First, let me say that ballet has been a passion with me since I was a kid. I remember going to Radio City Music Hall in New York for the first time on a field trip in school to go see the Radio City Christmas Spectacular. I thought to myself that I would like to dance like them one day — that’s when my passion for dance began. Ever since the show, I have had dreams of dancing en pointe and performing.
But being the shy kid that I was, I never followed that dream to take classes. So as I grew up, I just put dance in the back of my mind and went into the Navy.
What made me want get into dance as an adult?
Unfortunately, I got the chance to start ballet after a second chance at life after having an accident in 2012, when I was T-boned in my car. I was able to get back on my feet cause of my experience in the Navy, I was trained to get back on my feet without the help of physical therapy, but something still didn’t feel right with me and felt weak from the accident.
I wanted to do something, but going to the gym wasn’t something I wanted to do. Going to the gym, you do the same exercises over and over again. So that is when I decided I’d check into ballet classes because it was something I always wanted to do, and I knew you always were learning something new when you go to class.
Even though I knew ballet wasn’t going to be easy and I knew may not become a professional, like my two favorite dancers, Polina Semionova and Mikhail Baryshnikov, I am finally following a dream I wanted to do.
Now, that I am taking my classes, I have finally found the happiness that I’ve been looking for since I was a kid. So, if people want to look at me and judge, that’s fine because ballet is something I want to do and enjoy. Even my teacher says she sees the hidden ballerina in me come out because I have the passion for ballet when I come to class and sees me getting better every class!
Since I started going to ballet, I advanced in November ’14, to go en pointe, and have slowly progressed in my classes. Ballet has opened me up to feel the happiness that I was missing in addition to the great exercise it gives me to keep fit and to enjoy life more.
I’m here to say, if you have a dream, don’t let anyone stop you from following it cause then it may stop you from finding the happiness that you were looking for!
Brainstorming Content for Adult Ballerina Project
The idea for this post and brainstorming session is pretty much completely stolen from Philly Love Notes, a local blog here in Philadelphia. But since I know that I really needed to go through a similar thought process here on ABP, I figured I’d share my process of going through it as well and take input from others.
How to Create Content starts off by talking about how people no longer go directly to the source for the content, instead people go to social media, RSS feeds, Pinterest, Tumblr, etc. Well I’ve found that mostly be to be true with other forms of content, I also know that a huge bulk of my readership comes from Googling how to do something ballet-related. Go figure.
However, I totally understand that this idea is true: You have to be everywhere and anywhere your readers might find you. ABP is–we have Facebook, a Facebook group, Tumblr, a Pinterest board, G+, Twitter, Instagram, and we are SEO friendly.
The overall goal of the podcast, to me, was to help you come up with easier ways to not take up too much time brainstorming how to do everything.
I’d recommend it to anyone who is looking for ways to get more out of blogging.
Grace shares that the key is to develop easy and effortless high quality content that can be shared over multiple platforms and comes naturally to you. She goes into a little bit about how to do some research, and one of the things I’ll definitely be doing a look through my analytics to see what has been really popular over time.
Grace then goes on to share 10 main categories of content, many of which I feel there’s a spot for ABP to fit in (and I’d love to hear what you’d like to see):
Then the podcast went into some trusted go-tos, a lot of which I already do:
Overall, this was a really great exercise to help walk me through what I can be doing more of and what (and who) I can feature on the blog.
Is there any particular post, article, or idea you’d like to see in any of these category? Let me know in the comments!
Photo by: Alan Cleaver