A year in New York + 500 creative hours later

Yesterday I came back from a dance class happier than ever. Nick Joseph, my long-time dance crush, taught a hard-ass choreography. I felt terrible for the first half of the class because I was falling behind. But then I remembered what sensei Isidro taught me. He said to not focus on getting the choreography in class, because it will come in time, but try to sneak into the teacher's brain to understand their intentions - the weight placement, texture, and timing choices. Also, remember to plié at all times. That changed everything, the plié. My feet got much faster. Then I started to have fun too - I started to see the creative choices in Nick’s choreography. Eventually, I just felt grateful that I got to dance this way.

If you’ve never been to a dance class, there’s this tradition that teachers will pick out outstanding students to perform with them. The classes are full of really high-level dancers who’ve performed on Broadway and such, so I never got picked. But yesterday Nick pointed at me, twice. This dancer who’s one of the best in the world likes my dancing????? What the actual fuck? Really??

But the craziest thing is, I didn’t even feel that much happier that Nick picked me. I thought I would, but I was only, say, 15% happier, because I was already so much fun as is. I was trying out this new training method that doesn’t focus on the outcome and it worked. I can have fun and be good at something. There’s an interesting balance between focusing on techniques and pleasure that I’m starting to figure out.

Then it struck me how much I’ve changed after a year living in New York and about 500 hours of creative work poured in.

When I first moved here, I felt like a nobody. I wasn’t “cool” enough for this city, because here everyone was well-dressed, well-traveled, and well-accomplished. The last time I felt accomplished was in high school 😮‍💨. Any public display of creativity, even a sticker, felt like a direct insult to my basicness and lack of skills. I even lost the joy of dancing for a while. I knew I was relatively good at it, but I was never a properly trained dancer. All my dance education was from Youtube University in the luxurious campus of my room with no mirror. And the whole “pick out the best dancers” thing messed me up too. It turned dance into a performance and not a space I could just jump into and feel safe in anymore.

But wrestling with doing creative work for about an hour each day, totaling nearly 500 hours, in a city beaming with “best of the best,” did teach me a thing or two.

As cliché as it sounds, I just want to keep doing the things I love, creative projects like this Substack post and a dance video and a poster. They’re all inconsequential, especially concerning the current world affairs, but they feel magical to me. Somehow I’ve found something that feels so fucking good to do and that’s accessible at the tip of my finger? I still need to figure out how to make a living so I can live, buy supplies, and do the projects. But the fact that I can execute my ideas at any time, and have all the means to finish them, is surreal. Of course, I still get insecure over not being great at something yet, but the number of hours this thought makes me miserable is shrinking significantly.

Lots of friends admire that I’m “chasing my dream” properly. I don’t feel like chasing though, nor do I have a specific dream. My only proper dream for now is to figure out how to build a sustainable stream of income so I can live well just enough for time and mental space to make creative projects. Otherwise, I’m already doing it.

Times when someone like Nick Joseph or Galen Hooks called me out in front of a class full of professional dancers also gave me extra encouragement. They see something good in me, even though I don’t have the best technique or learn the fastest yet. There’s something in the way I tell stories that’s worth sharing. This kind of confidence was foreign to me a year ago. Back then, I wondered why would anyone ever want to see something from me (except my friends who are supportive and nice). I still don’t know why anyone would want to see things I create, but I’m not too concerned or have it a factor to stop me from making and sharing anymore.

With that, my relationship with the Cool People of NY changed. I’m getting less impressed and more suspicious of the cool people because …what do you actually care about? I’m more drawn to people who do things with dedication and joy these days. The other day at the Times Square CVS, I asked the worker there where the earplugs were, and he pointed me to exactly aisle 23. “How specific,” I said. He smiled and told me he tried to remember where everything was. Wow, people who try their best at whatever they do. Then there are people who smile a lot doing what they do, like Isidro and Haeni, my dance crushes, or the baristas from Hamlet cafe, or Grandma from Maple Str community garden. I don’t have to be a suffering self-hating artist to make beautiful stuff.

That’s it, I want to be a financially stable, mentally happy artist. Took me a year to figure out.