Swimming

Among all the music and art (or attempts thereof), I've also been working on my swimming. I'm planning to participate in a swim meet - my first one ever! - in a couple of weeks and have been working on sorting out the finer points of my strokes. I'll be doing 100 (meters) freestyle, 50 backstroke, 50 breaststroke, and 100 IM (25 each of butterfly, back, breast, and free). I'm not the slowest on my team but I'm close to it...being a competitive sort, it's been tough to stop thinking about who's faster and just focus on getting my own times under control.

Getting ready for the meet has taught me something: swimming requires concentration. I've been swimming laps off and on ever since college, whenever there was a pool and some motivation, but it's always been a way of simultaneously getting some exercise and letting my brain relax. Now, especially when I'm keeping pace with others, it's alarmingly noticeable when I let my mind drift, because suddenly I've fallen behind and need to power along for a few strokes to catch up. Seems like an obvious thing, but concentration and focus have always been reserved for musical and academic pursuits, and it's a completely different feeling to have to tell my body - instead of my mind - to stop daydreaming and get on with it.