When I watch my first practice recordings now, there are things that are still hard for me to look at. Where am I putting my hands? Why does that movement look so forced? I hear something happening in the song and wonder why I didn’t do anything with it.

But when I recorded those videos, I thought I was doing pretty good. When I went to my first Dominican bachata festival, A Lo Dominican near Barcelona, I thought I could dance. That festival was my first trip to Europe. I came home wanting to take it more seriously, but I had been enjoying myself before that too.

I like my dancing now, but I’ve liked it at every stage and then come back later thinking, oh, nah. There were things I couldn’t see yet. Next year, I might notice something in today’s video that I’m not thinking about right now. What I understand as getting better keeps changing, and so does what I want to work on.

Giving myself something to look at

I started by dancing on my own, then bought a mirror around July 2024. That gave me a way to see what I was doing while I practiced. By October 19, I wanted to record the last song of my sessions so I could watch it back before the next time I practiced. I wanted to get better, and the video gave me another view beyond what I felt or could catch in the mirror.

Having the recording lets me pay attention afterward instead of trying to dance and evaluate everything at the same time. I can notice something specific and bring it into the next practice.

Those videos stayed on my phone for the first few months. After coming back from Dominican Swag in Amsterdam in January 2025, I finally started sharing them. I’d been thinking about it for a while. The hundred-day series came separately, but the recordings already had a purpose before anyone else saw them.

A year after the first recording, I danced to the same song again, “Vagabundo, Borracho y Loco” by Kiko Rodríguez, to see what had changed. This year, I decided to keep that going.

I don’t watch the older versions before recording the new one. I don’t want to copy what I did or have it influence my decisions. I just put the song on and dance how I’m dancing now. Then, when I’m editing, I bring the recordings together and compare them.

Seeing the changes together

This time, I watched today’s recording, then last year’s, then the first one. Watching them separately, my first thought was that some of the things I’ve been working on were already there last year. There were differences, but at first the change didn’t seem that big.

Putting all three on the same screen made it easier to see. During the same stretch of music, I could watch how the movements connected, how much of my body was participating, and what I was responding to.

I’ve always liked playing around with the music and having fun. Sometimes, watching an older clip, I’ll wonder why I did a move at that moment. It might have been fun to do, but the song wasn’t necessarily calling for it.

My practice sessions have mostly been freestyle. There can still be a moment where I think, oh, I kind of want to do this thing, and then I do it. What I’m working toward is connecting the movement to the song as much as possible without having to think it through. In this year’s recording, I can see more of that connection. The fun is still there, but more of what I’m doing comes from something I hear in the music.

These are things I’ve been working on, so being able to recognize them in the comparison feels good.

What this year has looked like

When I made last year’s recording, I had only been teaching for about a month, having started in September 2025. Now I teach twice a week, and the focus has become more explicitly about social dancing and communication between partners.

I’ve always believed in connecting to the music, then your partner, then yourself. Teaching gives me more reasons to understand how that works and how to explain it. In Dominoes Flow and my class recaps, I’ve also been working on communicating what I’m doing to someone watching through a camera.

Recently, I’ve been going deeper into musicality, learning more about the instruments, watching videos, and playing with what I hear. I’ve been practicing on different timings too. Those choices affect what I’m listening for and what I want to do with it.

I’ve always been a social dancer first. There’s already a lot happening on a dance floor, and I don’t want to spend the dance thinking about my next move. I want to react to the music and the person in front of me. Even when I’m practicing alone, that’s what I want the work to translate into.

Looking back can also remind me of something I’ve stopped giving enough attention to. Recently, an older recording reminded me that I used to do more timing practice. I thought, you should bring that back, because you’re not there yet. Keeping the videos gives me a way to revisit an idea as well as notice what has changed.

Giving the earlier version some credit

Seeing yourself dancing at different stages, or looking back at an old recording, can be a humbling experience.

Comparing myself with other people is harder to avoid. I see dancers who have been doing this for ten or fifteen years and want to be that good. I also see people who seem to be progressing faster or getting more attention, and it’s hard not to compare what they’re doing with what I’m doing.

But I don’t know how long it took someone else to work through something I’m struggling with. Sometimes it takes twenty-one years to become twenty-one years old. There are parts of the process you can’t rush just because you’re ready for the result.

I try to remember: never get too high, never get too low. You’re never as good as your best day, and you’re never as bad as your worst. Somewhere in between is usually where you are. Not getting something yet doesn’t mean the work isn’t going anywhere.

The version of me in those first recordings also deserves credit. I’m not someone who naturally takes pictures when I travel or documents everything I do. Recording, watching myself, and eventually putting those videos out was very foreign to me. Parts of it still are.

For someone who overthinks as much as I do, taking that first step was harder than what I’m doing now. Today, I’m much more comfortable doing what I want. I can critique the dancing in an early video and still be grateful that person went through the discomfort of starting.

What will matter next year?

I don’t record every day anymore, even though I’d like to. I teach, I have my own social, and there’s editing, writing, my website, coding, and the business side of what I’m building. The time I used to have for practice isn’t quite the same. I still touch bachata every day, but not all of that time is spent dancing.

Next year, I might spend more time on teaching, instruments, musicality, or history. Some of that will show in my movement, and some of it won’t be obvious in a short video.

What does getting better mean? Do I mean technically? More connected to a partner? More musical, more playful, more fun to dance with? What’s important to me today might not be what I spend the most time working on next year.

If you’re working on something yourself, I think it’s worth keeping a little record, even if you never share it. You don’t have to turn it into a project or watch every recording immediately. You might come back to it later and notice something useful, remember what you were trying to do, or just enjoy having that moment.

Even as someone who doesn’t document much of the rest of my life, I appreciate having these two years to look back on. I’m putting out the process: practicing, finding something to work on, and trying to get a little better. That’s what I want to keep sharing through my videos and bring into my classes and socials, even as those things grow and change.

This article gives me another checkpoint: what I was thinking about, what I was working on, and what mattered to me at this point. Next year I’ll have that to look back on too.

A year is a long time. I want to stay consistent, stay humble, and keep pushing, with room for what I’m learning to change the direction. If I’m able to keep this tradition going, I’ll come back on October 19, 2027, and see where I am.