ten years of service

I spent my Saturday mostly in the car. Six hours, total. Which is about equal to the time I spent in my destination.
Fresno.
Why would anyone ever go to Fresno? I ask myself the same thing every time I find myself on the way there. Usually it’s like this trip. Waking up before 5 am in anticipation of sitting in the car for hours, unable to sleep because I just can’t sleep in the car, before getting up on stage for about 15 minutes total of dancing time. But really, I wouldn’t have it any other way.
This past Saturday marked ten years of Highland dance competition for me. For some reason, I thought it was last year, but my records indicate otherwise. (I have a binder full of old entry forms and a list of my results from every competition ever. If I could have figured out a spreadsheet, I probably would have done that at the time. I was eatsleepbreathehighland for a long time!) At the Fresno competition in 2000, I only did two or three dances and I didn’t place at all. (I think I did Fling, Seann Triubhas, and maybe Lilt. I did place at my second competition and even got a stamp, but was still in Beginner for two years because I took it really slow.) Fresno 2010, I did a lot better. Five dances and two sixth places. If this were the days of Beginner and Novice and working for stamps, I’m sure I’d have been disappointed. But these are the days of having no class and little practice and getting no sleep the night before the competition. And the competition is a leetle stiffer in Premier 16&O than it is Beginner 11&O.
A lot of dancers stop competing at this age, especially when they start teaching. I recently decided that I’m going to do one competition a year as long as I physically can. As demanding as Highland is, I don’t know how long that will be but I hope it will be a long time from now. Twenty years of competition would be great!
I’ve made a lot of progress to get from this:
To this:
Knitting/sewing talk soon!