So, guys, remember I told you that I was nominated for a couple of blogging awards – this is one of them. The Versatile Blogger Award is an award shared between bloggers. I think that’s fantastic. As bloggers, this award gives us the opportunity to share a happy thumbs up with our favorite blogs and to network and share our favorite blogs and bloggers with others. I think our blogging community of adult dancers is truly amazing! The information, the support, the pure joy that dance blogs share is a wonderful extension of the adult dancer world! Every now and again, I contemplate shutting down the blog – it takes time and energy that I don’t have a lot of extra of – but being part of the dance blogger community is as part of my dancing experience and I wouldn’t want to lose that ❤

I want to thank the beautiful Bush Ballerina for the nomination! I love her blog and have so much love and respect for her journey to embrace dance in the outback of Australia!

The deal with the Versatile Blogger Award is that you get to nominate up to 15 other bloggers for the award. Also I get to post 7 unknown things about me.

So let’s start with the 7 things:

1.  I have agoraphobic tendencies. Public spaces and crowds make me uneasy. People never believe me because I travel so much and I’m always out and about but I’m usually dealing with some level of anxiety whenever I’m not inside my house.

2.  I can’t wear flip-flops as shoes. I can wear them only when the occasion really demands it – the beach or the shower at the gym. I can’t wear them because I have anxiety about germs or other nasty things touching my feet. So I also rarely wear sandals. The idea that any kind of foreign object would touch my toes gives me the heebie-jeebies.

3.  I love Scrabble, Boggle, and other types of word related board games. I’ve been known to play them all by myself. I do not like electronic games.

4.  But I do love electronics, mostly Apple products. Interestingly I really hate to shop for them though! The idea of having to go into an electronic store to deal with sales people in order to buy a new phone or a new computer is beyond stressful.

5.  I don’t like J.R.R. Tolkien novels. Most people assume that library geeks love The Hobbit et al but I do not. Never have. I’m missing that particular geek gene on my DNA.

6.  My cat broke a tooth and I had sympathy pains for weeks.

7.  I always carry hand wipes, antibacterial hand cleaner, and disinfectant spray. Sometimes I can actually feel the germs… I can feel them! But if you ever need to clean your hands and I’m around, I’ve got you covered!

Here are the blogs that I would like to acknowledge and recommend!

My number one choice for adult dancer ballet blog will always be Johanna at Pointe Til You Drop. Johanna’s commitment, passion, and love for ballet – not just watching ballet but DANCING! is incomparable. She is always helpful, inspiring, and right there in the grown-up ballet class fray. If you don’t follow Pointe Til You Drop, you are truly missing out. Get on it!

Robin at These Lovely Things.   Robin’s blog is not entirely about ballet and Robin is a ballet teacher, not an adult ballet dancer but I’ve always found great wisdom and support from Robin. She’s an awesome photographer too.

Blogs that I’ve more recently discovered and am loving include All Round Girl, Poets and Pirouettes, This Life and Times and Tia Paulina Flamenco. Funny, inspiring, and full of the reality of grown ups enjoying the strange world of dance, these are blogs that I truly enjoy reading. For me, it’s all about sharing experiences and less about being too cute and flippant for the sake of gaining followers. I like to think of us as a community rather than a popularity contest. Despite the fact that we are scattered all over the world, I think our growing community is beautiful and vibrant, filled with laughter and passion, and, most of all, lots and lots of dancing.