Swimming Against the Current

I'm frustrated with my progress in dancing lately.

This has been a busy semester, and I simply cannot afford to practice or attend all of the dance team coaching session that I have access to. This is a choice I make, and I do it because I value other things more than dancing, but I get frustrated when I don't see any progress. My dance partner and I did fairly well in our most recent competition, but it seems the results are always the same--people that place higher than us move on to more competitive levels, and those we beat last semester are taking their place above us at this level.

Developing dance technique and skill is like swimming upstream--you have to work hard to make significant progress, and minimal or moderate effort will allow you to stay where you are, but if you do nothing, you're only going to move backwards. As a reformed perfectionist, this is frustrating; there is no end of improvement that can be made.

I don't aspire to be a professional dancer, but I don't think I can be satisfied never progressing past where I am now. The more experienced dancers and instructors I talk to have tried to talk me down from the ledge by encouraging me that I am improving and that you don't really regress as much as you think you do, but that's of little comfort now. And I do realize and agree that our placement in a competition is not a pure measure of how well we dance--it's amazing how much subjective value and luck factor in. But this week it's been tough to decide what a reasonable goal is going forward.