So it’s been awhile. I mean a long while, since I’ve posted anything to this blog…I had such good intentions of posting weekly, and I have all these great ideas of things to write about, but like all well meaning New Year’s Resolutions, I failed…I posted regularly for about a month, and now here I am 3 months later, asking you all to tune back in. Sorry. I could give you all the excuses, I was busy, work was crazy, and just life. But really that’s all they are, excuses and the only person that they are really working on is me. Because let’s be honest, I just stopped dedicating time to sitting down and hashing something out. 

Eventually I’ll finish all those half written blogs I’ve started since October. Alright who am I kidding, no I won’t. 

When I was a kid, I wanted to do everything. No seriously, if you asked me what I was going to be when I grew up, I was going to be an actress, a singer, an astronaut, cure the common cold, and become the first female president. On top of that I wanted to do everything my friends did. I wanted to be in dance, take piano lessons, ski school, and girl scouts, and do all the things my brothers did, play soccer, basketball, baseball, and hunt. Then there were the things that I wanted to do simply because I thought they would be great like gymnastics and figure skating. Overall I wanted to not have a life, because activities would be my life. 

Thankfully my parents were very good at managing my expectations and grand ambitions. Most of the time I would bring something up and my parents would respond, “Mmmhmm, yeah, we’ll see.” After that I would hold out hope for these activities but would quickly lose interest and my parents were never bothered again. However, on the rare occasion that I remained persistent, they would either make me a deal, or say no. 

For example, piano lessons, I think my parents would have gladly signed me up the first time I pushed the issue if we’d actually owned a piano. However, we didn’t, and therefore how would I practice? But I was oh so persistent, because all my friends were taking piano, and so my parents struck a bargain, they signed me up for a six-week course on the keyboard. A family friend, lent us her keyboard and I began my training to become the next piano virtuoso. That dream lasted about a week and half. I was expected to practice, what is this madness?! On top of homework after school I was supposed to spend 45 minutes a day practicing on the keyboard and then twice a week I gave up 90 minutes of my evening to go to class. It was eating into my Batman and Star Trek watching and it was awful. Looking back, I’m not sure how that keyboarding course was really going to help me with piano, because on a piano you don’t have different programable sounds that you use to achieve the desired tone for the melody you’re playing. I mean come on, have you ever heard of a piano piece called the Galaxian March? (Seriously, I’m not making that up, that was one of the songs we played, I can recall it from memory. Do, So, Fa, Mi, Re, Mi, Do, Do, Mi, So, Do, So, Fa, Mi, Re, Mi, Do, Do, Do, Do). Needless to say, I wanted to quit, and my parents told me if I wanted to quit before the end of the course I would have to pay for it. So I stuck it out grudgingly and never wanted to play piano again.

 Then there was soccer, I had wanted to play soccer from the time I could walk, and this is one of those activities that I wanted to play, mainly because I was a daddy’s girl and this was his sport of choice. This activity also had the added benefit of social interaction with my friends, my parents were happy I was doing it, my brother played, and it was something I wanted to do so it hit all of my criteria. Every fall from the time I was 4, I was playing Fall Recreational Soccer. Honestly I wasn’t that good as a kid, in fact early in my career I use to sit in the back field and pick dandelions while the kids all played horde ball. You know when they all just run around the field in a pack following the ball. Then my dad bribed me to play, by telling me that he would give me a quarter for every time I kicked the ball. Let’s just say after that game it went from a quarter to a nickel to nothing, very quickly. Once we all got older and started playing more cohesive soccer I really did love it. And couldn’t wait for 5th grade when I could officially try-out to be on the spring traveling soccer team. Fifth grade and try-outs finally came, I was on the team and it was going to be wonderful, but let’s not kid ourselves, it was really hard. We started practicing indoors in February three days a week. Then outdoor practices four days a week in March with games starting at the end of the month. Practice wasn’t the worst thing, honestly it was the games. Every weekend we were on the road, we’d drive 300+ miles to play two games, and then do it all over again the next week for about three months straight. The hardest part wasn’t even the traveling and playing. I knew what I was committing to, because my older brother had been doing it for years and I traveled with his team, the difference was that we almost never played in the same place. Which meant I was spending all my weekends split from my family, my mom and I would go one way, and my dad and my brothers would go the other. My dad was the assistant coach for my brother’s team, which meant he never got to watch me play. For me personally, that was the biggest reason I only played one year of spring soccer. My dad had been my coach, and even though I didn’t always appreciate his commentary on my playing, he always wanted me to get better, because he knew that if I was playing better than I would have more fun. Don’t get me wrong the mother daughter bonding that happened that year was wonderful, but sometimes moms can be too supportive. 

The other reason for quitting was that I wasn’t enjoying myself, the team had a lot to do with it, we were on the brink of middle school and my 17 other teammates were not always the kindest bunch, in fact I was told fairly consistently that the only reason I was on the team was because there was only one team and all the girls that tried out had made the team. Now mind you this never happened in a public forum, but was whispered to me during meals on weekends or in the backs of minivans as we traveled with another family. Along with that I was constantly being played as a left fullback. In my11 year old mind, that is the equivalent of being put in center field during tee ball, it’s like I was being told that I wasn’t really useful on the field, they just needed a place to put me where I couldn’t do much damage. I was never to cross mid-field, unless I was, by some miracle playing a mid field or even a forward position.   

Of course these were not the reasons that I revealed to my parents when I told them that I wasn’t going to do another spring season, in fact I just told them, that I would prefer to play rec soccer in the fall and rec volleyball in the spring. They shrugged their shoulders, said okay and honestly were just happy that I had played the whole season without begging to quit halfway through. 

I will admit though, that during my last three weeks of play that season, our regular sweeper was moved to mid-field after one of our players was taken out due to a spread of Hepatitis A (it was a thing that year), and I was put in as sweeper. That was where I really learned to love playing defense. There’s more pressure, and your team and fans are depending on you to do your job. That was probably one of the best things that came out of the season, that and realizing that for the sake of my self-esteem, I was never going to play soccer competitively, I couldn’t deal with the constant gossip, and false friendships.  

For all the things that I wanted to do and be when I was kid, I can tell you that as I grew and with some help from my parents I realized that dreams and wants change and some even drop off the map (I never want to be the President, seriously politics is not a game I’m interested in playing). However, the things that you want to pursue won’t come easily and sometimes you’ll just have to stick it out, but they will be worth it. Commitment is important. I won’t promise that I’ll post on this blog every week. But I will commit myself to more time in my life to be more diligent in writing and editing my thoughts to share with those of you who are still interesting in reading about what I have to say. So thanks for sticking with me, there will be more humorous anecdotes soon.