This isn't the first time, I've sat down and the only thing that could save me from a particular situation was to actually quit the one thing that I loved the most.
It all started my senior year of high-school when I had to quit the one thing I loved doing the most. Softball. Softball was the game I adored more than most things in life. I started my softball career when I was four and unfortunately I had to quit when I was eighteen. Reasons that consisted of the poor coaching staff as well as unfair playing time. I'm not one to just quit something when things don't go my way but this was something I couldn't stand dealing with any longer. After quitting the softball team, I used my love for the game and put it towards something else that I started to enjoy and that was marching band. I originally played the flute during regular band but being the courageous person I am, I decided to learn how to play the Sousaphone (Who's Phone? Sous-A-Phone. My fellow band geeks with definitely understand that one, lol.) AKA the funny looking Tuba.
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It's hard to tell, but I am the one holding the "REBELS" sign up in the bleachers. Joining the marching band was a spontaneous act that did to make me feel not so bad for quitting the softball team and I'm honestly glad I did because we won more competitions than the softball team won with games and the marching band was more of a family to me than the whole softball team ever was.
Fast forward a few years to now, fall semester of my junior year of college.
Spring semester of my freshmen year I made the brave decision to join my college track and field team. All those people in the picture above became my friends and family. I spent literally more time with these people during the school year than I did my own family. These people became the ones that I looked forward to seeing every day, my shoulders to cry on when the times were hard, and the ones to laugh uncontrollably when life was just too dang confusing. Now that I am no longer a part of the team, these people are still the ones I can go to whenever I need (as matter of fact I live with two of them and the other one spends a lot of time at our place because she's my best friend).
Junior year whether it's your junior year in high-school or college. I'm currently finishing up the semester (last week of classes start Monday and then next week is finals week) and I've taken extremely hard classes this semester which meant I spent all my free time, reading and doing assignments rather than partying like any other college student. Since freshmen year, I have been a part of my college's track and field team. I was a short sprinter which was a different concept for me because I really only ran long distances for the majority of my athletic life (from seventh grade to sophomore year I was running cross country) and didn't really start running short distances until my first year of indoor track my junior year of high-school. Since I was taking some pretty difficult classes this semester I tried to balance my work schedule, my class schedule, as well as my track practice schedule and it, started to take a toll on me physically and mentally. I was having a pretty hard time finding time to practice, get all my school work accomplished while not trying to stay up until after midnight and make sure I was getting my hours in for work so I made the brave decision to end my career as a collegiate athlete and focus on my education which is more important to me than running circles around a track.
You're probably thinking, "Wow, how can she quit two things she loves more than anything?" or something along the lines of, "Did she really actually love these two sports because it doesn't seem so if she could actually quit them?"
The thing is, I do love both sports more than anything and I hated the feeling of quitting something that I loved as well as I hated the feeling of letting people down because I was quitting those sports. In reality, a lot of people are actually really proud of me for doing so. Senior year it took a lot of courage to quit something where I wasn't getting treated like I should and it took a lot to realize that I shouldn't let people continue to treat me less than what I should be treated like. I wouldn't say it took courage for me to quit the track team but it was more like, I really don't know what word to use but, an adult move. I realized what was more important to me and I went with that decision that would benefit me more than the other, which ended up being quitting the team.
These two situations may be the first two "difficult" decisions that I will have to make so far in my young teenage life and they definitely won't be the only two situations that I will face either. The only thing that I've really learned from these two experiences is that no matter what you do in life people are going to be either proud or disappointed in all the decisions you make in life and all you really need to worry about is whether you are happy or not and if you're not, make those life changing decisions that are going to make you actually happy and be the best for you.
I guess the best advice I could give you is, take chances in your life, you never know how it will affect your life and maybe you'll be glad you took the chances you did like I am.
