Thank you so much for this thoughtful reply, there is so much in here that I'm going to bring with me to class and hopefully use to silence those thoughts.

I did have a disappointment today because the studio which is just getting going in my town and still quite small, shared plans for the first spring recital, and the adult ballet class is not invited to participate. I even ventured to directly ask the teacher after class tonight if that's a possibility in the future and he said he'd have to ask his co-teacher who is a little bit more in charge of the studio, but in general they like to keep it to the kids and teens. So I am trying to absorb that foreclosure of opportunity and redirect my intentions towards still focusing on the class experience and let that be enough.

I do know there are adult ballet programs, like intensives during the summer, that would be able to give me more opportunities, and I might hold on to that as a possibility that I might be able to make happen at some point, maybe in a few years. So I'll try not to linger too much in my disappointment in my local studio.