I failed. And then what happened.

When I was 14, I tried out for the swim team at my high school.

I'd been swimming since I could walk, but those try outs were nerve wracking.

And I was not a popular kid. I tried hard to be a wallflower, because to be anything else meant sticking out and getting made fun of.

So, when I made the team, I was shocked. And incredibly excited.

I remember loving the work of our swim practices. I was a good swimmer, and they were hard. And I was tired after. And they made me stretch and grow.

But I liked to forget that we were practicing towards the goal of competing.

And when I got "cast" in my first meet, I wasn't just a one-man show. I was part of a 4 person relay.

I had four other people and a whole team behind me, counting on me to not screw up.

I truly don't remember exactly how I felt in that moment, and on that day. I remember a great deal of stress.

We'd been practicing a ton.

Flip turns.
Diving off the block.
Touching the timpad at the end of every lap to make sure our times were recorded.

I knew what I had to do.

I was the first person off the block.
My heart was racing.
I was swimming way too fast.
Trying to calculate when to turn to make SURE I touched that time pad.

And as I undercalculated, and my feet did NOT touch that time pad and I had to turn around to touch it, the fatal seconds that added to my team's time thundered through my heart and soul.

I never swam in another meet again.

That moment of choice stayed as a pattern in my life. Where I would come up against moments where I "failed". Or did less than what I knew I could do.

And I would just quit the whole thing.

I talk about life as an ongoing creation of consciousness because it is.

It took a black horse and a white and caramel paint horse to facilitate me into choosing something different. :)