Now, back to the blog post!
I recently (okay, it's been a little over a month ago) went on a camping trip with my family and church family back home. We were swimming in the lake and there was this buoy waaaaaay out in the lake. I have no idea how far it was, but it was pretty far! Not to mention I'm totally not a very good swimmer anyway. I mean, I can tread water 'til the cows come home, but stuff like special strokes and swimming fast and that kind of thing? Beyond me!
My little brother spent some time on a swim team, and he decided that he was going to see if he could swim all the way out to the buoy and back. When he started this endeavor, he passed my mom and I. She kind of did this little half-hearted following thing, torn between letting him explore his abilities and not wanting him to go that far and drown because he was too tired to swim back, and I stayed with her because, hey, I wanted to hang out with my mommy! Well, at some undisclosed point in time, we ended up following him. All the way to the buoy.
On the way back, both of them had to stop once or twice and just float for a minute, but I just kept going--not because I was trying to beat them or anything, but because I was afraid of not making progress. Being that far away from where your feet can touch the ground, especially as an inexperienced swimmer, is kinda risky, so I wanted to keep moving and get back as soon as I could.
But when I made it back, I was almost sad it was over! I had proven to myself that I could do something I doubted my abilities in, and that intense swim was actually strangely mentally relaxing. Besides, getting out of the water was stinkin' cold! So when my sister-in-law and a church friend decided they wanted to try, I decided to go with them too! So ultimately, I made this crazy swim that I wasn't positive I was capable of twice!
When I got back and after I'd gotten out and relaxed a little, I was seriously considering doing it a third time, but my Dad and the other friend talked me out of it. When it was time to climb on the motorcycle later, I was glad they did! But even though I was pretty sore and really tired, I honestly think I could have made it a third time if I had to, because there was a point in that swim where you understand that if you give up, if you decide you're just too tired and stop swimming, you drown and you die. Sure, you can float for a while if you need to, but roll with me for a second:
That swim is a lot like how this semester is going over.
This week is a pretty good week (as demonstrated by the fact that I can stop long enough to write this blog post), but there are two or three nights most weeks where sleep doesn't really happen in excess of three hours. I'm always doing homework (ALWAYS!), every moment of my life is ear-marked for something. When I was in high school, a friend and I used to laugh at how crazy our lives were during finals week because we had our lives planned out down to what we were going to study every hour of every day, but it's not so funny now that that's seriously how my life works all the time at the moment! I got off work 45 minutes early the other day by surprise, and I almost didn't know what to do with myself! I could have found somewhere to get some extra studying done, but instead I decided to go ahead and stop my my apartment (in the middle of the day?!?!?!) and actually be a girl and do stuff like doing my hair and *gasp* putting on make-up! Craziness!
But it's do or die, and without having done this semester, I would never know whether or not I can do this.
And there's that crazy part of my mind that's saying, "Let's do it again next semester!"
I'll probably be able to talk myself out of this one. This is the first time since moving that I've actually looked forward to a break in the school year! But at the same time, this degree is taking me a very long time, and dropping back down to one class in the bigger picture almost reminds me of stopping to float in the lake.
I guess I'll cross that bridge when I come to it though. Right now, I have homework to do!
Just keep swimming!
