Risk - A funny word.

Queue up ‘Piha Lounging by Day We Ran” on repeat as I write this

Can we talk about risk for a second? It’s Sunday morning, I’m sipping on my coffee and I just did something that probably seemed scarier than showing up at an Olympic start line competing. Plus all the puking nerves that come as a side dish served with the main platter of stupidity.

The thing about risks is that if you don’t take them, you’re forever stuck living your life within ordinary measures, possibly in a box that you’ve been put in, going through repetitive moments day in and out. Some are happy with that, but that is definitely not how I was put on this earth to function.

I’ve taken calculated risks & I’ve done some of the craziest things that some can only dream of; I’ve packed my bags and left my family behind at 14 to pursue Olympic dreams, I’ve packed my life at 28 and moved to a new continent not knowing anyone, I’ve had to re-start my whole life more times than one imagines, I’ve played with fire in more than one scenario at a time, I’ve crossed lines and suffered yet I’ve also crossed lines and it was like ecstasy (even tho I don’t know what that’s like), and I’ve told people I’ve loved them, and been hurt, but I’ve confessed my like and I’ve also been lucky enough to have it reciprocated.

With that being said, when I fail, I fail miserably in this case. Not only is it a ‘fail forward’ situation where you learn from your mistakes in sport, yet in personal situations I have been lucky not to put a wall up after I’ve been rejected a million times…and today. You’d think I’d learn. I’ll never forget telling Alex Coleman in the hallway in grade 7 that I liked him - and then he never talked to me again. Yes, I’ve been weird that way since the beginning. Would I go back and change that? No.

Talking about how you feel is possibly the single most scariest thing on the planet, because while it’s a risk, there are also other parties involved. Society doesn’t allow us to steer off the beaten path and we’re told to live life a certain way…while all you see is people that are in love but they’re not together, and people that are together but not in love. I’ve also been on the right side of the line, when things have worked out in my favour with all chances I’ve taken, but I’ve also been deeply burnt. My point today is that you need to take risks, to stay alive. You need to feel something. Play it safe for the sake of others and then you die hoping something was different. As long as no one gets hurt, then what’s holding you back? It’s better to fail at something miserably than to ever sit and wonder what would have happened. I’d rather have Alex Coleman in grade 7 not talk to me, and tell all our friends that I am weird, than to admire him from afar never telling him how I felt. It’s all nerve wracking. All of it. But then if it works out, then it can be the most amazing feeling in the world. The same goes for sport, business and taking risky measures into the unknown; you will mostly be on the right path when you’re off the beaten path as the unknown is what has yet to be discovered.

My risk today was not a planned action; it had been something that has been sitting with me for some weeks now and while I’ve taken the leap blindly today like a moth attracted to a flame (may I add “dumb moth” to this), I found myself on the other side of the line wanting to vomit instead of feel excitement (although I was burning with excitement internally all of January and February to a point where I couldn’t sleep the whole Olympics) And that’s also okay. Nothing hurts more than not being wanted back. What would we be as humans without the experience of going through a full spectrum of emotional rollercoasters? And at the end of the day, you learn about yourself. (But F*ck I am so done learning in this case)

In hindsight as I finish this blog up now and write this last paragraph a mere 12 something hours later at 10:30 pm, I realize that everything is so much bigger in the moment, and it waters down as time passes. If we go back a few years to when I was the first ever Olympian on OnlyFans dealing with the negative comments on a daily basis almost killed me, but 6 years later I am living the life I have created for myself, unapologetically.

I’ve always been the first to do something a little different, and it’s always been hard. I can’t recall ever taking the easy path somewhere because I am just not wired that way. So while I ask myself today why I can’t be wired like “normal people” and to function the same, and like what people my age like, or even fall in love with someone available, or just even be attracted to what WANTS ME BACK, I realize that it would be SO BORING - so all in all, I will continue to do me, the weird way, the way that may cause me a little heartbreak, the way that makes others uncomfortable, the way that gets me angry comments on a post online, or the way that will always be criticized, because only then I know I am living up to a standard of whatever my true self really is like….but today it sucked. I put myself out there and I got the opposite reaction as to what I had expected which was another lesson in itself; don’t have expectations and you can’t be disappointed. See, I am hard on myself. It’s the only way. Onwards.

Take the risk. The worst that can happen is….you write a blog about it and move on.

XX

A.