This post is also about ballroom dancing

Cooperation is good.  Communities are helpful.  People who are good at what you do can give good advice on how to do it.  Success is making the most of the opportunities ahead of you, and often times those opportunities come via the people you know.  Cassie's writer friend showed her a piece she'd written, and Cassie said, "You should submit that to Nature, because I know what they're looking for, and this is exactly it."  So the friend submitted, and was published in Nature.

The problem is, I don't want to make friends with people who do what I do.  If they're not up to my standards I hold criticism in my heart.  If they're good then I'm threatened.  It's not that I won't befriend photographers or writers.  Obviously, I have friends who do these things, and do them well.  But when I meet someone, the fact that they share those traits with me is a point against them.  It's only later, after I have come to know and love them, that I can let go of my territorial instincts.  Once there is an us, then we can be writers together.  But when there's just two people, only one of them, and it has to be me, can occupy that space.

I'm not proud of this, and I try to squash it as much as I can, but the instinct is there.  Part of this is competitiveness.  And part of it has to do with identity.  If I am used to being The Weird One in a group, then that becomes part of my self-identification, and if someone else takes that title, then I have lost a little of who I think I am.  Which is why I don't bristle when confronted with someone who knits better than I do, or dances better, because I am not used to taking those things as identifiers.  I actually do still bristle a little bit among drama people, because I used to be one.  And even though I haven't acted on stage since my junior year in college, it bothers me that people don't see me that way. 

I have complained a good deal, although not so much on this blog, about the interactions I've had with ballroom dancers.  The in-club people stick with themselves, and barely even seem to see anyone who isn't in the club.  I went to a ballroom dance, and the only people who said hi to me were swing dancers, who I had met just as recently as anyone else in the room.  When I asked people to dance, no one actually refused me, but they still seemed to barely notice I was there.  And I spent a lot of time standing in front of someone, waiting for them to acknowledge my presence so I could ask.

It's been pointed out to me that ballroom dancers don't necessarily come to it as a social activity.  It's a competitive performance.  And even when they're dancing "socially," they see it as practicing for the real thing, which is competition.  So there isn't any point in dancing with someone who might not know every step that they do. 

But I just realized that, beyond the difference in what we think we're doing at a dance, I am pushing a lot of boundaries.  I'm nobody.  And I walk in, obviously confident, stand in front of the class as if I think I'm teaching it (see previous post).  I haven't paid my dues (I mean, I have literally, but not figuratively) but I expect to be welcomed into the circle.  They're not being snobbish, not necessarily.  They're being territorial.  They're acting, actually, just like me.