Moments of Awesomeness

I saw a YouTube video recently giving pointers on how to skate sideways. It was great and all, but the thing I loved was one quote. She said "don't worry if you don't get it straight away. All you are aiming for is one moment of awesomeness, and then every time, try for another". It has stuck with me and now every skate session this is my plan. Try for, or look for, one moment of awesomeness.

Today was double Rollerfit day. Overall it's fast becoming my favourite day of the week. I still find this hilarious seeing that the main parts of a double Rollerfit are sweating like a maniac, being completely exhausted, not hitting the moves your working on, legs burning the next day, and the occasional fall. But it's on skates which seems to always make it fun, with great people ... actually more than fun, it's a complete blast. And it's a great place to find a moment of awesomeness.

One of my Rollerfit friends said something that also stuck with me a few weeks ago as we were attempting to do a spiral. This is a move where on one foot whilst moving forward, you make a T with your body by putting one leg perfectly parallel behind you and your arms perfectly parallel in front of you. I had seen a few of the more experienced girls do this on one of my first lessons and I was amazed at their skills. Anyway we were attempting this and failing to make a T it was more like a \ and she said, as I made a frustrated comment "just remember it was only a few weeks ago we were still trying to do cross overs well enough to go in a circle, now look at us, look at how much we have already done!" and she was right.

I had had a moment of awesomeness and hadn't even noticed. Cross overs will probably always need fine tuning but I can easily do them in a way that seemed hard just a few weeks before.

So I worked on my spirals and sure enough, huzzah, I rock at spirals. Step by step .... actually roll by roll by roll, I'm doing it. I'm achieving these (albeit sometimes brief) moments of awesomeness.

In the last few weeks I have also comfortably achieved decent backward skating prowess, even being able to do a basic backwards move to turn corners (officially still needs work to do it the proper way, but hey, I can turn corners backwards!). So the next challenge I set myself was figuring out how to shoot the duck (that move where, while moving, you squat right down and lift one foot so it's pointing off the ground in front of you and then putting it back under you so you can get back up).

Over the last few weeks I've been getting closer and closer. And I praised myself for each little achievement. But tonight I shot the duck not just once, but four times. Down, leg up, leg down, back up. Sure I'm not flexible enough yet to have it as beautifully straight as our coach or some of the young whipper snappers, but down, leg up, leg down, back up .... I'll cheer for my moment of awesomeness in achieving that. So again, yeah I rock(ish) at shoot the duck, just needing to fine tune the move.

Now I have my next move to work on. Last week at my first try, I fell over (it's a complicated move that requires you to go from skating facing forwards to backwards jumping from one foot to the other mid turn). I can do the basic move, but the more advanced move is going to take some time. Tonight, I managed to turn 3/4 of the way. I wonder when I'll be able to turn the whole way? And then when I have, when will I be able to do it so smoothly that I can continue skating? It feels a long way away, but if my accomplishments so far have taught me anything, it's that one day I will look back and say Hey! not so long ago I couldn't do that!!

Moments of awesomeness! It's my new life plan.

Watching - I really loved Tucker and Dale vs Evil and my new favourite thing is Norwegian horror movies. The movie Troll Hunters was so very cool!

Listening - Nup.

Reading - Same, I'm so tired I'm falling asleep after only a few pages.

State of mind - Rocking out those moments of awesomeness.