I took ballet for almost 14 years, and I honestly do not know why I stuck with it for so long. I started because all my friends from the pre-school playpen did it, but I think I only kept with it because it was a creative way to express myself without speaking (I was shy) and because moving rhythmically with music was fun.

It is fun. I will be the first to admit that I love dancing, but ballet was just so lame, so I quit. It was too slow, and rehearsed. There were specific moves, all named in French that required memorization and perfection rather than expression and creativity. I wish I had known then what I know now—I may have been able to escape the land of ballet diets, buns, and The Nutcracker in favor of something else that I enjoyed, I just stopped all together. Ballet was just so narcissistic and boring. I didn’t have the attention span to stare at myself in a mirror and dance Swan Lake four times a week.

Until this week’s issue I had no idea that dance classes were offered in kinds of dance other than ballet, jazz, or tap. I had no idea that you could take a dance class where classical music wasn’t used at all. Call me a sheltered youth in my small Albany suburb, but I had never heard of a dance studio that offered anything remotely different or creative. I wish I had known about tango classes back when I finally quit the stifling experience that was ballet.

This week’s issue highlights two different, yet similar creative forms. Tango and hip hop may seem as different as night and day, but they both allow for self-expression. They are what I have been looking for—a way to use music to express oneself without the rules and conventions of ballet or any other traditional dance form.

Tango is all about passion and heat, while hip hop is about beat and rhythm. There’s more leg room, there’s more expressive opportunity. There’s more room to let your personality shine and to work through your problems. You can dance through your problems. You can be yourself.

That’s all I really ever wanted anyway, to be myself. Isn’t that all anyone wants? With ballet I spent more time thinking about what I was doing rather than actually doing it. I spent more time worrying about my “ballet body type,” my ability to memorize a specific technique, and how “turned out” my feet were. There was so much pressure to be a skinny ballerina, to be as tall as a Rockette, or to one day be one of the anorexic, snooty, bunned, and pointe shoe clad dancers in the New York City Ballet—extra points if you can count your ribs through your leotard. That’s a lot for a young kid to handle, even if I loved dancing.

I wish I had known that there were ways to dance for me, instead of for the proverbial them. I wish I had known about tango, or hip hop, or even modern dance when I was younger. I could have kept up with an art form that I loved, instead of quitting and being miserable about lacking an active hobby for the past six years.

I guess this is my point: if you love something, there is a way to do it. If you love dancing, but hate ballet, you can tango. If you love music, but think the violin is lame, you can make some hip hop. And if you love pizza, but hate Pizza Hut, you can start your own business with the help of Buffalo First.

This week’s features section has three very different stories, but all have one underlying theme—you can do whatever you want. If there’s a will, there’s a way to express yourself in whichever means you feel most comfortable with - dancing, music, or even starting your own business. There is always a way to do what makes you happy. All you have to do is go out there and find it.

So go! Don’t do what I did and sit on your ass until one of your Features writers brings it up in a meeting, or one of your friends mentions it in passing. Go look. It’s out there.