One night a few weeks before the holidays I was exhausted after spending loads of time with our youngest who had announced that morning that he was sick — every parent’s worst nightmare to wake up to.
I was mentally exhausted, but after sitting through the editing of two podcasts that day, I knew I needed to move around. I decided to roller skate for a little while to get some practice in and give myself a bit of a mental break, like skating always does. As I stretched and warmed up by doing my usual yoga routine, I noticed I was feeling a bit wobbly.
(NOTE: Skating Instagram post in this post is from a much better night of skating a few days later 😂)
I put on my skates and as soon as I stood up, I knew I wasn’t going to be skating long. I didn't even have the capacity to pick a song to skate to. I lowered the lights and changed them to cornflower blue — my husband, the gadget geek, went through a phase of finding Philips Hue lights on sale so our living room can be changed to whatever color we want
Rolling around in silence, I began observing how I was feeling. I felt each creak of the floorboards up through the soles of my feet as my gummy wheels went over the wood.
I went to my familiar moves — pivoting, manuals, dribbles — and felt uneasy with them all. It was disheartening, and I quickly coached myself by reminding myself that having a skating practice includes setbacks and off days. In fact, it's days like these that are necessary for growth.
I continued trying my go-to moves, still getting pings of frustration that my body couldn't do everything I knew it was capable of.
I practiced spinning to my right, my dominant side. I felt wobbly around the second rotation and thought how I had only been skating for maybe 2 minutes and I was already so disheartened.
Spinning on skates has always made me feel better. I went from never, ever believing I could spin on skates back in March to spinning up to 3 times now and getting faster and more comfortable every day. That thought alone is usually enough to bring a smile to my face.
But not that night.
As soon as I realized that not even spinning was going to lift my spirits the way skating usually does, part of me was ready to say "f*ck it all!"
I pivoted, which is usually an easy move for me, but that night, it felt like I couldn’t even get that right. As much as I tried to remain patient and remind myself of all the good things I love about skating, there was an anger in me, probably excess energy leftover from the stress of the day. I thought to myself, "Oh! So it's going to be that kind of night then? Well, if I'm going to be spinning badly and it won't be fun anyway, let's just practice spinning to my left side, which I already hate practicing because I'm not good at it!"
If you know me at all, you know that sometimes my anger and frustration can be the best motivator sometimes. I truly believe you can’t bully yourself into self-esteem or loving yourself or becoming healthier. That said, I do believe that a healthy chip on your shoulder can do wonders sometimes, which was what I had when I felt let down by my muscle memory that night when it came to skating.
I spent the next 5 minutes really drilling non-dominant side spins until I was absolutely so dizzy I couldn't anymore.
And the thing that surprised me was it was actually a really good practice!
Do you know how they say "lean into your fear"? Well, I literally spun into my fear.
I actually felt myself quickly get better! The more I pushed myself to spin just a little more, a smidge faster, and try out different arm movements, the more I found myself enjoying simply being curious about spinning to the left. Even if I knew I wasn’t going to be good.
In a way, the fact that I knew I wasn’t going to be good at anything that night automatically gave me permission to suck at turns to the left, so any progress I made by simply practicing would be something, at least
I ended up getting more comfortable with the feeling of spinning to the left, I practiced the heel-toe movements needed for the spins, and I enjoyed giving myself a lot more grace than I previously had. I didn’t record like I normally do. I knew these spins were not worth putting on Instagram — though in retrospect, maybe they were and I could have written this post there.
But, really, I’m glad I kept that practice to myself. It was just what I needed. I went through some stuff mentally while skating, and I got to feel fully connected to my body for the first time probably all day. Fear of losing my balance and falling is a great motivator to pay attention to every part of me in that moment.
A hashtag I saw when I first started my roller skating journey has become one of my favorite mantras for nights like this — #practicemakesprogress. It’s been a great hashtag to follow and a fantastic reminder that the path to success is rocky and growth is never linear.
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