Camera Adds Ten Pounds

I’m having major doubts and insecurities right now about my dancing.

Last weekend, when we did the casting for Kyle’s piece (the piece that I got into), Kyle only really checked people for timing. We were just supposed to mark stuff and didn’t have to go full out because he wanted to focus on weeding out the people who were off, hitting the moves at the wrong time, too early or too late. I guess I’m good with timing.

But anyone can be good with timing, especially if they do what I do: dissect the video, write down every move and when and where they fall, slow down the track to half its rate and work up.

The problem is when I go full out, I look sloppy as hell. Violently sloppy. I wonder if I would’ve gotten into the piece if the casting process for Kyle’s piece was the same as the prior pieces.

People who get casted in a piece are supposed to be good. I don’t know. I have this (rational or irrational?) fear that I could still get kicked out of the current piece I’m in if I suck enough. And judging from videos I’ve recorded, that could be possible.

The greatest service and disservice that I can do to myself is watching myself dance on video. It’s a service in that I can see what I’m fucking up, but it’s a disservice in that I get so ridiculously frustrated from not knowing how to fix myself after trying and videoing myself over and over again. It’s a service to my progress as a dancer, but it’s a disservice to my spirit.

Well, I really have no spirit or positivity to begin with; I’m running on nothing but raw determination, which has always been enough for me in the past. But now? Fuuuuuck I don’t know. I’m stuck.

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“This story gave my dad a few good laughs.”
Written March 1st, 2007

I had my first tennis game today! :D (After that smiley, everything in this entry goes downhill.) It was a JV match, and my temporary partner was Tim. I was pretty nervous because I knew hardly anything about the rules for doubles games, and at yesterday’s practice, I played my first ever practice game, which sucked, and which also was the first time that I had a real practice session in the last two weeks. I was definitely not prepared to play today’s game.

When the bus dropped us off at Piedmont Hills High, I already began noticing what players on PH’s team were skilled, which was like all of them. They also overall looked better than most of ST’s team (as in, their body appearance, not their game). Anyway, while the Varsity people played their games, I messed around with the JV kids and chilled with Alice, a player from STHS’s girls’ tennis team.

Me and Tim’s match started around 5:30, and I think we were already giving our opponents a pretty bad impression of ourselves during the warm up because I started by hitting the ball over the fence. Twice. In a row. Bitch.

When it came to the actual match itself, they basically annihilated us like we were some cockroaches just chilling on the casing of the Chernobyl reactor seconds prior to its meltdown. Most of our points came from their faults, and I think out of the whole match, we only won one set. I could tell that our opponents were getting pretty irritated with playing against novices like us, because when the game started, they were enthusiastic and focused, but gradually became sloppy and slothful. They probably felt annoyed that they had to waste their time with us; one of them was wearing a pair of sunglasses, yet I could still see the anger blazing in his eyes.

I’m also pretty sure that they thought that specifically I was pretty stupid: When I named off out the score, “40-40!” they corrected me, shouting over, “Deuce!” I mumbled accordingly, and did little air quotes with my fingers and rolled my eyes as I repeated, “‘Deuce’.” (I really need to cut down on mocking and making fun of everything, but it comes to me so instinctively. Like, when the Piedmont Hills player were being introduced, one person was named “Andrew Tran,” and upon hearing that, I turned to the person next to me and cracked, “I definitely haven’t heard that name combination before!”)

So during our miserable match, there were two other Varsity matches going on, and when those ended, it was time for us to leave, even in the middle of the Junior Varsity matches. But that was good, because I couldn’t take anymore losing.

This game was a pretty slap in the face as to how not good I actually am, and how the majority of ST’s Junior Varsity is not that great either. At first, I thought I was starting somewhere close to the top, but now I’ve realized that I’m pretty much at the bottom with the rest of the JV kids. However, what’s amazing is that I don’t actually feel too angry about it. I’ve always hated starting at the bottom, and I quitted a lot of things because I didn’t get good super fast (one of the minor reasons I gave up trying to learn breakdancing). But I’m actually not feeling this with Tennis. I’ll probably piss of a few more players from other schools before I finally start to get good.
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I quit tennis at the end of the season, by the way. (Couldn’t really play tennis anymore after completely destroying my racket by smashing it against the concrete ground over and over again.) But I am NOT giving up on dancing.