OUCH!!

Yesterday we had an outdoor dance performance where I performed my sword solo.  Unfortunately, it was a very windy day and I attempted to balance the sword on my head.  It balanced for a moment before there was a wind gust and the sword slipped.  I grabbed the handle of the sword with one hand and with the other I attempted to stabilize it -- unfortunately, in doing so, the tip of the sword sliced the palm of my right hand (luckily I'm a lefty).  Needless to say, my hand is sore (didn't help that we played the handbells at church this morning and I had to grip a bell with my right hand) and I'm doing my best to allow it to heal and not become infected.  If nothing else, it has to get better by next Saturday because I'm performing my sword solo again (this time will luckily be indoors!).  I did learn a valuable lesson though - when dancing with a sword, one should actually bring Band-Aids to a performance and NOT leave them in the van...


Some people have asked my why I didn't just let the sword fall.  My answer has been a simple one - - I don't want to have to pay for my sword to be rebalanced or replaced if it falls onto the pavement.  I figured a little bit of pain was better than damaging the sword to the point I couldn't dance with it anymore.  Granted, by catching it and hurting my hand, I feel as if my confidence was shaken and my performance suffered but I can't go back and change it now.  All I can do is chalk it up to experience and move on from here.  I have a performance this Saturday to look ahead to and another one next week.  I don't want this experience to overly impact those upcoming performances - - I don't want to necessarily "play it safe" out of fear of getting injured again.


I think I have been "playing it safe" out of fear of being injured in other aspects of my life as well.  Even though I don't really have time to do so, I know this is one of the main factors for not putting myself out there in the dating world again.  Who knows, maybe I'll never be ready.  I know that I have to continue to work on finding myself and caring about myself before I can find anyone else who will (someone at church today joked that after having my hand cut yesterday, I should try and find an EMT to date so I'll always have my on someone on call if I get hurt again).


I'm often the first one to admit that I still have a long way to go on my journey of self-discovery.  One of my biggest shortcomings (as I've written about before) is how I view myself when I look in the mirror.  I know that my reflection is different than it once was but I still see things that I want to change about myself.  Maybe, one of these days, it won't be such trouble for me to see things that others see when I look into the mirror.  I guess it's just a difficult thing because I often remind myself of the things I don't like.  That is something for me to work on.


I have never really found it to be a difficult thing to provide positive support to friends and those around me.  I know that I have written before about talking to myself as if I had me as a friend.  I often find exercises like that to be difficult but I know that I need to work on exercises such as these in order to further my personal growth and development.  I just wish exercises like this didn't have to be so hard/draining emotionally.  I guess I could look at it with the old saying, "anything worth doing is worth doing well" and just go for it...  We'll see how well that goes for me.