The title of this article probably didn’t do the most to make you feel uplifted but hopefully the rest of it will do so in some way. Before I begin with the bulk of my uncertified advice I am going to tell you a little about my week. This weekend I was scheduled to attend a gymnastics work out in Cincinnati to train upgrades for next season on really nice equipment. I had arranged a hotel room, talked to my coach about travel plans, and on top of it all had got in contact with one of my GSP friends from Northern Kentucky and organized a meet up. All that separated me from a fantastic weekend full of tumbling and friends was one practice on Wednesday night.
I went to the gym ready to do some difficult tumbling, and concerned about my ankle that was swelling up a bit from a past injury. After about two hours I had my assistant coach tape my ankle because the bruising was quite bad. I started running and performing stellar passes on the double mini, but my height was a bit off. I went to run and do one last pass with a double front tuck dismount, a common pass for me to perform, but my mounting skill was off by too much to make up for in the air. I fell from about 10 feet in the air onto my shoulder to hear a loud pop. I stood up like I do after every injury to assure the younger gymnast that I am fine and proceeded to my mother telling her that I wasn’t well off.
After a while in the ER and an orthopedic appointment the next morning, I ended up in a sling with a separated AC joint in my right shoulder- 6 to 8 weeks out of gymnastics and of course no trip to Cincinnati. I was devastated, my gymnastics career has been plagued with injury and I didn’t want this year to be the same as those prior, but almost worse than the gymnastics- I could no longer see my friend from GSP.
So, at that point I had two choices: sit around and be upset about what could have happened or get up and work to be the best at everything I could still do. I realized that even though my gymnastics has led to many injuries it has also led me to nine State Championship titles, I realized that even though I couldn’t see my friend that the next time I could would mean even more, I realized that even though I couldn’t write at school I would still perform excellent in all of my classes, and I decided to take this defeat and accomplish many things because of it.
We all get knocked down and disappointed because that is just how life works, but it just makes us cherish the good moments and make them great! So me, the uncertified shrink of The Odyssey, will leave you with this- don’t ever let a hard day effect the next one because they are all days and they all mean something and are meant for something, don’t waste them because of what they could have been.
