hard work

i promised y'all i'd write again today, so here we are :) this one's gonna be fairly seriaaas so if you're not in the mood for some introspection, i won't be offended if you don't read through my mind's perambulations ;)

there's something i've sort of always known intellectually but have come to only really grasp in the past year, and particularly in the last few months: if you want something, it's ultimately up to you to go out and get it.

sure, it's not always as cut and dried as that; many people are handed stuff (money, contracts, whatever) in life without having really worked for it, or they're born with particular talents which make it easier for them to succeed in whichever field. i've always had a knack for academics, and didn't really struggle throughout school and university to do well when it came to tests, projects and exams. that's not to say i didn't work hard; i put a lot of effort into the work i produced and i'm proud of what i've achieved. that being said, it all came fairly naturally to me.

not so with other areas of my life - particularly in the athletic arena. i was an active kid, sure, and i climbed a lot of trees and played a lot of stingers growing up… but i never really enjoyed PE or any of the sports in which i was required to take part. i was always the last kid running around the Oval, panting and puffing on the warm up lap, my face red and my legs tired. i didn't learn how to skip rope; i never felt the need. likewise with riding a bike, something i still can't do. i attempted it on a couple of occasions and then gave up after falling over what i deemed to be one too many times. this didn't really bother me. 

my family isn't big into sports but i've been a sports fan for about a decade now, getting into cricket in 2005 and rugby the following year. this, however, didn't make me any more of an athlete. i've always admired sportspeople but have conceded time and time again that i'm just not like them, not cut out to be fit and strong. then, sometime between 2013 and 2014, i decided that even if i wasn't an athlete, i could do a little more to take care of myself and in so doing, feel better about the body i have. yo, i'm not overweight; nor do i have any major health concerns or complex body issues. however, we could all do a little more to look and/or feel a little better - amiright? 

i started running (and was honestly terrible at it), and then in April last year i started CrossFit. at this point, i had no core muscles to speak of (or they were in deep, deep hibernation). our coach would tell us to "brace our cores" when doing whatever movement and i'd glance around like a dumb nut because, um, i honestly didn't know how to brace what i didn't have. i would scale pretty much every workout. i would take longer to finish the workout than anyone else - sometimes double the length of the really fit, shiny people. i felt a bit like Jabba the Hutt doing CrossFit. 

(all credit here to Nathan Wright... i had to add that sentence in to accommodate the amazing sketch, of course.)

i let this get to me for a little bit, and started getting the feeling that I COULDN'T DO THIS and I SHOULD JUST GIVE UP… because this was my pattern. whenever i encountered something in life that i wasn't able to master within a week, i'd toss it aside. 

as soon as i realised this, it was like a light was suddenly switched on in a really dusty room in my mind. almost as soon as i made this discovery, it actually became easier to push through. i was doing something i'd never done before - carrying on with something at which i was pretty pathetic, with the intention of getting better - and it was terrifying and liberating at the same time. i started rolling my eyes at the shiny, fit people and just doing my thing. (i didn't really roll my eyes at them. i love most of them. i want to be them when i grow up one day.) and honestly, i'm still pretty terrible. i can't do a pull-up unassisted, and the most i can crank out in a row with a band is maybe… seven? i'm also incapable of doing toes-to-bar or hand-stand push ups yet, and most of the weightlifting is really challenging for me. i'm the world's worst Russian get-upper, burpees are still a major nemesis and i've yet to achieve a single double-under. BUT. i can do box jumps forever. i can squat really well. i have learned how to skip (!) and can do so pretty quickly (!). i can deadlift 60kg, which is more than i weigh. and guys. I HAVE SOME CORE MUSCLES! THEY HAVE AWOKEN! more than anything, i have learned to stick it out and push myself to be a better version of me, and i'm getting somewhere at whatever pace. it really is sort of miraculous. 

one of the guys i follow on Instagram, marky_ih, posted this yesterday:

underneath it he wrote, "You can be born with talent but you'll never master your craft without dedicating hours of hard work to develop skills. If you're not dedicating time every day to your craft then you don't want it bad enough."

how true is that?! i'm not crazy; i'm never gonna be Camille Leblanc-Bazinet or Annie Thorisdottir or Julie Foucher, and that's okay. i'm going to be Hannah, and i'm going to be the best version of her that i can be. if that means working on something athletic at which i am pathetic every day, then that's what i'll do. (clearly i do not need to work on my rhyming skills. they are excellent.) the same applies for my designing and hand lettering; the same applies for my blogging. (don't panic, i'm not gonna blog every day and spam you with posts ;) )

in any case, that's my aim. what do you think? that was a lot to suffer through without many pictures, so have a hug:

and have some motivation:

and have a severely disgruntled cat dressed as a taco:

and sleep tight :)