Dance Anyway!

Friday’s video gave me a lot to think about. Thanks to someone sharing my David Bowie “Fame” dance on a Bowie fan site, I’ve managed to rack up 750 views compared to my usual handful.

At first I was getting all these really nice comments and the virtual attention made me feel really good, but then I noticed a few snarks about my “dancing,” which made me reevaluate watching my numbers.

I had to remind myself why I’m even doing this.

I guess if someone were to just stumble upon one of my videos without knowing why I’m doing it, they might totally be like, “What? This girl can’t dance!”

I guess it doesn’t really make sense out of context. But even as I write this, I hear myself apologizing and wonder why I feel the need to do that. Like, a part of me wants to shout, “Hey! I’ve never had a dance lesson in my life! And I’m a mom with three kids. I’m not that bad with all things considered!”

But why do I even feel the need to justify my dancing? I’m dancing to feel joy, to remind myself I make my choices everyday whether to choose joy or to stay small and sad. I dance because it makes me feel good and I like sharing my videos to inspire others not to feel trapped by the world’s expectations.

Most people expect dance videos to be shared because the dancer is awesome. Well, you know what? I AM awesome, but I’m not a professional dancer. I’m awesome because I’m not afraid to be myself and share who that me is at the moment. I want to show the world that you don’t have to be a professionally trained singer or dancer or ANYTHING to want to share the joy you feel doing those things with the world.

We can just sing or dance or cook or write or run or tell jokes because it makes us feel alive. And sometimes feeling alive is all that matters.

And here I go again, apologizing for my video today: my camera battery was flashing, so I didn’t know if I’d have enough juice to get today’s video shot and then I started dancing to discover I had zero energy and didn’t know if I could make it through the song. The whole video, you may pick up on my mind saying, “I should quit. Why am I doing this? I can’t even make it through this one song. I’m going to quit…no, almost through…power through…”

Wow, no Zen mind here today.