Trusting Yourself

I've gone through two days of hell. After day one, I woke up with what felt like a broken rib and realized that it was because I hadn't used those muscles in over a year. On day two, I panicked in front of my group. I had some votes of confidence, and I allowed myself to learn. The entire time I kept telling myself; I was made for this job, I was born to do this...because well, I am, I was.

This is actually a bad picture to use...I was really hurt in this picture...

After that, I took a day off so that my body could recover. I drank tea, I stayed in sweatpants all day, and I didn't shower. (I also finished my entire thing of mint Oreos, thanks for not judging :) .)

Today, I went back to the mountain, by myself, and snowboarded for two straight hours. And I did it hard. (And started singing some Ke$ha because of the line, "Tonight we're going hard...") While on the chair lift, I started thinking a lot about life, and the applications of snowboarding. I'm constantly terrified because I just had surgery. If I fall wrong, I'm not going to get back up...I'm afraid of turning wrong, of leaning too far...of everything.

The conclusion I came to then, is that writing is a lot like snowboarding. (For those of you who don't know, I've recently been employed as a snowboarding instructor, hence all of this mountain talk. If you're friends with me on facebook, it pretty much says that I like to snowboard and write. So...all of this is rather perfect.)

 There's a point where you stop being scared; where you turn your board out, and barrel down the hill.

After a point, you learn to trust your equipment, your legs (even if they still feel weak, even if you've just had surgery)...yourself. You trust that you know you well enough to know what you're doing. You trust that your board or your bindings won't just come apart. You trust the weather conditions, the mountains...the sport. And you go, because you're at the top of the mountain, and you need to get to the bottom.

But

No matter how good you are, how experienced you are, you never want to throw your body down a mountain. You learn what you're capable of doing and you do it. And you do it until you get bored, until you're ready to learn something new.

Yea, that's right, I work here. Be jealous :)

Writing is no different, my friends. 

You learn to write, and you do it until you realize something just isn't working, something isn't enough. Then you branch off; you start researching your art, you start calling it your art. You admit to being a writer, you're prideful of this fact. You make friends, establish yourself. You don't expect to be a rockstar, you stumble you fall, you get rejected. You don't throw yourself down the mountain (instead, you edit). You ease into it until you know what the hell you're doing.

And when everything falls together, until you can stand on any mountain and say "I own this," you continue along.

Writing isn't a race. Snowboarding isn't a race. Find your pace, and rock it. Maybe sing some Ke$ha if you're up to it. :)