Day 180 - Having a discouraged moment

I was at a local street festival yesterday and there was a girl hooping on the street.  Just hooping.  I had brought my hoops, but I had also brought my husband and three kids, and really we were there to spend time together as a family.  Not to hoop.  But I wanted to, so so badly. 

As I watched her I found myself feeling really sad.  Sad that I can't do that, at least not yet.  The thing is, I want to just take my hoop and go hoop all over the place.  On the street, at festivals, in parades.  Today is World Pride day and I know a lot of hoopers from all over the province are hooping in the parade.  I bet it will be a ton of fun.  I can't do that kind of stuff. 

My time to hoop is already so limited as it is.  I have to squeeze it in here and there, and my big 'blocks' of hooping time (my Wednesday evening and Sunday morning jams) are carefully planned around my husband's busy schedule.  Anytime I want to go to an event, I have to coordinate it with him.  We have three small children, all of which are on summer vacation right now, and I am a stay at home mom while my husband runs his own very busy landscape business.  Unfortunately prime hoop season also falls during his busiest season.  He works 6 out of 7 days, for 12 hours or more a day.  This is how it has to be, it is not like he works for someone else and can just clock out when the day is done and take weekends off.  When you are an entrepreneur, you work pretty much around the clock.  I am ok with this and fully supportive, his goal of running a successful business and his 'workaholic' personality are what have allowed me to be able to stay at home and take care of our children, something that I have always wanted to do.  For this I am really thankful.

But yeah, it does mean that the success of our landscaping business comes first, alongside the health and well being of our family, and my hooping way after that.  Anytime that he does manage to take a day off, that time is spent catching up on work around the house or spending time together as a family, which is the most important thing to me.  It is hardly fair that whenever my husband does make an effort to be around, I dump the children on him and run.  I do use that time to plan some things for myself, like my hoop sessions, but I make it a point to plan some family activities for us as well.  Otherwise it becomes a case of us just passing the kids back and forth but never actually doing anything together, all 5 of us.

Reconciling my family life and my love of hooping has often been a challenge for me.  I don't always think of it as a bad thing, afterall they are two very compatible things.  What better family activity is there than spending some time outdoors, hooping together?  The hard part comes when I do need to divide the two, at the times when I am trying to be Martina the hoop dancer/hoop teacher/hoop maker vs Martina the Mom.  I have found that my business itself is not particularly progressing at a steady pace because I'm picking away at it in between my family responsibilities.

Sometimes I feel like I am making excuses for not pushing Hoopla along at a better rate, like a truly ambitious and motivated person would make it work despite also having a family to attend to.  If I am honest with myself, this is probably true in a lot of ways.  I am not an ambitious, go-getter, business-type person by nature.  In fact the only ambition I have ever truly had was to be a mother, and that at least I know I am good at.  This whole running my own hoop business thing, I don't always know....

For the most part I can sort through these feelings and am really ok with Hoopla not necessarily blowing up and becoming a huge thing.  It was never my intention to grow my business fast and furious, in fact I have taken many measures to make sure just the opposite.  With my husband's business being priority and so busy already, I had purposely not marketed myself or pushed my hoops and hoop classes for fear of getting too busy, because the reality is I just don't have the backup and childcare in place for if I were in high demand.  The main reason I started Hoopla at all was for the love of hooping, and so that if anyone out there is interested and does want to learn to hoop, they can seek me out and I will guide them.  And that is what I have been doing.

Nevertheless, sometimes it's hard to shake this sad, nagging feeling that other people are doing more and being more in the hoop world than I will ever be.  I guess you could call it the ugly face of jealousy in a way.  Not necessarily jealous that they are better than me, I know better to compare myself to other hoopers, rather jealous that they can put their art first.  I often wonder if I would be more motivated and ambitious about hooping if I didn't have a family as well.

I have said it before and I will say it again though, I wouldn't trade my family for all the hoops in the world, and that part is and always will be true.  I take comfort in knowing that my true calling is to be a wife and mother, and I am proud of that.  And I also know it doesn't mean I can't be a hoop dancer as well, or that I can't build Hoopla and have it be successful.  I know that in the grand scheme of things Hoopla is still young, and there is still time.  Time to grow, time to learn, time to be successful.  There is no hurry. 

I started Hoopla with the goal of sharing hoop dance with others.  When I get caught up in thinking that I should be further along by now, I take a step back and remind myself that my kids are only little for a short period of time, and one day they will all be in school and I will be twiddling my thumbs wondering what to with myself, and when that time comes my hooping will still be there.  One day my husband's business will be more established and then maybe it can take a back seat for a bit while mine gets more attention.  One day all of these things will fall into place, and then maybe that day I will be the girl hooping on the street.

See, even just writing it all down makes me feel better.  I think some hoop therapy might be in order too.

Day 177 - Sometimes I Get Bored

I feel like at this point I know a lot of hoop moves and tricks.  Maybe dozens even, I don't even know how to count them all (I mean, what qualifies as a hoop trick?  Surely something like knee or shoulder hooping isn't so much a trick as a movement....?).  In any case, I can move the hoop this way and that way, twist it around, turn in all different directions with it, break and reverse, etc etc.  Every new move or trick learned is a way to unlock new flow, and really there are probably infinite combinations when you know that many moves.

So why do I sometimes feel bored?  Stuck in the same ruts, over and over again?  This move to that move, weave forwards, tuck, toss, catch, flow this way, flow that way, lather, rinse repeat.  I'm sure that in any given song/dance I am doing a lot of different moves in many different combinations, and yet I feel like it is not interesting enough.  This of course is not true, it is plenty interesting.  And I am always trying to come up with new ways to flow.  Still......

I think this is more of a mindset than anything else, so I try not to think about it so much.  I mean I keep learning new tricks and incorporating them into my dance and I still feel like I don't know enough to keep it interesting.  But I know that to an outside set of eyes viewing my dancing for the first time, it probably does look really cool and not boring at all.

This is all part of the fun I guess!

Day 176 - Bio and Hoops Hoops Hoops!

I finally wrote my bio.  What better place to put it than here?  I will get a proper website on the go, that is my goal for over the winter.  One thing at a time.

And, some pictures of hoops I've made.  Because they're pretty.  Enjoy!

About Martina

Martina’s first experience with dance was in 2004 when she decided to try a bellydance class with her friends.  She was immediately hooked and continued bellydancing for 4 years, training with several different dance schools including Arabesque Academy in Toronto.  She also had the opportunity for a short period of time to dance with a small bellydance dance troupe based out of Newmarket.  After moving to a new town in 2010, Martina had hoped to continue her bellydance training however was disappointed to find there were no local dance schools or dancers that offered classes.  Feeling sad and discouraged, for a short period of time she was without dance in her life and there was truly a void where it had once been.  Martina discovered hoop dance in the fall of 2011 and it was love at first spin.

The first hoopdance video Martina ever saw was Lisa Lottie performing to Differente, and she knew from that moment on that hoopdance was something she wanted to be a part of.  She bought her first hoop and learned how to hoop while she was pregnant with her daughter.  In the years since discovering hoopdance, it has become her passion.

The year 2014 started off with a challenge to herself:  To hoop every single day.  Martina decided it was time to pursue her dream, and started Hoopla Hula Hoops.  She has had the privilege of training with master hoopers such as Jonathan Baxter and Anah Reichenbach (a.k.a. Hoopalicous), and has most recently completed the Hooplove Coaching course with Deanne Love.  Martina has also been awarded the 2014 Flowbot Award, a scholarship to the InFlow Festival taking place this summer in Muskoka.

Martina lives in Collingwood with her husband and three children, and on any given day can be found out and about at various parks and greenspaces hooping it up with her children and friends.  If you see Martina out hooping please stop and say hi, and join her for a spin!  Martina’s mission is simple:  Share her love of hoopdance with the community!

Hoopla Hula Hoops provides quality dance hoops for adults and for children, as well as hoopdance classes, workshops, and parties, and hooping for special events.   

 

 

 

 

 

Day 175 - I Am a Hooplove Coach

I can't believe it's taken me so long to write these words here.  I mean, I finished the course a few weeks ago already!  And I have been telling myself I need to share the news here almost every day since then but just haven't had the time.  So I'm doing it now!

I finally finished Deanne Love's Hooplove Coaching!  Ok so it took me a little longer than the 30 days it was supposed to take.  I imagine that many other hoopers (ahem those without kids!) could dedicate a few hours to the course each night.  I couldn't.  If I was lucky I could watch the tutorials or read the material for 30 minutes to an hour MOST nights (some nights I just couldn't do it).  By the time my kids were in bed, and I finished packing lunches for the next day, and folding the laundry, and making whatever hoops were on order, there was usually a very small sliver of time left to do the course work.  So I picked away at it, but I did manage to finish it by about the second week of June, so that's not too far behind!

So now what?  Well, I'm finding myself in this interesting transition period, where I know I need to be doing more for my hoop business but I still don't know exactly what.  But I am not stressing about it.  I feel like the beauty of what I am doing is that I don't need to pressure myself.  I can grow my business as fast, or as slow, as I would like.  So it is taking me some time to wrap my head around the whole process.  There are still a lot of things I feel I need to work on, like my bio and credentials, and thinking about a website, and organizing more classes.  As always family first, so I fit the hoop business in around that. 

Admittedly I am finding it hard to build an interest in hooping and I am still not sure if that is because this town is a hard crowd to crack, or if I'm not trying hard enough.  I am putting myself out there as much as I can, but I am never entirely sure if it is enough.  For example I do know other hoopers who are doing so many more events than I am, but the bottom line is, I just can't commit to much of that stuff...yet.  There is still time.

For the time being, I am making time to plan weekly hoop jams and gatherings, and hoping that people will come out to meet me, and a few have.  I've still been at the Y every Sunday, sometimes I have a few people and sometimes I don't.  I've also been trying to get to Sunset Point with my hoops on Wednesday evenings, and have had a few people join me then too.

The most important thing is that I keep on hooping, and that I can do!

Day 169 - YouTubing it UP! Practice makes.... ???

Alright all my hoop videos are going up on YouTube.  For one if they are on YouTube then I always have access to viewing and sharing them.  And for another, my husband has told me I need to free up some space on the computer and since I am hesitant to delete all the pictures of our kids without backing them up again (even though I have them uploaded to a share site as well), the hoop videos will have to go.

It has been a time consuming process, first of all going through them and deciding which ones I wanted to hang on to (I mean really, I don't need like 4 videos of the same session where I'm pretty much doing the same thing in each one, now do I?).  And really I will never watch all of them again.  So I am holding on to my favourites, the ones that after I watched them for the first time I smiled so hard and was so happy to see how far I had come (even though when I watch the same videos now they are so boring!).  The best thing about watching the videos from the very beginning is knowing that I am already 10x better than I was then, so by this time next year I should in theory be another 10x better (if not more since I practice more and am doing more training)!

Practice makes...improvement?  I can testify to the fact that hooping everyday has made me a far better hooper in much less time than compared to last year where I only practiced every few days or so.  If you love something then do it, and do it often, and you will be as amazing as you want to be.

Anyways, here's my YouTube Channel:  https://www.youtube.com/user/martinaraeonthebay

Day 160 - Please Join me for a Spin! Hoopy Wednesdays are ON!

Whenever it's been a little while since I posted, I have to redo the math to figure out what day I'm on.  Looks like I'm almost halfway through the year, and haven't missed a day yet!  Woo hoo!  I'll be honest there are some days that barely count (not many though), but I do manage to get a spin in.  Sometimes it's as simple as standing in front of my tv for 10 minutes doing drills.  Coiling the hoop up and down on my body, working in my non-dominant direction, or just doing isolations.  If I picked up the hoop that day, then it counts!

It really helps that the gorgeous weather is finally here which has meant much more outdoor hooping!  It is always easier to make progress and have breakthroughs when outside in the fresh air and sunshine, when I'm not limited by space.  And so, with the arrival of outdoor hooping comes the start of HOOPY WEDNESDAYS!  I'm inviting people to join me every Wednesday evening (weather permitting), to have a little social spin and enjoy the outdoors.  It's at Sunset Point 7-9pm.

Last Wednesday was the first one, and it was absolutely amazing.  The weather was just perfect, it could not have been more lovely out.  I was worried it was going to be too windy since the wind was howling all day, but by evening it calmed down and it was wonderful.  I had a few people stop and join me, and it was nice being outside and connecting with others through my hoop.

I have also tried my hand at aerial hoop/lyra which has been fantastic.  The girls at Aerial Silks Collingwood have been so great and so supportive, and I'm really starting to get the hang of it now three weeks in.  It's really hard, but is a great core workout and I am loving it.

Another little bit of news, I have a fan!  A friend from overseas messaged me and said her 5 year old daughter loves my videos, and asked if I would do a basic tutorial for her since she is still have trouble getting the hang of it.  I don't know that making tutorials will ever be something I'd like to do, especially since there are already so many great ones out there, but I had fun making this short one for the little girl.  My own 5 year old was my assistant and he did a great job demonstrating the technique.  I must say he is becoming a great little hooper himself, his waist hooping is coming along nicely, and he has even been trying some arm/hand hooping too.  Making Mommy proud!

I really enjoy watching kids hoop especially when they are really into it.  There is nothing like seeing how excited they are to try it and get it.  I did a birthday party a few weeks ago which was a lot of fun, and I often take hoops to my kids' school after class so the other kids can hoop, and we all have a great time.  There are some really great future hoopers out there, and I would be thrilled so see them all blossom into amazing hoopers one day. 

Here's one more video I've managed to upload (it's a slow process).  From late last summer, and the music is Let it Fall by Lykke Li.  Amazed at how far I've come since this video!