Why I dance…

Ever wonder why someone chooses to do something… meaning a hobby or a sport or even reading a book for fun? I recently had a conversation with one of my friends about this, we mainly talked about why we contra dance. I first started contra dancing five years ago at the end of spring semester of my junior year, they decided to start a contra dance in Bristol, VA and one friend had been contra dancing for a long while and told us all how much fun it was. So I decided to give it a chance and I am glad that I did because it allowed me to strengthen the friends I had made that year and when I moved back to Rhode Island and finally had a license and a car I was able to continue dancing and meet some amazing people at home.

A few months ago I realized how much dancing I had been doing the past two years and also noticed the lack of that beautiful feeling of a “dance high”. I honestly think I was slowly becoming bored with dancing, mainly contra dancing, simply because I was contra dancing sometimes multiple times a week. I shouldn’t feel that way about something I love and I think I found a need to write about it because friends weren’t understanding fully why I felt like I needed a break from contra. When I was in school I wasn’t able to dance a few times a week or even once a week, so every time I did get to dance it was fun and exciting and left me wanting more. There might be people who still don’t understand why I am doing this, maybe in time they will.

While not dancing, I have been doing other things that I love like art and writing and reading. I have also been working on things and reading up about social/world issues that I had kind of pushed to the back of my mind after college. And surprisingly everything else that is going on in my life feeling like bad things keep getting thrown at me, I refuse to say that I hate my life, and most people if they were in my shoes might be doing just that.

While I may have digressed a bit from the original topic, it was necessary for that last paragraph. I will continue to dance, but if it’s not every week or only once a week, please don’t say that you disagree with my reasons for not needing to dance every week. Because they are my reasons and not yours. They work the same as opinions, and I shouldn’t have to explain this every time I decide to take a small step back. Sometimes it’s good to take a break from something you love and do all the time, simply to remember why you love it and what made you love it in the first place.

Thank you for taking a few minutes to read this!

Moments Where Everything…

Seem perfectly in sync with each other. How many of those moments have you had in this life? I believe from memory, I have had two. Yes, in 25 years and 7 months of being alive I have only had two moments where everything in the universe seemed to work perfectly with each other. Coincidentally both of those times I was dancing, both times I can tell you who I was dancing with and where I was dancing, but I could not tell you what song was playing or what the contra dance was or what I was doing while blues dancing. When this happens, when you seemingly forget to think about what you should be doing or what your body should be doing in a moment of time and it simply acts upon what it feels like it should be doing. I find that when I get truly lost in a dance I am dancing at my best, oddly this either happens when I am sick or if I am not having the greatest day or week. All I know is after it happens it is probably one of the best feelings in the world.

I hope that at some point you all have this experience, not necessarily dancing but in something that you enjoy doing. Also thank you for reading this short bit I’ve been meaning to write for the past couple of months.

Letting My Life Speak.

Old piece of writing I found. I carry around multiple notebooks/ sketchbooks on a daily basis so I can write a poem or draw or simple jot down my thoughts. Enjoy!

Letting My Life Speak

Letting my life speak

Wearing my heart on my sleeve

Not living how others want me to live.

Moving through the motions

With a blank stare

With blank emotions

My eyes are dead

As a puppet on a string.

Breaking down, tears rolling down my cheeks

The decision to be made

Is driving me crazy

I need a break to walk away.

The fire inside me is growing dim

I find the sparks again as 

The music plays

I get lost and forget everything.

I am letting my heart whisper guidance

I am letting go

I am living my own life

I am letting my life speak.

The eyes are a window to the soul.

I am not sure how many of my friends know this or how many people I have spoken about this to… but I think all of you should know the multitude of which I find inspiration in music and sounds. Everywhere I turn, every quiet forest, every bird, every gentle breeze, every storm, every rainfall, every snowfall, every story I hear… those are my inspirations. I find some form of inspiration everyday… but it takes years to gather enough moments of inspiration to create art that I can truly be proud of and the last piece I was excited about happened to be my senior exhibition project which was almost four years ago. That was up until Sunday night… well before that but Sunday I finished and sent in a design to Threadless for one of their challenges. Yes for people reading this and that have been loving keeping up with the posts on facebook. And if you are thinking this is silly or a pathetic way of getting people to vote, you can think what you want. But I want people to really understand that my art, when I am truly happy with it an excited to show people, that it’s important that everyone in the world has a chance to see it. Many people have said this: “Your eyes are a window into the soul…”. Well this design I am giving the world a chance to see into my soul a bit, at least for the moment the joyous and inspired part of my soul. My soul takes me into galaxies far beyond our own and allows me to dream up things in my imagination that I can never get quite right on paper… That was until I read the challenge presented by Sony and Threadless and my hands and imagination immediately figured out how to work together.

So if you have read this far, I thank you with every morsel of my heart. And I ask that you if not before this please vote for my design and make sure to leave an awesome comment on the design page, and if you have voted but decided to not leave a comment please think about leaving one. Comments are another way a design gets chosen. And then if you could share either this blog post or the link on my designs page with all of your friends, I would be eternally grateful. This isn’t really about winning, it’s about everything I wrote before this, winning would just be an added bonus and to say that I actually won something (which I’ve never been that good at anything). Yes, this may be a bit of a bribe..(but also a brilliant idea from a lovely friend) every comment/ vote I get I will bake a cookie. At the moment for comments (6? cookies) and votes (140 something?). I also bake really delightful cookies. =]

Here’s the link: http://thrdl.es/~/x3h