Maybe lots of of thoughts that aren't really even connected & might not even have a real point.

My sophomore year of high school I tried out for the cheerleading team. Sort of. My parents thought I was crazy- I studied the piano, I played sports, & I was actively involved in school, but we were not a cheerleading family. We just weren't. All of my friends were trying out though, & it just seemed like the thing to do. I was playing varsity tennis that season, & had to balance my after school practices with the practices for cheerleading tryouts. It was sort of hard to juggle both, & I was stressed out. The day before the tryouts, I panicked. What if I forgot the dance routine in the middle of the song? How embarrassing would that be? What if the cheer I made up wasn't peppy enough? What if I wasn't as cute as all of the other girls, with their perfectly-coordinated school colors, puff-painted faces & bows in their hair? What if I didn't make it & the whole school found out? That was it. I couldn't do it. I couldn't take the risk. I went to the cheerleading advisor & told her that I was no longer going to try out. I quit. The day before tryouts.

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I've always sort of regretted that, the quitting part. Not that I think that cheerleading would have been such a valuable experience (I'm glad I missed out on the inevitable drama that ensued for the next two years), but because I just didn't believe in myself enough to really even try like I should have.

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My junior year I ran for ASB President, complete with signs plastered all over the school with my name in big letters. I was ultra-invovled in student government in high school & I really, really wanted it. My dad was so excited for me that he bought a truly excessive amount of lollipops from Costco. We attached a slip of paper with a perfectly clever slogan on each one (something involving voting for Kathryn Hudson being "sweet") & I gave away hundreds of them to my classmates in the hallway. I practiced & practiced for election day, & when I was finished with my speech, the AP History teacher said I gave the best he had ever heard. My ASB advisor called with the news the next morning. The captain of the football team had won. He beat me. I had lost. She added that our school district probably just wasn't ready for a female ASB president. In hindsight, that's sort of a terrible thing to say to a 16 or 17 year old girl, right? I thought so, & it certainly didn't make me feel any better. I was sort of heartbroken, to have lost. Really heartbroken. It hurt my pride to go to school that day. I was truly embarrassed.

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Getting ready for college, I had a period of rebellion, you could say- albeit more of an intellectual rebellion than any sort of real mischief. I didn't care about my acceptance letter from BYU & chose to go to a very liberal liberal arts school in Washington, instead. Three months later I called my parents in tears, truly humbled (for a number of reasons) after months of real depression. I asked them to come pick me up. My dad came & got me, & we laughed the whole way home while listening to old surfer music from the 60's (that was suddenly now cool again). He never said I told you so, & I knew that he really loved me. I don't regret my initial choice of schools, but it was a really hard couple of months (that spilled into a really hard year). A few weeks after that drive I found myself in Provo, Utah - with a very different life.

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I don't really know why I'm thinking about these things (especially together), or why I even want to write about them for that matter. Maybe it's because I was really sort of anxious before the election- not because I was worried about who would win, but because I was worried about the feelings of who wouldn't. Because I know the feeling of not winning, & I don't really like that feeling. Or maybe it's because I turned 26 last week, & I'm sort of feeling more mature (old.), & I'm looking back & trying to learn from all of my experiences, imperfections, failures & shortcomings... & I'm trying to turn those into good things. Maybe it's because times are tumultuous & fairly uncertain, but I read this talk this morning, & I'm going to try to accept the motto of Come What May, & Love it. And learn from it, too.