Those things that you left behind...they mean as much to you as you want them to.  It's okay to leave them behind for something better, but it's also okay to keep them close to you.  As long as you are being honest with yourself.

JaSmix Summer 2019

I'll keep fighting.  I'll keep hoping.  Because it's a fortunate thing, to even be able to hope at all.  There are some who are not so lucky.  Those who have been forced to face the reality of life.

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JaSmix Summer 2019 was this past weekend and it was a great success!  (For those not in the know, JaSmix is a community-run social dance event that I've been organizing and putting together for the past 3 years -- it's completely free and it runs for the entire day with workshops, lessons, and lots of social dancing)  Like always, it was a lot of work, but really satisfying to hear everyone's positive feedback and energy and to see everyone having a great time.  We started at 3PM this year (and ran until midnight, as usual), but we had an even more packed event this time, with events running simultaneously in both the GCC and Hacienda for most of the day -- we had 6 workshops, a group intensive, private lessons, and of course lots of dancing.

There tends to be this point sometime during a JaSmix event where I suddenly get the realization that JaSmix is basically just as long as Big Dance and arguably MORE tiring for myself since I'm literally there for 9 straight hours (more like 10 if you include setup and teardown) doing everything.  I taught my "Advanced Turning Basics" workshop, did 4 private lessons, and had a 20-minute break to eat dinner before helping out with the practica session and then DJ for the dance.  I was feeling super tired after the combo of teaching my workshop and then 4 private lessons, but was pretty alright the dance had all started and most of my job was done.  My voice was definitely pretty much shot by the end of the night though -- talking so much will do that to ya.

As I mentioned, we had things running in two different rooms this time, which meant that this was the first time where it wasn't actually possible for me to be at all of the events that happened throughout the day. (need some sort of time turner if I want to do that....) so I wasn't able to see any of the group intensive nor any of the later workshops (I was busy teaching private lessons...).  Somehow it basically all went off without a hitch though, which I'm definitely grateful for.

My lesson itself went alright I think, people seemed to enjoy it at the very least.  The private lessons have been super rewarding as I feel like I've been getting much better at actually figuring things out together with people.  And I even got a few good dances in at some point during the night, which was great.  Oh, and people really made good use of the on-screen setlist display, so that was great.

Anyhow, I'm trying to take it a bit easy now that all of that is behind me.  Here's to the next JaSmix event, hopefully in about 6 months or so!

An...."interesting" weekend.  I'm definitely ready to just be done with people and things.  I've already noted this before, but it's really funny how my immediate reaction to being stressed, tired, or even just unhappy is to turn towards trying to get things done or accomplished.  That's not necessarily a bad thing at all, I mean it sort of makes sense really -- just gotta work through it so that it'll all be over sooner.  But it is sort of funny how it's during the myemie times that I can't think about taking a break.  It's extremely rare that I'll get to the point where I really just decide that I'm out.  Of course, it does happen.  But before I get to that point, it really annoys me if I show any sort of weakness.  I'm not really sure how I got to be that way, whether it was some sort of military discipline instinct or just something I think is a generally good attitude to have regardless.  Maybe it's because seeing other people slack off when the going gets rough always really bothered me.  The whole idea of being "hardcore" back in the marching band days.  The people in the group who weren't, who really didn't care...it was always a big issue.  But that's just how it is, in life -- everyone's here for different reasons, and they all work in different ways.  Hopefully, you find yourself in situations where you can cooperate with the people around you and feel comfortable.  Every once in a while you don't, though, and I guess that sort of happened this weekend?  Sometimes it's not malicious but rather, just unfortunate.

So uh...I guess that all was a really roundabout way of saying that this weekend was kind of unfortunate.