team sports for the solo flyer, part 1

I have to break this up because I NEED some sleep tonight. I've slept ONE out of the past FOUR nights. One. That is not natural. Not to mention, it's dangerous for me. I tend to fall asleep while walking if I get tired enough. Obviously, this is a problem when you consider traffic.

Anyway, the point is that I'm breaking this post up into a couple of posts. This is the one where I introduce the series, obviously.

I'm in the gymnastics troupe at school and so far, I love the gymnastics. It's hard. The mats are hard. Landing in the mats sometimes hurts. Everything is much, much harder than it looks. My muscles are soft (which means not soft at all, but they might as well be nothing for this sport), which makes every skill even harder. My arms resemble Bert's, but with little shoulders. They were good enough for Taekwondo, but for gymnastics, I might as well have the strength of Bert.

But, all that aside, I have no intention of quitting. Shoot, the fact that it's hard probably makes me even less likely to quit, besides, I WANT my back handspring. I'm not even close to getting it. haha. Oh, and let me mention that besides being 27, not the ideal age for starting gymnastics, I'm also entirely lacking in natural talent. Martial arts? I was not bad at martial arts. I had good legs, ok hands, I was alright. But this? Everything is bad. I did front handsprings for an entire semester and got them exactly twice. Twice. I have done 2 good non-supported, landed front handsprings in my lifetime. 2. But it's fun and my ornery side is starting to kick in as well.

So I like the gymnastics. I don't know about the whole team thing though. For various reasons, I was always the person who went and did whatever by myself. So now for me to have to do the huddle is a little strange.

The first roadshow I went to, I didn't feel like part of anything at all. It was all strange and new and a little silly, maybe. It doesn't help that I'm older than most of the rest of the team, but I don't think I'm the oldest. People speak to me too, so it's not that. I'm just chalking it up to not thinking as a team being for the moment. We'll see if it changes as I go to practice and shows and more people get comfortable with me, if that happens. It'll be interesting.

More later.