After 3 weeks of staying off my skates to ensure proper healing of an LCL injury, I got back on my skates Wednesday and I glided across the floor… There is something bizarre about skating that I’ve finally put my finger on.
When I am on my skates, I feel weightless. I forget that I am the slowest runner on my Rugby team. I forget that walking up 4 flights of stairs to get to the playroom makes me break out into a sweat. I forget that I was riding a subway for 40 minutes with a giant gear bag strapped on my back. I forget about all the assignments that are due this week as I finish my last semester of theatre school. Suddenly, all I am thinking about is skating.
This might not sound like a good thing. I am a student after all, I should be concentrating on getting awesome grades and graduating from my class as most likely to get a job and retiring early, the last thing I should be doing is setting aside 6+ hours a week to go to Roller Derby practice, right? Wrong. I did my time like that and the only thing it amounted to was a little bit of closet depression.
Before I had roller derby in my life, I was getting up to go to school. I pushed myself to spend ridiculous amounts of time working on sets or costumes or in the band for the school musical. I had a pretty good amount of fun and show was my escape from the mundane class structure of high school.
Then I graduated. I went to theatre school. We did minimal work for class and most of my waking hours were put to helping on different shows, not just the 2 that I had been assigned to. But something was missing. I wasn’t having any fun anymore. I didn’t enjoy anything. My whole life revolved around mounting these productions which I barely had time to go and see. I was so involved in getting the shows up or getting my assignments in that I never stopped working. Even during the few off hours that I had hanging out with friends, my mind would race through all the things I would have to sew before the next day.
I took my work so seriously that I couldn’t be taken seriously. Because I had been surrounding myself with only work, work became my whole universe. With nothing to ground me, even the smallest thing like running out of thread could sometimes make me stomp out on a rampage. I wasn’t fun to be around, and even I started to dislike being stuck around such a tunnel visioned nut ball.
I knew that I needed a distraction from school, but I also needed something to challenge me. So I started looking for things to do in Toronto. That’s when I came across the fact that we had Roller Derby….
Ever since starting Roller Derby, I’ve actually become a better student. I have become better at time management, if only so that I don’t have to skip practice to do last minute assignments. I’m more trusting and I actually have patience. Partially because any rage that I may have is dispelled twice weekly, also I finally understand why we need scheduled nights off. Although, I still have mad sympathy for those at the theatre school who still do 16 hour days for 6 days a week, not including the time on the one day off where they write assignments. I’ve realized that I need to have fun. And I need friends that aren’t drowning in theatre sweat, I think having friends who come only from the same boat as your starts to make you loose perspective of what other people in other walks of life are going through. And do we ever have a huge array of girls from different walks of life, who can help you to realize just how small your late assignments are when it comes to the big picture we call life.
That was a long one… I promise next time I’ll keep it short and sweet!
Frozen derby luv from the igloo,
eSkimo Jo 7734
ALSO Don’t forget to get your tickets for the APRIL 2nd bout!!!
