adult tap class.
It was the best decision I could have made for myself.
I always loved tap best. I was always really good at it. It’s not as popular as contemporary dancing, or ballet, or jazz and hip hop, but it was always my favorite.
Now that I’m an adult, I’m coming at it from a different place, mentally. I don’t have the same insecurity I had as a teen. I don’t care if I look silly or am the best or worst. I’m just there to have FUN.
There’s also something magical about a group of adults who all set aside this hour per week to do something for ourselves. For that one hour, we are fully present. We are there learning and having fun and supporting one another as we all improve. For me, this class is the ultimate in self-care. It fills me with joy every week.
Going through the routine of class, practice, rehearsal, and performance feels like coming home, in a way.
It was so magical that, after a year of taking tap, I decided to enroll in a second adult dance class. I spent several weeks watching the class through the windows while my son took kenpo karate at the same time and place. I watched the women warming up and going across the floor and learning their combinations and I just CRAVED being in there.
Just when I had that realization, the teacher offered a free class just to let people try it and I thought, “I’ll just go to the free class and see what my body thinks of this.”
Guess what? I loved it. Was I rusty? Oh, yeah. Was I sore afterwards? Oh, yeah.
But I had the best time. Of course it helps that the atmosphere at this studio is so welcoming and warm and family-like. We cheer for each other and encourage each other and laugh and dance and it’s the BEST time.
A few months ago, our local college put out a notice for auditions for a production of Chicago, the musical. I decided to audition for a dance role. There were two parts to the audition: singing and dancing. I didn’t plan on singing since I was trying out for dance only, but the director wanted to hear my range. She did ask me to come back for the dance audition a few days later. The day of that audition, I almost didn’t go. I was so nervous. All those feelings from my teenage years were creeping up. But I went. And I felt like I had a really good audition. I felt confident, and I remembered the routine!
I didn’t get a part, and I was pretty disappointed (I think I didn’t have enough personality (!!!) during the audition because I was concentrating so hard).
But!
I was still so proud of myself for getting out there and trying, at age 41. I was proud of myself for dancing with WAY more confidence than I did when I was a teenager. I felt like I overcame a huge obstacle.
Auditioning (and not getting a part) made me realize that performing again is something I want to do. So maybe when the right production comes up, I’ll try again, from my new, adult state of mind. And smile more.
Rediscovering the joy in dance has been a journey for me. I was nervous to come back to it after all this time. Could I still do things? Would my 40-something brain be able to remember routines? Would I love it?
But I’m so glad I took the leap. I can still do things (not exactly like I could when I was younger, but still). My brain can remember routines (it requires FULL presence, but that’s GOOD – I’m not thinking about all the other schedules and plans and worries).
I LOVE it.
This journey has been healing. The perspective I have as an adult has been able to repair the wounds I gave myself as a younger person – wounds inflicted by my own insecurities, mostly.
In finding that joy again, and reconnecting with it, I’ve healed. I only wish I’d done it sooner.
I’m sharing my story with you because I think so many of us lose touch with the passions we develop as kids. We get busy, life gets in the way. We have families and put our hobbies on hold.
Rediscovering the joy we found in those hobbies, though, can be life changing.
So I hope that if there’s anything you loved in the past—art, music, dance, sports, anything—and you feel called to go back to it, that you’ll take that leap. I promise, it’s worth it.
