jchrisobrien | no pain, no gain

I'd forgotten what it's like to be the beginner. Poi class is pretty daunting right now. I've seen people who've started after me making much more progress than myself. I also have my own body getting in the way. Last night I worked on doing a waist wrap, which involves snaking my arm around my back. Chad said this will be difficult for me as I'm very broad shouldered. After getting a poi right in the eye (it was nicely bloodshot, but not black and blue) I had to sit down and take a rest, before I started swearing. I'm going to have to put some serious extra hour practice into this. Another option would be to learn something I may be better suited for, fire staff perhaps.

I joined some of the crew for drinks and snacks at the Sunset Cantina, where I chatted about old horror movies and listened to tales of WildFires past. The social part of poi is advancing, even ifn the actually skills are not. THUD ended up being a pretty good time again. My exhaustion almost got me down, but I weathered the rest of the night with meticulous attention to the dance floor, and some timely musical interventions from Znuh and Shivar. There are some more new faces coming into the club, some haughty, some not.

It's a fine line to walk, interpreting when someone likes the attention they are getting, and when they don't. I thought of swooping in to rescue the girl in the blue corset who was getting pawed by the man-ape, but she seemed to be able to handle herself. Chivalry can sometimes bite you. Perhaps I'll must up the courage to talk to her next week. I plead exhaustion in my defense.

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I've seen people who've started after me making much more progress than myself

It always looks that way from the outside--trust me, it is impossible to be objective about this kind of thing!

I've made progress in some areas, it's true. I just need to practice more, and try to be inspired by the people around me as opposed to discouraged.

The girl in the blue corset is my friend V's room mate. We were keeping an eye on them too :)

Hopefully she enjoyed the night. If you guys need any "security" on future nights, just pull me aside. I'm no Ed the Destroyer, but I've been told I can be "menacing". >:)

Will do ;)

Progress is a relative term.
There's no great race to learn all the poi moves you can before anyone else, though some people do think about it that way. There's nothing wrong with practicing more, but you should make sure you're doing it for the right reason. If you're doing it solely because it bothers you that others have learned quicker (either because they've been practicing more or had more instruction), you should think about what it is you're hoping to gain from spinning. I will fully admit that I felt this way when I was learning - that I had to push myself farther faster than everyone else. And it worked for a while, until I realized I'd taken all the fun out of it and I wasn't sure why I was spinning anymore.
If anyone is making you feel like you should be progressing faster than you are, please ignore them. Everyone needs to work through their ego, and people who pick up poi quickly tend to take the longest doing that.
Regardless, there will always be people that learn things faster than you; there will always be that kid who picks up poi and can do everything you can in three days. While its a good exercise in humility, don't let it get you down. It happens across the board. When I was teaching high school it was always weird when I had a student who was smarter than me, but after all, the most book-smart people in the world generally don't become high school teachers, so its going to happen.
Although I wouldn't recommend giving up on poi, I would recommend picking up staff. There's a lot of similarities between the two so knowledge of one can help you with the other.

Mainly, I want to practice so I can stop hitting myself in the face! That's all par for the course in learning, though. I feel like I've learned the basics, and there's a big gap between where I am and the next step. The last two things i learned still are very tricky (reverse thread the needle and waist wraps).

There were certainly always be people better than I. I started learning poi because I wanted to meet new people and learn something new and interesting. So far so good, though both are going slower than I'd like, it's not something that can be forced.

I could also take some more breaks between trying to work on something new, and go back and do things I'm much more comforatble with. I do like the dancing with poi! My goal is to learn more things that I can throw in while I"m dancing around.

I think J said many things better than I could have.

If you have interest in staff, I know it helped me to better understand poi. as i've been somewhat disenchanted with learning new things lately, if you'd like to do some staff work, i'll gladly help you. especially since i've found that sometimes working on something completely different can really help. like i've said, my staff helped my poi, and the opposite is also true.

but if you're really enjoying poi in general, i would definitely discourage giving up on it. it has many benefits not afforded by staff. liek the ability to bring your practice toys anywhere

If you're at class next week, I'll talk to you about staff stuff. I have a practice staff I can use at home (but it's a bo staff, so heavy!)

I won't be giving up on poi yet. I'll see what more practice yields first.

"ability to bring your practice toys anywhere" - srsly.
Sometimes I hate hooping.

no pain, no gain

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