Hello Everyone,
This blog post has been delayed a bit due to some technical issues that I have been having. My computer was attacked by a severe case of Friday the 13th, but more on that later.
You're all probably wondering what's with the 'not going to NY' thing. Why would I spend my valuable time telling you that I'm not going to NY. That's nothing special. The chances are good that you, my beloved reader, are also not going to be swinging though downtown Manhattan anytime soon. But in the last three weeks I had an opportunity open up to make this journey to the other side of the world.
It all began suddenly with a phone call. I was about to start my shift at Officeworks when my phone began its merry jingle. When I answered, I hear an excited Mrs Donaldson (ballet teacher and mentor extraordinaire) tell me something about Paul Boyd (guest teacher) calling her and needing to get in contact with me about an opportunity to perform in New York. Eagerly, I took the number that Mrs D gave me and called Paul. I was only able to have a brief chat with Paul as he had to go back to teaching, but I established that Tanya Pearson, whom Paul was teaching for, was sending a group of dancers to a competition in NY and they had to leave out a boy who was causing problems with his attitude. Paul had put forward my name, which left the ball in my court. I would have spend three weeks in Sydney learning a pas de deux before taking it to this competition in New York!
As we were short on time, I told Paul that I was definitely interested, but would have to do some number crunching and call him the next day with a final decision.
At this point I was fairly jumping round the Officeworks tea room! This sounded as if it had the potential to make all my dancing dreams come true. What an opportunity to get out of Redcliffe and possibly into a company, in New York!!
However, after a few moments of seeing visions of success and glory I had brought my self down to earth with a few sobering questions: what was this competition? who would I be performing with? and how on earth was I going to be able to afford this? Paul said that Tanya Pearson was going to provide board and classes, but the living and flying would be in my hands which presented a problem.
After finishing my shift at Officeworks, I went to my nightly ballet class and was able to discuss it at length with Mrs D and my class mates. Mrs D was starting to be a bit dubious about it as there was no guarantee that I would be able to get a job out of it. No doubt that it was a once in a life time opportunity, but there were a few too many unknowns. Questions like: who would be watching? would I have/be able to do other classes? would this involve living for a week in NY? would I be able to travel further if required? were all needing solid answers.
After doing my somewhat distracted class that evening. I went home to get on the Internet and see if I could answer a few of these questions. Unfortunately, the more I looked at it the more it looked as if this was not going to work out. I didn't really have enough dollars on hand to live for a month without solid income and afford a trip around the world. I also discovered that I would be performing in the Youth America Grand Prix and no one could give me a definite answer as to whether or not I was too old to perform.
By the time I turned off my PC late that night, I had come to the conclusion that I could either go to NY and be risking all that I had on this one roll of the dice. Alternatively I could wait, build up some cash capital and do the Europe trip where I would have a much better idea of what I would be getting into, be more in control of what was happening and would be much better prepared physically and mentally.
So when I called Paul the next morning, I told him that I as much as I would have loved to come, it was just not physically possible or practically sensible at this time. I thanked him profusely for thinking of me and hoped that I would be able to be more helpful in the future.
Now you know why I'm not going to New York. It was an exciting twelve hours though, running around trying to make a decision that could change my life for ever.
That raps it up for post, but I will write further of my (non-)adventures soon. Included in the next post will be the stories of my black Friday, Mother's work ethic and the junk mail flood.
Thanks for reading :-)
DreamChaser
