Aliciaの光

1. South Korea

2. United States

3. United Kingdom

4. Israel

5. Japan

6. Barbados

7. China

8. Hong Kong

9. Mexico

10. Canada

11. Ireland

12. Finland

13. Laos

14. Vietnam

15. Thailand

16. Nepal

17. Switzerland

18. Poland

19. Slovakia

20. Czech

21. Austria

22. Hungary

23. Croatia

24. Jordan

25. Sweden

Long overdue for a blog post, I return to Tumblr to acknowledge failures and change. In the past 3 years, for various obnoxious reasons I’ve ended up living in 6 apartments, going on 7 since I returned to the windy city. I certainly am not a person who chronically moves - for some weird reason or another I have needed to or been presented with an opportunity I couldn’t refuse. Intrinsically speaking I wasn’t required to move, and doing so has not been an economical path. But each was an experiment - a failure if you will - and I learned a bit about myself from each home and each person I lived with. 

But this post is about becoming comfortable with failure. And bouncing around was a small part of learning about it, but nothing is ever so straightforward that one thing or person or event was the singular cause for change. I’ve learned a lot about myself from the people that I’ve surrounded myself with, and in some cases, the people I’ve elected to distance myself from. My mother used to push me to remain friends with girls who I had a strong friendship with since grammar school, and I stuck with this practice well into my twenties. After becoming more self-aware and pushing truly toxic friends and family out of my life, I have begun focusing on issues of substance - such as where am I truly happy? Are my surroundings impacting my happiness or am I impeding on my own self-worth with my habits? 

Addressing these questions are much bigger picture, and this is potentially setting myself up for failure. But following Stefan Sagmeister’s quote (well, actually I didn’t know who he was when I originally started thinking about this) I went in with as little fear as possible. There are countless examples of this, but the one I’m going to tell is about the time I tried out for the basketball team. Well, actually, I also tried out for the gymnastics team and track team. And I think the volleyball team. I lump the stories together because the plot is the same: I started playing basketball/volleyball/running/doing gymnastics in gym class, and found it to be rather fun. I joined the team, thinking that I must have some natural talent since I had watched countless athletes on television during the summer olympics, and everything looked effortless. I went shopping with my mother to purchase the right shoes and clothes, showed up for the drills and started to fall a bit behind my peers. I felt tired and no matter what I did, I was always second to last. Luckily, I wasn’t last, so there was still hope that I might suddenly have some talent. Imagine at this point that I am closing my eyes, in basketball practice, missing every single hoop; in volleyball practice, hitting the ball only slightly and scoffing at my red arms; in track, running what I thought to be very fast but realistically barely moving and my face turning a sunset red color; in gymnastics, getting prepared for a cartwheel on the balance beam and 100% just giving in and realizing that I am never going to be able to do this. 

Fast forward to my twenties, and I start to walk everywhere. I walk so fast after a while and get so bored of walking, that it turns into running. I run slowly but I run across cities. I eventually hit 20 miles and finish it at 6 hours, and then shave it down to 4 hours. And then I start playing sports with my boyfriend. We play volleyball/basketball/running/gymnastics together. And I’m still bad at all of them. He scoffs at me for being bad. I begin to see that I have found something in running that despite all of the failures, I can withstand and enjoy. I break up with that boyfriend and continue running slowly.