Celebrating 1 Year of Rollerskating & 3 Lessons I've Learned
Early October of last year, I found myself feeling completely stuck, stagnant, and completely unmotivated. I was in grad school, in a master’s program for psychotherapy, and while I was acing my classes, I wasn’t exactly happy. I was limboing between wanting to keep going and questioning whether this was the right path for me. I took a study break and started scrolling through Instagram, landing on a few roller skater’s accounts. The next thing I knew, I was searching all over for a pair of skates myself but they were sold out everywhere. So, I signed myself up for email alerts for Impala’s and within the next week, was able to place an order. I remember getting that email regarding a restock, KSOLE and I were in San Diego for the day, and I had him pull over in front of a restaurant so I can place the order right away. Once I checked out, we celebrated with carne asada burritos and within two weeks, I got my very first pair of roller skates.
When my skates came, I did what most people would, I made KSOLE take me to a nearby parking lot and skated around. It was love from the first day and almost every other night, I was out skating at the park or a parking lot. I wanted to learn every move there was and became obsessed over my progress. I figured as long as I knew how to do tricks, I would be good at skating but I was wrong. I was doing it completely backward and that was my first lesson — to find my flow.
Tricks and moves are only as good as how you incorporate them into your flow. Flowing is the goal, at least for me, but when I first started, I had no idea what a flow was. All I knew was that I wanted to look cool and be like the other jam skaters (dance skaters). I picked up a lot of tricks right away and in less than 3 months, I could strut, spin, transition, backward skate, do toe manuals, “shoot the duck”, and was working on toe spins. But when I met with other skaters, I realized that all I’ve been doing was drilling and didn’t know how to put what I’ve learned together. Thankfully, the skating community is amazing and I soon found friends to help me out with my flow. However, I’m still working on smoothing it out, a year later.
By December, I decided to quit grad school (read more here), which gave me more time to skate. I was practicing weekly but hit a wall as I was trying to learn crazy legs. It frustrated me so much that I actually didn’t want to skate as much. That’s when I learned my second lesson — everyone learns differently and so sometimes you’ll have to be taught in 10 different ways to find one technique that you understand. I had 5 people teach me crazy legs and it wasn’t until one night on the basketball courts that it finally clicked (6 months later). Shout out to Linda for teaching me. My crazy legs still aren’t clean but I have the movement down at least!
Fast forward to today and I have to say that about 3 months ago, I stopped skating consistently because I started boxing (and love it so much). Don’t get me wrong, I still love to skate, but I found that I prefer to skate as a social activity. I’m no longer yearning to be at a specific level and am in no rush to even push my progress. Skating brings me joy and the moment I tried to turn it into some type of challenge, the fun got sucked out of it. I found myself comparing my skating skills to others, I became intimidated when going to local events, and felt less confident overall so I took a step back.
I spent a lot of my life comparing and measuring my success to others in everything I did, from jobs to relationships. It was a program I had since childhood; my parents compared me to my own cousins all of my life. When I took that month-long break, I immediately felt guilty, and that I was “wasting” all my progress and this is how self-sabotaging happens. Recognizing this, I worked on unlearning this toxic way of thinking but I have to admit that I haven’t fully succeeded in shutting it down just yet.
We are human, we make mistakes, we make progress, and sometimes we also have to take 10 steps back just to learn things properly — or again. Roller skating changed my mindset for the better and gave me a healthier perception of myself. It also gave me some amazing friends (hi RUBY) and some lifelong friends (sorry Rubina, you’re stuck with me forever!) So while I may not be skating as frequently or pushing myself to be as smooth as Kim or as cool as Ashley, I am happy with where I’m at and what I can do so far, and that’s honestly good enough for me.
