Do you keep up with your maintenance? What happens if you don’t? What qualifies as maintenance anyway?

Having everything that you use all the time or even once in a great while can take some doing. It’s easy to put things on the back burner that aren’t an urgent priority.

If you drive one of those old-fashioned internal combustion driven conveyances, there might have been a time or two went you went a few miles past the recommended interval for an oil change. (Thank goodness oil changes will be a thing of the past in our EV future!)

If you think about anything in your life or your world that would qualify as a tool of some sort, then maintaining said item has got to be part of your flow. Tools don’t have to be metal or mechanical either, you may have certain routines or sequences that need to be trotted out and polished up once in a while.

Even choreographers get rusty. So do DJs, movement facilitators, or workshop leaders. You’ve got to stay limbered up and have all the tools in your toolbox at the ready. Which means you’re well-advised to sharpen up the ones you rely on the most, and occasionally edit our the ones that don’t serve you anymore.

The thing about rust is that it won’t form on something that is in use and handled often. Sometimes you discover something that has been abandoned or long-forgotten and you decide to breath some life back into it.

You take it apart, examine the components, the parts, the way it works. Perhaps some cleaning and oiling and buffing back into shape is in order. You might have to try it out and see if it still works. If it’s not irrelevant and still serviceable, you can put it to the test in your real work or practice.

Some tools work so well that they almost become a part of us. Others are very specialized and only get brought into play on special occasions. But if a tool is worth being in your toolbox, whether physical, metaphorical, or virtual, then it’s worth keeping in tip-top shape and ready for action.

So take a look at your tools. Ask them what they need from you to stay sharp and ready. And don’t put off that maintenance, there’s nothing more frustrating or embarrassing than pulling out your favorite monkey wrench or movement practice and getting stopped in your tracks because of the rust.

Much love and easy sailing till next week!

M+

Mark Metz
Director of the Dance First Association
Publisher of Conscious Dancer Magazine