When I was thinking of starting to blog again and playing with names for this blog, I knew I wanted to somehow incorporate the idea of the pursuit of happiness. However, over the past few months I’ve really been focusing on the idea of intentionally creating or cultivating happiness, as seriously as a lifestyle choice. With that idea in mind, I also knew I wanted to talk about what I know in a professional sense and in practice, which is dance and education. So that’s how I arrived at the blog title of The Happy Dance for this little section of mine on the interwebz.

Every now and then, I’d like to step away from my voice as an “expert” (We are all always learning and forever students of this thing called LIFE, aren’t we?) in dance education, or startup entrepreneurship, or online marketing and talk about regular life things. Being the hardcore Gen-Yer that I am, I’m completely aware that everything I share on the internet (And, oh boy, am I all over the internet… Good thing I love Google!) is completely public and potentially accessible by anyone, including the very words I’m typing in this blog…. So I want to talk about things with which I’m comfortable sharing and that are hopefully still helpful to whomever is reading these words of mine. So, I want to talk about what I’m doing to create happiness! I want to share the tiny moments of my life that are causing me to do a Happy Dance. Presently, that’s travel.

I remember this quote that I came across several years ago:

“How vain it is to sit down to write when you have not stood up to live.”
– Henry David Thoreau

That’s kind of how I’ve been feeling about my life lately. I’ve been feeling like I want to stand up to LIVE each day in the ways that bring me the most joy. I want to take all the risks. (But don’t worry, I’m a really safe [read: paranoid/anxious] person, so all my risks are super calculated.) I want to experience all the things.

So sometime last year, I set the intention of traveling. And, I’m thankful that I’ve been able to commit to and live out that intention. Today is the first day of May of 2019, and, since November of 2018, I’ve traveled to 8 different cities, 2 different states, and 3 different countries. (The featured photo from this post was taken in Heidelberg, Germany!) In fact, in the past 6 months, I’ve been fortunate to take a little vacation 5 times.

For me, traveling is causing me to do a little Happy Dance because it both humbles and inspires me. It makes me feel simultaneously small in a super grand world and enormously large in being gifted with the opportunity to create the reality of my dreams. (Truer entrepreneur words were never spoken, right? Hashtag live yo’ dreams.)

What are you currently cultivating in your life that’s causing you to do a Happy Dance?