Taking A Year Away From My Sport Changed My Life, And Not How I Expected
And it changed my life in a way I never expected.
As long as I can remember, figure skating has been the main aspect of my life. As a young child, it was a hobby and sport that I was good at, and it fueled my fire to keep skating and competing for over a decade.
I spent countless hours on the ice pushing myself to be the best I could be. Figure skating shaped my life and has been one of the few consistent things in my life to this day. I stuck with the sport through countless physical injuries and mentally challenging experiences because the feeling I had skating and performing was unlike any other. It was freeing and exhilarating.
It was my passion…until recently.
During my final year of high school, I realized that I lost out on a normal childhood and adolescence, throwing away some friendships and opportunities outside of sports in order to skate more. I grew to resent the sport and felt that going to my long and extensive practices felt more like a job as opposed to something I loved and wanted to do.
Even with my passion fading for the sport I once loved, I decided to join the club team at my university and compete at the collegiate level. I figured that being in a different environment would re-ignite that spark I once had for the sport and help me fall back in love, but I was wrong. The small resentment of my sport still resided in me, and my performance on the ice was plummeting fast. I finally just could not bring myself to practice and completely fell out of love with figure skating.
I knew I needed a break from my sport to figure out what I wanted to do and the only way for me to stay skating was if I 100 percent wanted to.
I took my second year away from competing and stayed off the ice for months. During that time, I was able to recover from old injuries I did not care to fix and took up new opportunities. Even with time away from the ice, I felt like something was missing. That missing part of me was figure skating.
I reconnected with some teammates and made my own choice to start skating again a couple of months ago. I felt at peace, free, and in love with this sport again. I felt like myself, and I felt comfortable on the ice for the first time in years. Most people who take a break from their sport never come back, but for some reason I did, and I am so glad I did. I realized how much figure skating means to me and the way I have grown because of it.
Yes, I needed a refresher from the sport, but it caused me to remember what it felt like to skate out of pure love for it, and it changed my life.
I Limited My Social Media Usage And I Challenge You To, Too
My worth is not defined by the amount of likes I get.
Every morning at 8 a.m., my alarm goes off, I roll over, and the first thing I do is check my Snapchat only to open a bunch of pictures of the top of someone's head, or the wall, or — my favorite — a black screen. This is something we're all guilty of, myself included. We all know that social media is becoming an addiction amongst us, so why do we still use them in an unhealthy way? Why are our friendships defined by who has the longest streak? Why are our perceptions of others based on the most perfectly posed presentations of people? Why is our self-worth dependent on the number of double taps or shares or comments?
My world used to revolve around social media.
Every time I posted a picture on Instagram, I would constantly refresh to see how many likes I had accumulated. The worst part about that is I would get upset if I didn't get any likes in the seconds between each refresh.
If I got bored or had some downtime between classes, I would spend hours just scrolling through the same posts, hoping to find something different.
So much of my life was wrapped up in the superficiality of social media posts to the point where I no longer knew who I was. I would see pictures of my friends who ended up at the same college and feel left out, I would see girls from high school joining sororities, I would see people looking so stunning and having so much fun, and I let that be the thing that influenced how I felt.
Social media consumed me. It made me forget all the wonderful things I have in my life. It made me value a photo opportunity more than just enjoying the moment for what it is. Let me tell you that a moment is no less valuable just because it isn't visually appealing.
I've recently started using the Screen Time feature on my iPhone. I set a two hour per day limit on my social media usage, and when that time is up, I can no longer open the apps. Since then, I've been spending more time face-to-face with the people I care about. I've reconnected with old hobbies. I feel less stressed. I stopped comparing myself to others. I learned to be happy with myself.
I limit my social media usage because all the time I've spent aimlessly scrolling through Instagram is time I could've spent going for a walk and enjoying the warmth of Spring.
I limit my social media usage because I value face-to-face interaction. I value hugs and laughter and all the other things you can't get from a screen.
I limit my social media usage because it hurts my feelings when other people are on their phones when I'm trying to talk to them so how can it be right that I do that to someone else?
I think about how dependent on social media we have become, and it makes me so grateful that the sun is too bright to see our phone screens outside and that the mountains raise too high to have good cell service. I'm grateful that my friends make me laugh so hard that I don't even think to check my phone.
So, I challenge you to separate yourself from your social media. Even if it's just for a day. See how your life changes.