Update
(note: this post was scheduled for December 17th, and I’ve been having trouble with WordPress not publishing it or anything else since… I’ll try to fix this and release the posts slowly, but since I need to re-do them, it will take a while)
I’ve been a little bit quiet, and it’s been for good reason. In November, I got minor surgery on one of my toenails, which has dealt with a long-standing ingrowing toenail. I kept thinking that it wasn’t really affecting me, but seeing that right now, the position of my toe has changed completely and I am more stable on my feet than I have been since last year, I’d have to say that I was wrong. Sadly, as part of the recovery process, I’ve had to stop attending ANY classes since late October,and if you need to ask why, just take a look at the photo on the left.
This of course has caused me to pretty much climb up the walls. No dancing? Awful! I wouldn’t wish it on anybody, but I understand it’s for my own good, so I’ve been following the doctors orders to the letter. They told me I could slowly ease back into dancing, but shouldn’t attend classes until the area is fully healed. And since I also couldn’t even remain seated at the computer for too long, I took to finishing costume projects, as might be obvious by the amount of costuming updates that I’ve done.
Once I got to a stage where I was comfortable walking, I started practicing a little bit. No more than 15-20 minutes at a time, with long intervals in between. Not a lot, really, but it was almost enough to work on what has become my very first solo, doing my own choreography to Natacha Atlas’ version of “I Put a Spell on You”. I’ll post more information soon, along with a video and hopefully choreography notes, if I can turn them into something coherent and understandable to others.
So overall, it’s been a rather quiet couple of months where I’ve concentrated on healing, and on keeping the stupid dressing on. It’s also showed me that *any* sort of issue with the feet needs to be looked at asap… life would have been a lot easier if I’d had the surgery done when it was first suggested 18 months ago, and probably my ankle injury wouldn’t have been that bad or taken this long to heal -and is still doing, by the way. So, the moral of the story is, don’t ignore feet issues, or even toenail issues, they might be affecting far more than you think!
What happens now? I have to wait until this finishes healing -hopefully a couple of weeks more-, although I’ll try to keep dancing at home, and I’ve got a new choreography that is starting to take shape in my head. I’m going to restart ATS and Fusion classes in January, hopefully, and should get back to Egyptian practice in the New Year too. I am also attending an ATS residential weekend by the end of January. As for costuming projects, I’ve got three immediate concerns: a gift for a friend, a bag for transporting my sword to said Residential, and a cover-up to use at the Residential too, which, right now, is planned as a Ghawazee coat in black crushed velvet, using the leftover trim from my Silver and Black bra and belt. The list after that includes a couple more practice and performance tops, and three pieces using an amazing cherry brocade: a bra, a belt, and a Turkish vest, where I’d like to start flexing the embroidering muscles I re-awaken with the medallions on the Teal set. And in terms of dancing, I want to focus on recovering and improving my practice schedule and stamina from before the forced break. Not bad for new year’s resolutions, right?