First: THANK YOU to everyone who commented on Jar of Hearts, and SaFire for featuring it. For a long time I fell into the "next trick, next trick, next trick" trap, and kind of got bogged down in not being a cool hooper like everyone else. I'm fighting to find my hoopDANCE love again, and this video was part of trying to capture that. So it means a lot to me, this video, for a lot of different reasons, and it just floors me with gratitude that it seems to mean something to others as well. I really wish I could properly express how I feel my heart swell at your generosity...and I wish I weren't so easily overwhelmed by comment volume that I could respond to everyone individually. I know it is rude that I don't, I am sorry.

I am plotting to take hip hop and contemporary jazz classes this month. One class a week with Contemporary Ballet of Dallas. They are drop in classes, and I hope they kick my ass. I was disappointed with my modern dance class at CD/FW because as good as the teacher was, the class was in a really tiny room and there was no room to just let go and stretch and dance. It felt like the class was a pat on the head to adults who had decided to take up dance again, and that is not at all what I want. No, I want to be treated seriously, and I want my ass kicked. I need my ass kicked.

Because I am not doing anything.

I am back to where I was before I started hooping, though considerably less grumpy. It's been a hot summer, and Hoop Path was gorgeous but overwhelming, and so much has happened in my personal life that I finally just slid under the metaphorical blanket and buried my head. I needed a time out. Life got to be too much. I got pulled out to the deep water, and while I kept out of range of the undertow, I was still exhausted treading the waves.

I got freaked out by some creepy dude coming up to me while I was hooping a few weeks ago and hitting on me in a seriously slimy doesn't-understand-no sort of way. So I haven't been hooping outside. My new apartment doesn't have the space to hoop, the way I have arranged it, so I haven't done much indoor hooping. I have my gym membership, but it seems like such an EFFORT to get there and I don't know why.

I have all these songs I want to hoop to and I just DON'T. Because everything has been too much. I think I am coming out of it, but I am just so annoyed at finding myself back at square one in the first place.

Where's the love, you know? I had it. Where now?

I do have one thing I did NOT have when I first started hooping, though. I now have an LED hoop. And it is marvelously twinkly and shiny. I really quite like it. I am hoping it helps get me off my ass, because if there is one thing I cannot stand it is spending considerable money on something I never use. I plan to drop more money on a pair of single-color minis in blue, because I love my silly blue glitter minis and I have been playing with minis a little lately.

I need to just DO this stuff. But first I think I need to get the tattoo I have wanted for years, the simple script on my right wrist that says, "come up screaming," to remind me that when I fall down like this, I need to get back up and fight it off.