Rolling with the Changes

I don't know that I consider myself a writer, but I find that I have become addicted to reading my friends' blogs and have come to the conclusion that writing one myself would be a good way to detox.

I have changed a lot over the past couple of years, but I guess everyone does once college years envelope us. I was a dancer from age 2 through my freshman year in college. To say that turning my once beloved hobby into a college major left a bad taste in my mouth would be an understatement. That being said, I felt there needed to be a change in my life while I still was able to see the beauty in dance and still had passion for it. Needless to say, I changed my major from dance to early childhood education and colleges from SMU to TCU. I have no doubt in my mind that TCU is where I am supposed to be for college and have felt that way from the moment I transferred. However, though happy about changing majors, I was now unsure of my identity. Everyone had always known me as Katy the dancer. Now who was I? Katy the student? It was the first time in my life that I was not doing the one thing I knew that I was exceptionally talented at. All I had to claim now was that I was a student. All the new people I would meet at TCU would know me as nothing more than a classmate and could only classify me as such. I found that this indeed turned into a huge identity crisis for me. I was not ready to accept the fact that I was indistinguishable from anyone else around me. So what could I do to make myself feel like I was different and something important that made me unique? I knew I liked to excercise [for those of you who don't know, dance requires much athleticism and strength and results in much sweat and hard work in order to excel] so I now needed to find something else to do since I no longer had the time to devote 16 hours a week to ballet classes.

I decided to give running a try, it couldn't be that hard right? Wrong. I went out for my first run with the goal of a mile. Knowing nothing about running, I started off way too fast and might have made it a quarter of a mile before sucking wind caused me to stop. Whether a good or bad trait, I like challenges, so I was not about to give up on running. I could tell you that I just kept at it until I was running mile after mile, no problem. This in a sense is true, but the picture painted by such phrases make it seem that it was an easy task. It wasn't. It was a long, hard process that totally sucked. But, when it comes to my ego and my fitness, I am not a quitter so I eventually did make it to the point where running became something I enjoyed and craved on a daily basis. And yes, the mileage did build, though it took me a good two years before even considering running a half marathon. I've done two and there will probably be more but I am happy to say that I feel comfortable identifying myself as a runner and am no longer wallowing in self pity about not being unique.

I will not try to fool you and act like I have everything together. I am far from it. I struggle in a particular area daily. But that is for another time. However, I do hope that this encourages anyone that may be struggling to find themselves that it is possible. Change is possible, even for someone who did the same thing from 18 years.