I have seen a ton of articles about how we shouldn’t compare ourselves to others. How damaging it is, how backwards it is, how cruel it is. I understand all that. I agree with all that. I was very lucky to never develop the habit, which can be directly linked to my parents and my coaches. I’m so thankful that I don’t waste a second with negative comparison with other people, especially women.

As I get older and further from my collegiate athlete years, I’m finding myself ankle-deep in the quicksand of another kind of comparison. No one warned me about this one. I don’t yearn for my “glory days” again (although the free buffets at the dining hall were nice). I don’t really enjoy it when my friends or family bring up those accomplishments to brag about me. I know they do so because they’re proud of me, which I appreciate so much. That support is something I don’t take for granted.

What sucks is that when someone outside of the elite swimming realm hears those accomplishments, they automatically put me in some mental category only knowing that facet of my past. I’m either held to a standard I can’t do anymore nearly eight-years postgrad, or they ask how close I was to making a major team (hint: nowhere close). Often they ignore my answer and start telling people I nearly made the team, which is incredibly incorrect and irritating to combat.

I think a lot about who I used to be and how mentally strong she was. I’m working on getting that strength back, but there was so much going on in my life and I was thriving. By my senior year I had everything I could want and I worked my fucking ass off to deserve it. I was pushed with challenging classes and brutal practices. When many students had part-time jobs I had a rigid meet schedule. I have no idea what it was like to experience college as anything other than an extension of the same 20+ hour/ week practice I had in high school, just with scheduled nap times.

I think back to her and I wonder where that determination went. Where I pushed myself through the mental barriers and achieved so much more than I could ever dream about. Learning to hold a single breath while swimming 100 meters doesn’t sound like it would correlate into the rest of my life, but it changed me. If I can do that, why can’t I study even harder for an upcoming test that covered a topic I disliked but needed to learn anyway? If I could squat 225lbs, why couldn’t I be emotionally vulnerable in my creative writing classes? I hit barriers and unconsciously decided they weren’t more than wispy cobwebs and brushed them away.

The eight years of high school and college were the most intentional of my life. I’ve been trying to tread water ever since. Gone are the monthly goal meetings, the new challenges with new classes. I’m not automatically learning new things just by showing up. It doesn’t feel good to realize I’ve spent the last near-decade only just existing. I’m fortunate that I’m still clinging to my 20s and can change relatively easily since I’m child-, mortgage- and debt-free. The only soul relying on me belongs to my dog. Everything else can be handled by the permanent roommate if need be. I have zero reason to not reach my goals. They aren’t lofty, never-going-to-be-touched ones. And even if they were, fuck the idea that I shouldn’t try to touch the sky.

That’s why I’ve been so gung-ho into the Last 90 Days Challenge. Not only am I working on retraining myself with goal-setting but I’m trying to find new things to learn. I’ve signed up for ASL classes, am listening to financial planning podcasts, and have a paid subscription to virtual creative classes (which I need to do more!)

I don’t want to be someone who exists in a stagnant state anymore. I am the daughter of an entrepreneur who decided her old job wasn’t good enough so she started her own company and nearly 40 years later it is thriving. I am the daughter of a can-do-everything man who hasn’t met an instrument he can’t master within a week while chugging the hottest coffee known to humankind. He can also fix literally ANYTHING. It’s that dad-magic, I swear. I am the sister of a man who worked the less-glamorous teaching positions with a school, waiting to reach his life goal of having his own elementary school classroom. He has it now and is thriving. The fact that I’m just surviving isn’t good enough anymore. I want the rainbows and the sunshine and the gddamn unicorn!

Here’s to who I used to be and the person I am now; maybe, one day, I’ll figure out how to be parts of both.