Swimming

i keep sitting at 28 secs on my 50 and 1:04 for my 100 fr. its annoying, i wanna drop somethin.

but i was thinking yesterday while jumping in the chilled water at Cocoa Beach's Rec Center....

swimmers...
pretty much, we have a love-hate relationship with our chosen sport.
it hurts like crap. it's cold almost all year and it's only refreshing in the late spring and summer. we have hideous tan lines that are virtually impossible to get rid of. we eat soooo much and we can't hardly help it. there are times when you stop dropping seconds off your time and you start dropping tenths of a second, and that's when it gets annoying. caps are annoying; they leave tan lines and they hurt. the only time i've found them useful is in the winter when they help keep you 1 degree warmer. if you are blonde, your hair turns anywhere from green to blue, and if you're darker haired it goes blonde and then to the green-blue. and everyone SWEARS you dyed your hair when you didnt. "oh well you used sun-in then!" nope. sure didnt. and no one believes you.
girls won't shave their legs for weeks and weeks before a meet and we get teased a LOTT when we happen to wear shorts. guys get teased for shaving their legs for a big meet. and the funny thing is that it CAN help. swimming sucks because it's 90% physical and 10% mental in PRACTICE, but in a meet (where it counts) it's 10% physical and 90% mental. it's super hard to psych yourself. we get up at the butt crack of dawn for practice in the mornings and even earlier for warm up before a meet. and then there's always those people that say swimming is 'easy', even though they haven't swam competitively one day in their life; even though they haven't attended ONE of your practices, ever. they 'can still say that because when youre swimming you dont sweat' (though if you do swim, you know you sweat in the pool.). jerks.

don't get me wrong, i love swimming a lot. i just don't know why.
swimmers, you don't get enough compliments or acknowledgement to your sport. swimming is a really tough sport, and we work HARD to drop one second in a race that only lasts about 30 seconds (more or less) you know that one turn, or a bad start can cause you a race. the difference between 8th place and 1st is, at times, a second and a half. you can get DQ'd for hitting the wall a tiny bit sideways with one arm slightly in front of the other, or for shifting your weight on the block.
so, to the swimmers of the world who put up with all this crap and who still show up at practices and meets every single day, i want to congratulate you. keep workin' really friggin hard.

and just think. when the world floods again, we will be the ones that survive ;) 

Life Continues

18 hit. Senior year started. i've kept myself busy to the extreme with swimming and school and trying my very hardest to fit surfing in, though as of today i haven't been out in over a month -___-

i've brought my times down for swimming significantly since last year. im fighting to get to state, but we'll see how it pans out. this weekend is Conference. i need to beat a lot of people there to get to state. i've been training hard. hopefully it will pay off.

my plans are, now, to go to UNF for a 4 year degree in personal fitness. Possibly swim for UNF's team and if not ill join the surf team for sure. I already have most of my freshman year done thanks to BCC, so i might be able to get this done in about 3 years if i keep with the suggested schedule. I want to be a personal trainer and i want to volunteer my time at Duval County's schools as a coach because last i heard they were looking at cutting many sports out of the schools. This really is not good for kids because 1) it makes getting a college scholarship for swimming (for example..) really really hard if not impossible. and 2) i've seen where some kids wouldn't even engage themselves in school if it weren't for sports. to me, volunteering a few hours of my day to coach a team would be a great way to spend my time.

if i don't go to UNF ill hit up Daytona and live in either the port orange area or ON the beach. :)
now, i am trying to get some scholarships lined up so school isn't outrageously expensive. and im trying to get a job so that i can afford to move out and live on my own AND buy a car.
i cannot believe that summer is over already! that it's already october!! this year has gone by soooo quickly. which scares me, because people always talk about how years start passing super fast and you never get to live your life to it's fullest...

next month i'm supposed to go on a road trip to Pennsylvania to see my sister for thanksgiving. and then to Georgia again in December for the Winter Ramp. and then next summer im going to Costa Rica with Epic Surf Ministries. i feel like i need to cut one of these out so i have time to just take a deep breath. Costa is NOT being cut out.

a myriad of different emotions seem to be swarming through my head about so many different things that i honestly don't know what to do with them all.

im in one of those really awkward phases concerning church. i am still in high school, a senior, but my youth group has so many YOUNG youth (or less mature..) that i feel like i can't relate to anything we're talking about.
at the same time i am 18, so i fit into the young adults' status...but most of the young adults are in their early twenties to thirties....my issues, concerns and problems are tiny compared to theirs', and i can't relate to them either.
my issues, concerns and problems are not whether i can keep a job or that my boss is being a butt head. they are not about a teenage crush or guys stalking my every move or what drama went down at school today. my issues, concerns and problems are working hard to graduate high school, figuring out scholarships, finding an apartment and roomies, what EXACT program to go into and at which college, finding a job, and trying my hardest to please my parents while im trying to feel my way through all this. and maybe this doesn't seem real to many people, but it's real to me. i talked to a friend today for two entire hours. it's their freshman year in college. TWO HOURS. do you know how long it's been since i talked to anyone for that long and didn't get bored with it? it's because we were able to relate to each other.
so where am i left? im left with not going to church except on sundays. and even then, i have no idea what to do with myself. i hate that i feel this way, but i do.

i am in desperate need of friends my age.

anyway, after high school a whole new set of worries and concerns will clutter my table. ill move out and start college. then, for the next 3 years all i can imagine myself worrying about is school, my job, and boys. lovely. i have so much to look forward to.