Friends and colleagues,
It is a quiet early-morning friday and all is calm as I have no HW due for classes that will start in about 9 hours.
I've been extrremely bogged down and stressed lately between balancing school work, training for throwing, practicing my trombone, rehearsing, and dealing with other shit that UH administers insist that I go through. However, I am reminded every day as I leave campus that there are several homeless people in Houston's fine third ward that would kill just to have.... air conditioning. And for what blessings I do live in everyday, I thank God. It seems as though I will never have a day to breath nor to live a normal college student life...but that is the responsibility called upon me from my God and I am thankful. It's easy to look at this past year as a total hell hole but it's more important to look at how I have benefitted.
Though I am not happy with my trombone playing right now, I am learning valuable lessons when it comes to living this life of a student/athlete/musician and I do see myself conquering this struggle sometime soon. This year I have also met new colleagues, leanred more things about my playing, and have had some solid time in the school's ensembles...my playign sucks right now...but you know what...that's something that comes and goes.
Also, though I could do better as far as track goes, it really does seem silly to be upset with my performance lately. There have been meets when I performed under my ability but to look back and where I started to where I am now really helps me put it in perspective. I came off of a two year lay off from no athletic comeptitiveness besides intramural basketball. I come back to throwing after that huge layoff, start out sucking, and now-though I have miles to go- I have worked myself into a comeptitve college thrower...not only that, i won a meet and threw into UH's all-time top 5 discus throws! Yes, I have been upset with myself in throwing lately, but I will look back in retrospect and be thankful...thankful to be doing what i am doing...My trombone teacher says sometimes we get caught up in how things are going wrong for us and that is when we have to step back and realize, we are quite blessed and fortunate to have these abilities.
School....school has not been fun. And I dont mean classes...i mean dealing with the administrators here, coaches who dont understand, throwing partners who dont understand, people who dont understand, and dealing with all these complexities when it comes to my eligibility and degree. However, on the bright side, Ive leanred so much about myself here academically and emotionally then I did aywehre else. I've had to adjust to change in just about every respect of the word and it had helped me be more adpatable. For this opportunity I will thank my God.
I will also thank him for helping me utitilize the blessing of perspective. I'm glad I live my life with aburden to understand and though the society around me will never come to realize this importance, I will and for that I will thank my God. I also thank in advance for helping me show others the blessings of our humanity and to share with the the word of God. I thank God for the burden he has given me to help people seek truth and understanding in everyday lives even when I am not understood initially. I thank him for where I am. I thank him for helping me stay with my beliefs.
I live a blessed life and I have everything to owe to my God. When we do something as simple as step back and realize our blessings, there is no other choice than to thankt he creator. In my case, I have been blessed with the opportunity to throw, play my trombone, and study. I have a fan here blowing on my back-it is a terrible fan-but it sure beats the gust of trucks driving by on a hot summer day. I've got a shitty computer but it sure beats having to hike a mile to find the nearest library for internet access.
I started this post with the intent of bitching at how shitty life has been...but all I did was step back...and I'm thankful
