I'm posting here because it seems weird for me to make an "announcement" on the league forums. On Thursday, April 21st, I resigned as an active skater from NHRD. Before people freak out, I am still very much involved with the league, just not as a skater. I'm still League Coordinator, forum admin, and PR foot soldier. There are a lot of factors that went into this decision but they all end up circling back to time at one point or another.
Bad Timing
As my last post stated, Mr. Carnate and I closed on our house the same day the season started. I had a conversation with another skater at our 2010 Awards Banquet and she asked me if I thought I would be able to keep doing everything I was involved in on the league once we bought the house. "Sure! It shouldn't be a problem!" but as soon as we grabbed that set of shiny new keys and walked into our first home I knew that wasn't going to be the case.
Sure, I denied it for a while but things came to a head when I found out what the fresh meat and teaming process was going to be this season. Since I was only a Level 1 I had some work to do before I was eligible to scrimmage. More on that later. We had some interesting house experiences that caused me to miss some practice early on (like the furnace being completely psychotic and having to keep a fire burning in the wood stove to keep the pipes from freezing).
As the weather grew warmer and the feet and feet of snow from this crazy winter began to melt we finally had a chance to look at our yard. It needed (needs) some serious work. Because I had prioritized derby over everything else, there was no time for anything BUT derby. Between skating in various locations and all the off-skates work I was involved in there was no time to rake leaves, mow lawns, stain furniture, make curtains, and don't even THINK about planning and planting a garden.
It turns out that skater I talked to on that chilly December night was absolutely right; houses change everything. My priorities slowly shifted and by the time April came around I really just wanted my life back so I could actually DO things around the house. As another skater put it in a completely unrelated forum post, "Derby will always be there. Other things may not"
Insecurities and Lack of Practice
So yeah... anyone who has read this blog knows that I am fairly insecure about my abilities as a skater. When I started I hadn't been on skates since the age of 11 or so. I was/am overweight and out of shape. I've made a lot of progress between when I started and now but things changed this season. Last season I was able to make progress at my own pace. This season I had to make progress on someone else's pace. This put me on what I like to call "The Derbycoaster" of emotional ups and downs from about late January up until the day I resigned (and even a little beyond).
In late January I took my level 2 assessments. There are two things I always knew that I needed to work on: transitions and endurance. As expected, I failed transitions and missed my 25 in 5 by two laps. I thought to myself, "I can do this! 2 laps isn't as bad as it could have been!". The other members of "Team Misfits" - the group of skaters from last year who weren't teamed but weren't fresh meat either - were skating just about every night of the week. To be perfectly honest, with all the other time I spent on derby, I had no desire to put even more time in. At this point, more time skating would have been at the expense of off skates derby work.
I took my level 2's again in early March - I needed more consistent transitions and turning toes stops and I failed the 25 in 5 again. By 2 laps, again. This frustrated me to no end because I had been going to practices and pushing myself and made no progress whatsoever. Still 2 laps away. It felt like 20. This was the first nail in the coffin of my skating career.
I knew that I needed to put extra time in on skates to improve enough to pass that damn endurance test but I just wasn't willing to do that. That's the bottom line. I love skating with everyone but if I'm not willing to put in the work required to get where I need to be to skate with everyone then I have no business skating with a WFTDA league like NHRD.
A Series of Unfortunate Events
In mid-March, just after my second round of assessments, we got word that my father-in-law's terminal cancer prognosis had gone from 12-18 months to "weeks" overnight . His esophageal cancer had spread aggressively to his lymph system, lungs, and liver. Mr. Carnate and I dropped everything and flew over to the UK within 24 hours. We're so glad that we did but that was a week off of practice.
We came back on a Tuesday. The next Wednesday, after worsening reports, he passed away at home; a week and a half after we saw him. Mr. Carnate was, obviously, very upset being stuck all the way over here. There were a lot of logistics to be sorted out and it would have been extremely callous of me to say, "bye sweety! Good luck arranging everything... I'm off to practice!" So I missed practice all of the week before we headed back to the UK again, this time for longer for the funeral and to spend time with Ian's family.
On top of this, my grandfather passed away four days after my father-in-law. The day before I had been "teamed" on the Seabrook Meltdowns, my favoritest team in the whole world, as an alternate (since I wasn't scrimmageable). By the time I got back from the UK the second time I had missed two team practices and lots of bonding time. I went to a team practice on April 12th and felt completely and totally out of place (through no fault of the team or coaches).
I felt so far behind... to the point where I felt like I would never catch up. This feeling, paired with the "I'd rather be gardening" feeling was the biggest contributing factor in my decision.
Meat Hearts... I Love my Husband
The Derbycoaster was pretty brutal for me. After one of a handful of practices where I felt like I did really well I'd be riding on a high when I got home. Most other practices, I felt like I was never going to make it where I need to be and came home in tears. Mr. Carnate was completely puzzled by my apparent Jekyll and Hyde reaction to derby this season. I would be frustrated sometimes last year but never like this.
After a particularly bad day of derby I came home from work to Mr. Carnate standing in the kitchen with something reddish brown in his hand. It turns out he had cut a leftover pork chop into a heart shape and colored it red with paprika. He said, "I know you had a bad day so I made you a meat heart!". It takes a special kind of guy to do something that... creative (as it takes a special kind of gal to be completely touched by it). I love Mr. Carnate with all my heart and it hurt me that The Derbycoaster affected him, too.
We came back from our second trip to UK and I immediately jumped into bout week mayhem for our season opener. I had so much off-skates stuff to do that I skipped all but one practice that week to get ready for the day. That Sunday I had a frank, teary conversation with Mr. Carnate about my frustrations with skating, the things I WANT to be able to do with my time, and lots of other stuff. His concerns can be summed up in the statement that sealed the deal for me. He said, "If we spend this little time together now, what would it be like if we had kids?"
I want kids. He's on the fence, mostly because of how little *quality* time we spend together now. If I'm home (i.e. not at practice, I'm sitting in my office doing off-skates derby stuff). While we're in the same house, we're not spending time together if you know what I mean. We tried the "set one day a week aside" thing and it just wasn't working out. Something would always come up, usually family-related, that would torpedo our 100% free day with each other.
Something had to give. With tears in my eyes because I didn't want it to be true but knew it was, "I have to stop skating." I couldn't keep going on like this. I was tired of feeling like doo doo about myself after every practice. I wanted to do other things around the house that I could never get to. I wanted to get off the damn emotional Derbycoaster. And I wanted to spend *real* time with my family and not be worrying about what I wasn't doing.
My Wish
I wish that I still had a derby skating outlet that was low-commitment and mixed ability. This would solve both the time issue AND the feeling like crap about my ability issue. I could go back to progressing at my pace without all the pressure. Hopefully in the future, NHRD will decide to create a recreational group for the many people like me to can't or don't want to commit to the whole enchilada of the derby lifestyle. NH needs a recreational derby outlet and I would love to be a part of it when one pops up.
If any number of the circumstances above had been different, perhaps I would have made a different decision. If I had been a bouting skater, I would have probably felt comfortable missing the odd practice to do stuff that needed to be done. If I hadn't missed so much practice time due to, well, everything then perhaps those last two laps might not have been so elusive. If I hadn't bought a house I wouldn't have found all this neat stuff to do (pelletized lime, anyone?) or spent so much time/money at Home Depot.
My decision made me sad, but at the same time I knew that it was the right one. NHRD is awesomely amazing and I am glad I am still able to be a part of it in a reduced way. Maybe one of these days circumstances will change and I'll be in a position to come back full time and in better shape, but for now I know I'm doing what needs to be done. <3
