A short and sweet post to remind mostly me, but maybe you too, how important it is to just keep showing up every day to get better at something.
Since around Thanksgiving 2020, I've been practicing lindy hop ~2hrs a day with my dance partner (concerted practice, not casual social dancing). I've made some incredible progress that I'm really proud of and it's all due to that hard work and showing up day after day.
For me though, it's really only when looking back at videos of my dancing from several weeks or months ago that I fully see the progress and feel proud of it. (All the more reason to underscore the importance of filming your dancing...) Each individual practice day I usually don't feel great about my dancing and usually don't feel like I've made huge progress. Partly this is because of my own critical tendencies (I'm working on that :P) but also because this stuff really does accrue over time. I'm reminded of those digital photograph time-lapses that change one pixel at a time until somehow, after a while, the whole photo has changed and you're left confused at how it transformed into a complete different image. Getting better at something feels like that to me. You do all this work, and kind of don't notice many changes but then a few weeks, months, or years later you're looking at a whole new skillset (a whole new dancer, in my case). It's humbling and it's encouraging to see it all pay off. Looking forward to looking back in another few months :)