Evelyn Posts Stuff

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A Post About Diving

Hello!

Week Four of the Student Blogging Challenge is upon us, and the theme is Free Choice! This is very exciting, but also rather daunting. I have a hard time thinking up what to write about.

Last time I wrote about my dog, Barley. If you read this blog a lot, then I’m sure you are very familiar with Barley and have seen many random photos of him. You can scroll to the very bottom of this page to see one now.

That is not relevant. Right now I’m just stalling while I try to think of an interesting topic. I’m kind of unprofessional that way.

I also just completely defeated the purpose of the stalling by telling you that I was stalling.

Anyways.

Ummmmmm…

Aha! I know what to write about. Diving! You probably already saw the title and was just waiting for me to figure it out already. Oh well.

Anyways. Diving. That’s what I should be talking about.

There is a lot of things to go into here. I will not talk about all of it because I have a tendency to go on and on and on and on about stuff, and I don’t want this post to be 2000 words.

My goal is for this blog post to remain relatively short (in comparison to my other posts), since I have recently received feedback that my posts are too long. That makes sense to me, but I think I’m already failing.

Anyways.

I’ve been diving since I was seven or eight. Now I am fourteen. It’s been 6 or 7 years. That’s kind of insane.

Disclaimer: I recently quit diving. Technically, I don’t do it anymore. I still consider it one of my hobbies though, since it was such a huge part of my life for so long and I still enjoy it.

Let me tell you a story.

Eight-year-old Evelyn liked skating and gymnastics. She sucked at both those things. She did them anyway.

One day, she was invited for a play date at her friend Allie’s house. They played for a while. Then allie had to go to diving practice, and Evelyn decided to go with her and watch. Evelyn was fascinated with the (admittedly very simple) dives that Allie was doing.

After much thought, Evelyn decided to quit gymnastics and take up diving. After all, they are quite similar in that you launch yourself into the air and then do fancy tricks. She started diving lessons.

Here is a photo of me at my first competition. I’m pretty sure I got fourth place.

Evelyn liked to dive. She enjoyed being in the same class as Allie and chatting on the side of the pool as they waited their turn to dive. She had fun jumping off the board into the water and getting told to point her toes by her nice teacher. She did not like the 3 meter (high dive) board, but eventually she least partially got over that fear.

Later on, Evelyn moved into pre-competitive diving. Allie was no longer in her class, and they had to drive a bit farther to a different pool across town. Evelyn still liked it, but was a bit lonely since she wasn’t very good at making friends (she still isn’t, unfortunately).

Evelyn soon met a few people. She got to know them after laughing at the coach when he mixed up all their names. Soon they were friends.

She competed in a few competitions. Her proudest moment was when she came in second place by only a few points. Once, she and her dad drove for 5 hours to Kelowna for a competition. They listened to a lot of audiobooks that day.

Here is a video of me doing a front dive pike at a competition a long time ago. I went over a bit, and fell before I jumped. I also forgot to point my toes.

The next year, though, Evelyn showed up to diving and all her friends were gone. They’d all either moved up to a more competitive level, quit, or in one case, moved to England. Evelyn was a bit lonely.

Eventually she moved back to recreational diving when she felt stressed out and pressured to do things she didn’t want to do. She kind of wanted to quit, but felt that it was so much a part of her identity that she would lose herself if she wasn’t doing it.

Soon, though, Evelyn grew bored of demonstrating simple dives for small children. She was lonely and wasn’t learning anything, plus was getting very large amounts of homework. After much deliberation, Evelyn decided it was high time she quit.

That is the end of that story. Sorry, that was very long and possibly very boring. I don’t know because I’m the one who wrote it. Let me know in a comment if I need to work on making my long stories more interesting.

At least there were a few blurry photos.

What is the purpose of this post? I started out with a clear vision of what the meaning of this was going to be, but it kind of got lost in the mess of old photos of short Evelyns doing  bad dives.

I guess what I want to say is that you only live once, and you’re in control of what you do with that life. I felt like I couldn’t quit diving for the longest time since I was already in so deep. Now that I’m done with it, though, it’s just a happy memory and I can move on and do other things.

It’s a good idea to take a step back every once and a while and think about what you’re doing with your life. Is it a making you happy? Or are you just doing it because you feel like you have to?

That being said, though, I am still very glad I did diving. I learned whole bunch, I conquered my fear of heights, and I had a lot of fun. It was worth all the stress and bellyflopping.

This post is a little over a thousand words. I’m going to end it now.

That’s it for this week of STUBC! Please feel free to leave me a friendly comment. I will make sure to respond to you fast and check out your blog if you leave me a link.

Thanks for reading! Stay safe and healthy!

Cheers,

Evelyn 👩🏽

7 Comments

  1. Caradonna Adventures

    September 13, 2022 at 3:09 pm

    Diving is a sport that requires the use of equipment, training and skills. It is not just about getting into the water and swimming around, but also about being able to perform a wide range of actions underwater.

  2. Marcy Houston

    May 2, 2020 at 3:41 am

    Evelyn,
    Hello. I am Marcy, one of the commenters for the blogging challenge. I enjoyed reading your diving post. It was quite interesting. I enjoyed watching your competition video. You mentioned a few mistakes you made, but it looked great to me.
    As for the long post, I liked it. It was newsy and informative. My children like doing those two or three sentence posts. I wish they would enjoy just rambling on more like you did.
    Great job!

    • evelync

      May 2, 2020 at 10:22 am

      Hi Marcy,
      Thanks for commenting!

      I’m glad you like my stream of consciousness. Sometimes I worry that not having a more structured or compact post is a bad thing, but your reassurance means a lot to me!

      Thank you for all your kind words about my diving and my blog. It makes me happy to get lovely comments like yours! Thanks!

      Stay safe and healthy!

      Cheers,
      Evelyn

  3. Hello Evelyn!
    I think your post is really interesting! Thank you for sharing your story with us. Once when I was younger I had Taek Won Do. I did it 4 years before I quit it because it was not fun anymore, but I think Taek Won Do also taught me a load, like self defence.
    Visit my Blog: https://5gblog.edublogs.org
    Steph:)

    • evelync

      April 28, 2020 at 7:55 am

      Hi Steph!
      Thanks for commenting!

      I’m glad you liked my post. Hopefully it wasn’t too long and boring! I often get carried away when I write on this blog.

      Your story about Taek Won Do is cool. I’ve never tried it, but it seems like it would be useful for learning self-defence skills. My neighbour is really into martial arts and tried to teach me at some point, but I’m not very good at it.

      I’m glad you quit if you didn’t like it, though. It’s important to figure out what in your life is really bringing you joy and what you’re just doing because you think you have to. Good job!

      I will be sure to check out your blog and leave a comment!

      Stay safe and healthy!

      Cheers,
      Evelyn

  4. Hello Evelyn!
    My name is Kate and I also did diving for a few years. I kind of had the same experience as you where I felt like I wasn’t learning anything new, and I did do a bit of demonstrating for younger kids.
    I thought that your front dive pike was very good! I never really mastered it, as I couldn’t really touch my toes, or bend all that much.

    Awesome blog,
    – Kate

    • evelync

      April 22, 2020 at 10:32 am

      Hi Kate,
      Thanks for commenting!

      It’s cool that you did diving as well. What was your favourite dive? I really enjoying roll-ins off the 3m board and front one-and-a-halfs, even though I was bad at them.

      Thanks again for the comment! Stay safe and healthy!
      Evelyn

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