My Skating Obsession

I have been thinking a lot about why I do this. That is, why am I skating? The reason I've been asking this is probably four things:

1. I turned 40 last week.
   
2. I was talking with my friend Amber Lee about it, and she says I'm more obsessed about skating now than when I started.
   
3. I was watching the great skating movie, "The Cutting Edge" again tonight. There's the great scene there where Kate asks, "why are we doing this?"
   
4. I re-read the Julie Learns To Skate Diary.
   

In talking about this with Amber Lee and just my own thinking, I came to a number of conclusions. At some point, I will be in one of the following positions:

• I get frustrated and give up skating entirely
  
• I get to a certain point and I just cannot improve, and remain at some plateau
  
• I have some injury or life change that prevents me from skating, or at least from putting serious time into it.
  

Of these, the last will certainly happen to me at some point, although perhaps not for a long time. I think the first is fairly unlikely. So the middle point is probably going to hit first. The question is, how will I deal with that? In Julie Learns To Skate Diary she worked hard for about 2.5 years but seemed to get to a plateau and got frustrated. I think about this a lot. On one hand it seems like I have had to struggle a lot more for progress than she did, or than others I see around me who seem to pick up things more readily. I have to remind myself that I've never been particularly athletic so these things are always going to take more work. It worries me though. I'm hopeful that the effort I've had to put in so far will help me to be more pragmatic about my own abilities (or lack thereof).

So at some point I will reach a plateau that I can't get off no matter how hard I try. What will I do then? I don't know. I guess in part it depends on my life circumstances and how I feel about what I'm doing. If I am still learning and growing, if I still enjoy skating then I suppose I'll continue to skate even if I'm not improving. I guess the optimist (or my stubborn nature) says that surely if I keep working I'll keep improving. I've always said that my goal isn't so much to be doing jumps and spins but to skate well, with good form, and to feel like I'm competent. I think that is a pretty reachable goal. Furthermore I find that for me skating is sort of like dancing -- when there's a good song playing I really love to skate. If I have more skills in skating I'll have more ways to express that love, to express myself. Given that, I'm hopeful that I'll be skating until I'm physically unable to do so.