Hurdles – By @laurenbodiam
By Lauren Bodiam
Hurdles
Life is full of challenges, personal setbacks, and professional hurdles. We are bound to face failure, we are afraid of failure. There are times we feel stagnant and stuck and that is what makes us human.
While some SCABS offer inspiration insight and optimism, this will not. Instead i offer you comfort knowing that I can’t fluke anything, and anything I do try, tends to end with me flat on the floor in a bunch of tears.
Like most of us I have experienced hurdles in my life. They were introduced in the sports field in year 7. My first thought was how could anyone jump over them? but people did. I watched detailing the techniques they used to get over. I knew that it would come to my turn soon, and I needed as much mental preparation notes as possible if I was to stand any chance of making it over.
The trick to making it over the hurdles was pace. You needed to maintain the same running from when you started to when you begin to make the leap (of faith). While i maintained this information as I took my turn. I became the kid who stopped paralysed in front of the hurdle. This same story took a few repeats and after prep talks to myself I confronted my fear and make a leap. It did not end like the prep talk in my head. I was face first in to the ground with the hurdle on top of me in tears. I probably looked a bit like this.
I relate this experience with my first hurdle of SCA – the passion project and while I would love to write about how I jumped leaps with out falling I would be lying. From a project that started with enthusiasm and enjoyment turned out disastrous in the final days. I had planned my project with pace detailing how long everything would take from initial plan, to filming, and editing out all my umm’s and err’s this plan was like my plan with hurdles and did not take form. The sound packed up on my laptop on editing day, which lead to 10 hours of panic as I frantically tried every start up possible to fix the problem. It was unfixable. At this point I too was unfixable, the project I had dreamed of felt shattered. The end result was nothing compared to the vision I first had. It was subtitled and blurry. It looked how I felt and I knew there was no way back, no time left on the clock to try again. I ended the project like I ended the hurdles, on the floor in tears.
I fell on the first hurdle of the year. There are going to be plenty more, I’m sure of it. Here is to hoping the hurdle won’t hit as hard as it did the first time. For now I plan to get back up and try again.