And so it begins

The journey begins.

I have decided to try out for the Olympic Team one more time-Beijing 2008 will be the third attempt, I competed on the Sydney team in 2000 and missed the Athens team in 2004 by two points.

Wait, rewind...what I've been doing since I graduated from Stanford in December, a quick recap:

I was a scheduler on the Westly for Governor campaign in California and that all ended on June 6th when the Democrats in California made a bad decision and elected the other guy (he's going to lose to the Governator in the fall).

Okay on with the blog, now I'm headed back home to Rochester this week.

First of all, I can't believe that I'm going home. I NEVER thought I would do that. In some ways I felt like returning to Rochester would be a failure or a big step back in my plans to become an American success story. In many ways I still think it is - Rochester is a dead town with dwindling amounts of my peers who decide to stick around and pursue their futures.

But here I am-returning home to do just that.

Today my mother and I spoke about my goals and she mentioned to me how she felt (not in so many words but in her own way) that spending the next year and a half trying out for the Olympic team one more time is a risky gamble on my future and ultimately a waste of my time.

She may be right, at least on paper:

1. I'm 25 and should be in hot pursuit of a career if not already finished with some masters or other type of graduate degree. I am a Stanford grad after all - shouldn't my degree translate into dollars soon?

2. I'm 25 and living with my parents. Yes, I agree that this isn't the best option for someone my age.

3. I'm 25 and should be looking into finding a husband. I think that's less of a concern at the moment but a legitimate one at that. Training and traveling+relationships=imminent disaster.

4. I'm 25 and choosing to spend a year and a half scrounging for money since I won't be able to work. Granted that most people my age are still destitute and rely on their parents for money, however, it's a year and a half I could be working as a paralegal or something of the sort and making enough money to start saving away for retirement or those 2.5 kids I want. This is definitely a legitimate concern especially since I only have $15 dollars in my pocket/bank account at the moment.

5. I'm 25. Aren't I too old for this and three surgeries too many?

So, given all those reasons I choose to take my Stanford degree and train again anyways. This time it's not for anyone but myself.

A wise man who invented the apple computer once said at my commencement:

"Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life. Don't be trapped by dogma — which is living with the results of other people's thinking. Don't let the noise of others' opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary. " read Steve Job's entire commencement speech here

And so, there will always be nay sayers and sometimes those people will be the closest ones to you, but I'm 25 and it's about time that I follow my intuition in order to chart my own course in life.

It is with all my heart that I begin the long days of sweat, tears, and pain to pursue something that I started long ago as a six year old kid. This blog will be a dailogue of that pursuit and who knows, maybe two years from now I'll be writing a blog entitled, "GOLD is the new blog". (Check out pink is the new blog, it's amazing.)

My hope is that this blog serves as a point of reference for my friends to know where I am and how I'm doing even if I'm at a world cup in Tokyo or training in Moscow. I also hope that in some way my daring to dream will inspire you to take some risks and follow your heart.