What Failure Breeds....

Failure is a funny thing because it is a stepping stone into two completely different directions; one of despair, or one of triumph. Those who follow the first are doomed to live a life of sorrow. Those who follow the latter, will use failure as fuel to create a better life for themselves. We either learn to overcome it, or we are overcome by it. There is no middle ground..."

~ Anonymous

Today we spent the first little bit of class trying to figure out where everyone was. One of the instructors told us to go to the smokehouse, the other told us to go to the school through text messages. So as we went to the school one of the kids in my program was in charge of telling us to go to the smoke house. After we got all that sorted out we spent the first part of the morning going out the window, swinging down onto the ladder and sliding down from there. In the blog you will see a few pictures of me doing it. After that the morning took a turn for the not-so-awesome.

We were going through timed second story search tactics. Each group for every mistake they made had to do 30 push ups. For those who didn't go on air in time had to do 30 individually then after that each group mistake added 30. We didn't have the greatest of runs, it wasn't bad, but we had a bunch of little mistakes. I wasn't in as good as shape as I was before apparently because I was struggling. I had a hard time lifting the 50 ft of house into the second story window and dragging the victim out. Then the victim wasn't placed on my arms properly and we dropped him. Rescue Randy died from trauma. He will be missed. All in all after everything was tallied up we sat at 210 push ups. The comments that were said by certain folks during and after were out of line and rude, but I won't repeat them because I don't want to dwell on them.

In that moment though, I realized a lot about myself, it was a serious reality check into why I am here, and if I really want to be here. Most of my life I have spent time with a few people in my life telling me who I was and how I would not succeed. I would be nothing without them. I tried to shrug it off but after years of it, these things kind of sink in. I overcame it, and got help. I am working on a lot of it still because these things don't go away over night. There is someone in my life that will tell you that. Sometimes when you believe that you will fail, you will. Today, I gave it my all, and it wasn't enough. Before I would shut down and give up, but today I realized that I need to push harder, I've been doing the gym and running two or three times a week, but I am going to hit the gym everyday working different groups of muscles, I'm going to run everyday. I'm not going to do it, but I know I can achieve better so I am going to.

What I learned today, I guess, is something that I have subconsciously overcome the worst in my life to make the best I can out of it for me, and I will do the same for this. I don't know how to give up on a grand scale and I just need to use my minor defeats as a way to improve myself. I want this more than I've ever wanted anything so I am going to work for it. It's that simple.

Other than that, nothing exciting is going on. I have spent a lot of time on a few of the machines at work, so I am no longer bumping into stuff. I spent some time slinging bathtubs which are more awkward than they are heavy, but after 10 of them you get a little sore. I got done earlier than everyone so I got to go home. I'm counting down the days until Japan, 34 at the last count.  I cannot wait to get over there and spend a near month exploring and hanging out. I'm excited. Other than that, stay tuned!