Girl Power

Why is it that males lead the way in competitive sports?

In snowboarding, if a female gets some big air, you will hear the announcer say: “Wow. You usually only see that kind of air with the men.”

Gretchen Bleiler, the 2006 Olympic silver medallist in the women’s halfpipe said:

“Men and women are built differently, and in the end, men are generally more powerful and technical than women.”

She goes on to contradict herself by saying there are some women who can hit the same tricks as men.

Women are always able to hit the same tricks as men. It just takes women longer to get to that level.

It is men who revolutionize the sport and women eventually follow in those footsteps.

Men have been landing the quad in figure skating for years. Men are required to do the jump. Women are required only to do triples. But when Miki Ando, a Japanese figure skater, landed the quad in international competition the door opened up. In the next 10 years, women doing quads will become commonplace. It would be nice to take these women and transport them back in time to compete in an era where men weren’t yet attempting quads. That way these women would be revolutionizing the sport instead of men.

It would be nice to take professional skateboarders Vanessa Torres and Lyn-Z Adams Hawkins and transport them to compete before the Z-Boys ever tore up the scene back in the 70s. Then it would be two women who revolutionized the sport instead of three guys.

In my experience doing karate, women are timid and afraid to try. They need time to build up their courage. Where as beginner men are almost suicidal – they’ll go at it full-tilt even if they have wrong technique. But when a woman realizes she is fully capable, she becomes equal and sometimes better than her male competitors. I’ve seen it happen more than once.

Still water runs deep.

I am not an emotional person. Actually, I take that back. I’m very emotional. It’s just I’m a “crying-on-the-inside” girl.

All my emotions are contained in a stainless steel cylinder. Occasionally, I surprise myself when a single tear falls down my cheek.

Think Warf from Star Trek Enterprise, or better yet Mr. Darcy from Pride and Prejudice. It’s just the way I am. If I was capable of expressing my emotions publicly, I would, but it’s too awkward for me.

As a result, people treat me like I’m not human. They assume I’m hardened and callous, which is not true at all. It’s a misunderstanding.

I cry during the sad parts of movies. It’s just on the inside. Just because I don’t show the hurt, doesn’t mean there isn’t pain.

People often don’t get me gifts, because they think I don’t appreciate them. But I do. I just don’t gush. No matter how grateful I am, no matter how cute I think something is, I won’t show it.

My lack of visible emotion is a disability. It keeps me distant from others.

I’ve come to believe the people who seem the hardest on the outside are probably the people who feel emotion the most.

Anger

Anger can be a weird beast.

It can sneak up on you when you least expect it. And you can explode over the silliest things.

Anger can be like living on a fault line. Mostly you experience little rumblings over the years. But occasionally there are large scale earthquakes that bring about disaster.

Spring can really hang you up the most...

Spring snuck up on me this year.

It feels like it should still be winter. I was wearing my heavy winter coat a few days into April when my co-workers pointed out that it was no longer winter. It was going up to 20 degrees Celsius (69 degrees Fahrenheit). And I was like "Oh. Really?"

Somehow, I was still living in March. I'm amazed it's warm out.

I've been in the cold for so long, I'm having a tough time adapting. And that's weird, because it was a fairly mild winter.

All blogged out...

Blogs are a lot of work, especially when you start getting regular readers that you have to entertain.

Regular readers can't possibly know when you're busy, when you're in a rut or when you've just plain old fallen off the band wagon, even if only for a week or two.

But a blogger should persevere and keep going, even when it gets tough. Because there is nothing worse than seeing a blogger commit blog suicide - deleting thier blog all together.

You gotta keep on blogging in the free world.

Fate

Does fate exist?

Do you ever notice that when you get on the wrong track, life seems to auto-correct itself? It eventually seems you end up being where you need to be.

But is it possible to get so far off track that life can't correct itself?

Are there really wrong decisions to be made in life? Everything is a learning experience. And learning is important.

C'est vrai?

The Frontier

"The future is called "perhaps," which is the only possible thing to call the future. And the only important thing is not to allow that to scare you." - Tennessee Williams, Orpheus Descending, 1957

It's the unknown that makes the future scary, which is why I wish I had a crystal ball. It would make tough decisions easier.