The Humbling Pursuit of Revisiting Childhood Hobbies in Adulthood
How my return to tap class taught me it’s ok not to be good at everything right away
In August 2019, after a 15-year hiatus, I dug my tap shoes out of a box of childhood belongings and took myself to a tap class. (Yes, my tap shoes still fit — the ones I wore as a 15-year-old in a dance recital dressed in sequins with feathers in my hair).
I grew up dancing, having tapped my troubles away since the tender age of 4. I knew a shuffle time step from a pickup time step, a maxi-ford from a buffalo step, and often 6-beat-riffed my way down the hallways just to hear and feel the delightful click-clock-click-et-y-click of the taps on the floor. Getting back into tap was going to be like getting back on a bicycle, I thought!
Boy, was I humbled.
Tap dancing as a 30-something-year-old required rebuilding an atrophied connection between my feet and my brain. Apparently, unlike riding a bicycle, the wiring had grown rusty with a lack of use after all these years. Watching my teacher tap a rhythm, I was slower to match his moves and sounds with mine. Sometimes I’d think I got the step, but the un-syncopated sounds of my taps would betray my mistakes. And remembering and retaining choreography? I’d get one eight-count down, just to forget it all after learning the next eight counts.
How was this happening? Why was it so hard for me to get the steps, the rhythm, and the choreography?
The answer I came up with: because it’s supposed to be hard to do something you haven’t done in a while! It’s ok to not be good at something right away.
Mind-blowing, right?
The thrill of having something come naturally
I stopped dancing regularly at 16, whether because I grew tired of taking 8+ dance classes a week, a growing teenage social calendar, or because in hindsight my exhaustion was due to a case of mono and not just normal teenage tiredness — probably a mix of all three. I had been dancing my whole life at that point, and while certainly not the best in my class, I was pretty good. I was persistent, I practiced, and I loved performing. I strived to be the best, but I didn’t need to be, I just needed to do the best I possibly could.
Around the same time that I wound down my dance classes, I turned up the heat on academics. Now that — I was good at. Great, actually. Sure, I studied hard, but doing well in school came naturally. And I liked being really good at something, being recognized for my achievements, and seeing the direct connection between hard work and a meaningful reward.
Once I graduated from college, as is often the case, I went from an overachieving student to an overachieving employee, working hard yet constantly posturing for promotions and raises. Sometimes my hard work was recognized, and sometimes politics and processes got in the way of feeling like the work was worth the reward. I grew used to being good at my job. At (mostly) knowing what I was doing, or at least getting the hang of new challenges quickly. I chose a career that came naturally, that built on skills I like using, and that are relatively innate. I wouldn’t ever say I was coasting at work, but I would say I knew how to navigate the world of work in order to make sure I’m successful at what I’m doing.
And then I went back to a tap class.
It’s OK to suck at something
Working through the steps of that first combination, I was humbled to remember what it’s like to not get the hang of something right away. To be pretty bad at it, actually! I’m not suggesting I’m incredible at everything I do at my job. But with tap dance, I remembered it’s OK to not be good at something right away. To take on a project that uses a skill you don’t have, and to kinda suck at it for a while. That some skills take time, practice, and a lot of repetition to even start to look good. Things will likely look really bad before they start to look even moderately good.
When you’re caught up on climbing the corporate ladder, it’s far too easy to avoid taking on projects that truly make you uncomfortable. The desire for recognition and reward often means forgoing challenges that truly help us grow, because it means potentially being bad at something. With 9-boxes and stack ranking all the rage in corporate America, there’s no room to try something new and suck at it. But my return to tap taught me that most of the time, you only suck for a little while. The reward of trying something hard isn’t perfecting it, it’s trying it in the first place. Taking on the challenge, working at it, and seeing incremental improvement.
Returning to my childhood hobby as an adult also reminded me that I need a creative outlet like dance to balance the stresses of work. While dance doesn’t turn my brain off, it does force me to focus on the steps and not the terrible presentation I gave earlier in the day, or the frustrating meeting I had with my manager. If you’re tap dancing and thinking about the impending deadline for your project, you’re probably not getting the steps, the rhythm, or the choreography right. You have to simultaneously focus on the steps, while also not thinking about the steps at all, to get it right.
Now, as the door to the dance studio closes at the beginning of tap class, I close out the day’s Slack messages, meetings, and deadlines. I lace up my tap shoes and prepare to focus on my feet, the rhythm, the music. I know it’ll take me some time to warm up, for my toes to do what my brain tells them to do. I won’t get the rhythms right, and the loud tinny taps of my tap shoes will make that clear for all to hear. I can’t hide my mistakes when I’m staring at myself in a mirror next to my fellow dancers. But that’s OK — I’m in this studio to flap and flail and fail. To stumble on my shuffles. Drop my pickups and speed up time steps.
If only I could give myself that same grace to fail at work.