I've got nothing better to do

I took a trip to Philadelphia for an entire week but who's talking?
If you don't know, I'm an Irish dancer and I spent the week at the world championships in Philadelphia, freaking out, and then dancing. If you're not aware (a staggering number of people are ) Irish dance is actually a huge sport. It's also amazing, and tiring, and stressful, and facetious, and all around one of the most mentally, and physicaly exhausting things you can choose to committ yourself too.
I love it more than I could possibly describe in words.
After eleven years of doing it though, I had decided that for some reason, this was going to be my last competition. I think it was because, after dealing with all of the emotional baggage that comes with dance i was just tired. I was done with doing it for the judges, or for my teacher or for my parents. While I tried to convince myself that really in the end I was doing it for myself, I really was doing it for them. What had started out in the beginning as something that made me so happy i couldn't stop moving my feet, had turned into something I didn't want it to be.
It stopped being fun.
So I set a personal goal of just dancing the best I could at Worlds and really not caring what the others said, and I worked.
I worked, and worked, and worked.
And when i got to the competition i really felt like I was ready to get up on that stage and just show everyone how much I had improved. It suddenly became about me again. Not anyone else. Then it suddenly became fun again, and i can't tell you how amazing it was to walk on to that stage and see all of my friends and my mom up on the balcony, rooting for me.I finally figured out why I danced for them.Because it made me fell so happy to have people who no matter what you do in life, they support you. As long as you put one hundred percent in to it they'll be on your side. I felt like I could do anything. I didn't care about the judges. I was not afraid of the other people I was dancing with, I was just happy that i was dancing.
In the end I didn't do very well. But it didn't matter to me because I had accomplished my goal. I'm not sure if I'm going to continue doing majors, or if I'm even going to continue really doing competitions at all, but what I do know is that I got what i wanted back.
I got back my happy feet.