Week 1: Winx Club + Ballet Exams

Being a ballet teacher in the months of June and July means exams. My students needed to be ready. I needed to be ready. The principal of my dance school, my boss, was the examiner for my Level 2 ballet exams. In my three years of teaching ballet, the Level 2 ballet exams have been my boss's opportunity for criticism.

'Loren's kids had much better posture than yours.'

'You really need to work on their stretched feet.'

'Your improvisation music was too complex!'

This year, she pulled me over at the end of the exams. I braced myself.

'Thank you for working on those Level 2s arms!'

Sometimes it's the bad stuff that sticks with me--a splinter in my mind (as coined by my best friend). This time, it was a good splinter. A colourful sprinkle.

*

When demands and expectations of me are high, the high school Dux inside me shrieks...quietly. She gets quieter every year.

After I got a Credit for my excerpt of Mutable Air, Cardinal Water, a piece I wrote in the Reading Writing intensive, she got really quiet.
(I was really proud of that piece.)

I had finally, for 2 weeks, felt like a true, real, proper writer. I had written pieces I felt good about, pieces that freed thoughts, ideas and emotions I'd had trapped inside me for so long, pieces that reassured me. I was finally feeling better physically, after six weeks of suffering through glandular fever.
And then I got that results.

I really questioned whether I still wanted to be a writer.

I don't know if that questioning is good or bad. 

*

I got all these thoughts while reading Oliver Mol's 'This is Not a Love Story' for Essay Project. It feels modern, it feels young, it feels like it was written honestly from someone near my age or in my generation.

Speaking of, I don't know if my parents are getting old and cranky or if I'm evolving but they become more rigid and old fashioned every time I talk to them.

*

(Tecna isn't in this pic! :( )

As I said in my bio, I'm rewatching Winx Club right now, a childhood fave. My friend said I like nostalgia a lot. I never thought about it but he's right.

I love fairies. I managed to work that into Mutable Air, Cardinal Water last semester. This semester I'm writing about birds.
Hopefully I can work Winx Club in there too. I mean, they have wings.


(I formally formatted and added parts to this post in Week 3 and the ideas were formed in Week 2 so the Week 1 title is a lie.)