Bonjour tout le monde! (Hello everyone!)

I know I have been gone for a long time, I’m sorry about that! I was on vacation and I’ve had a very busy week. I started school this week and I’ve been mentally preparing myself for my brother to go live at college this year. Being home-schooled I’m so used to having that guy around, I’m not sure what the house will be like without him around 24/7. The vacations were great and it means I have so many photos to show you guys, I can’t wait! I also joined up with Bethany House so I will now also be reviewing books sometimes for you guys! I’m super excited about that as well! 🙂

With school starting, I’ve realized I’m a Junior. Oh. My. Goodness. That’s so old. I’m an upperclassman now. I’m very excited, while also being a little nervous due to this being the year that I have to start stuff like driving (hopefully), SAT (for real, not practice), and maybe a job or something. Just like last year, being a Junior seems soo old to me and I can’t believe I’m that far in school. I’m seriously just now getting used to being a sophomore.

But today’s post isn’t on school or books or vacation or anything like that, those are for later. Today is about friendship, actually, and motivation. I’m pretty open about my life on here, I talk about when I have trouble with something, but for the most part everything I post is positive or cheerful! (I hope so, it seems that way to me at least! 🙂 ) Something I’ve really noticed lately is that life is never perfect. I know right, big surprise, Emily! But no, I don’t live in a box, it just hadn’t clicked with me before. Things don’t go through their good times at the same time, you get some going through good while others are going through bad. Kind of like people, your friends are probably rarely all in a good mood at the same time.

I’ve found that with swimming, I’m always either on good terms with the sport itself, in which I feel motivated, or with my friends on the team, in which I always want to go to swim so I can talk to particular people. I don’t think those times have ever lined up for me. Today it definitely just switched back into motivated for swim, but I have no actual friends right now. (I’m going to leave everyone unnamed to keep privacy.) Today was the end of a super close friendship I had. It didn’t end over something in particular, it’s been in trouble for months. I don’t know why exactly, but no matter what caused it, it hurts. It has hurt for months and it probably still will keep hurting because I see the same person close to everyday. So the topic for today is how I cope with this kind of stuff, as well as how I cope with my opposite side to swimming when I have friends and no motivation.

Friendship first. Right away, I want to acknowledge how much it can hurt when you lose a friend, when you fight with a friend, or when you have any kind of trouble with someone you’ve cared about. A few different scenarios might be that your friend has changed and her “new” personality doesn’t fit with yours or with the person you’d like to be. Maybe you and your friend had a fight, either a serious one that’s a big deal or a minor one that got out of hand. Or maybe even you just slowly grew apart. For me, it was kind of a mix of all three. From here it all depends on your feelings.

For the first scenario, that’s a really hard thing to go through. This is the trouble I’m having with some friendships in my life. The problem comes down to people being a bad influence, everyone needs friends who make them a better person. If a friendship is really negative or if there’s no trust or people talking behind each others back, then it’s not healthy and continuing it might just end in more pain.

For the second scenario, I really suggest trying to work it out and apologize. Sometimes people can’t bring themselves to “humiliate” themselves and apologize, but it’s necessary. Even if everything blows over, an apology is still the best way to heal something. Sometimes the fights are too big or too serious to fix so easily. Then I would try to give it time and let the sharp emotions wear off and then see if you can at least come to good terms.

Slowly growing apart can be fixed, just keep trying to spend time with that person and seek them out to talk. Bringing up old memories to laugh about can be a good way to jog a friend’s mind on an old friendship.

If everything fails and you really can’t fix the friendship, know that it’s really okay to be upset over it. It’s a painful thing, it’s okay to be sad. Don’t let your feelings slip into your actions though, whatever you do. It is not okay to try to get back at someone for causing a problem and don’t be rude towards your friend or their friends and it’s not right to hold a grudge with anyone as well. The way to get past the pain of losing a friendship is to focus on the good parts of your life. If you just keep moping and never move on then you will be miserable and depressed. It’s okay to be upset, but after sometime you have to move on and find new things to be happy with. For me I just focus on swim and have cheerful small talk with those who start conversations with me.

On to motivation. So if your friends motivate you that’s great! If you have a group of friends who encourage you to do better, that’s fantastic and hopefully they motivate you. If you don’t have a support group or if your support group happens to be friends who aren’t interested in the sport you’re all in or interested in school and homework, then you have to motivate yourself. The main tips I use to motivate myself when I don’t have someone positive around or when the people around me are negative are these:

-Find inspirational people who do what you do, but maybe at a different level. Many people look up to Olympians in their sport.

-Talk with the person in charge of what you need motivation for. You can talk to a coach or a teacher, it doesn’t even have to be about getting motivated, but having a connection with the person telling you to challenge yourself can make you want to improve.

-Focus on how it will make you a better person. When I am doing math homework and I don’t want to do anymore or give up, I think about how I want to be a nurse and how I want to be able to know this stuff really well. When I swim and I’m tired, I think about how if I swim just a little harder now it might just give me the time I want in the next meet. (Plus I can eat more food at dinner if I burn more calories now! Haha! 😀 )

-Give yourself little breaks or countdown in your head. Sometimes taking five minutes away from homework can help me focus a lot and in swim if I countdown laps or push-ups, it gives me the mental strength to finish.

That’s all for today! I hope you found some of that to be helpful in some way! Thanks for reading that, it was a great stress/emotion release for me after today. (If you could keep that in your prayers, I’d love it! Just that I’ll be okay and be able to stay happy and focused, and also please pray for the happiness and peace of my friend too, thank you!)

xx

A man of many companions may come to ruin, but there is a friend who sticks closer than a brother.

~Proverbs 18:24