Looking forward to fall!

A lot of people are very upset about summer being officially over. Apparently everyone considers Labor Day to be the unofficial end of the season. While I am also sad about this, I thought I should write a post about the things I am looking forward to for my first fall/winter in NYC! There are so many parts that I love about September-December - I want to focus on that instead of the fact that my swim suits will probably not see the light of day for the next 8 months (moment of silence for that, please). And there are other things that are happening right now that I am excited about, too!

• My adult swim team is starting tomorrow. I started swimming with the team during last season, but we just had a 2 week break while they cleaned the pool. Now this season is starting up again tomorrow night and I cannot wait to FINALLY get back into shape. AND to compete at meets!
• Moving into and decorating my new apartment. I've talked about how I am currently living in the building of my next place, but we are moving to the unit exactly 5 floors below us. In a week we will be all done with that and will just have to put the finishing touches on decorating and such! Very excited for this headache to be over (and to not have to be sleeping on a blowup mattress every night).

• Football season! I. LOVE. FOOTBALL. I know a lot of people like college football, which I do too, but my college team WAS AWFUL, so I gravitate more to the NFL. Football is my favorite sport, and I am excited for my first season as a New York Giants fan! Though the Chicago Bears will always hold a special place in my heart, I gotta get with this NYC sports camaraderie!

• Seeing what is going to happen with this guy...I've been hanging out/talking with this guy for a little bit now. He's so awesome (I've written about him before) and I am excited to see what happens with us! Still not looking for anything super serious at this point in my life, but it will be fun to just hang out and get to know each other better :) Big smiley face for that one!
• Halloween. It will be my first Halloween in NYC!! I've had some costume problems in the past (ie - I put on a teal dress with a black belt and called myself a crayon) but this season I want to be so much better and go all out with my costumes! Ahh I need to start looking into different parties at clubs and bars and such to see how my friends and I will celebrate this crazy fun day/weekend.
• TV shows resuming. Now that I have a TV again, I am really looking forward to some of my favorite shows starting up again! The shows I keep up on are Parks and Rec (actually watching a marathon of it right now that's on this FXX channel I just discovered), Modern Family, It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia, and Workaholics. But now I will probably be watching a lot more shows because one of my roommates works in TV production. 
• Fall fashion. I love fall and winter fashion. The coats are so cute, and a great pair of skinny jeans makes me incredibly happy. All the fashion trends are great for this coming season, and I can't wait for the weather to change so we can all take full advantage!
• Holidays in NYC. Saved the best for last - SPENDING THE HOLIDAY SEASON IN NEW YORK CITY! This is probably going to be one of my favorite things about living here. I'm already planning going to the Rockefeller Center tree early in the morning to beat the tourists. And OBVI I'm going to participate in SantaCon (been counting down the days to that since I saw all the pics of it last year). It's going to be awesome!

So beautiful! What's not  to love about this?!

So, if you're really sad about summer being over, I am definitely with you on that one. But just think of all the fun that's to come! I'm so excited for the last part of 2013 :)

<3, Charlotte

The best swim practice there ever was

I'm being a total badass and posting at work, but I wanted to write an update on the swim practice.

Basically, IT. WAS. AWESOME.

It just felt so good to be swimming for me and no one else. When I got tired (which was inevitable considering it was my second time swimming in MONTHS) I just slowed down. I didn't get upset or frustrated like how I used to. Instead, I just took it easy and enjoyed being in the water for the sake of working out.

That was my trial swim, and it went so well that I think I'm going to stick with it! :)

WOO!

<3, Charlotte

Back to practice...

No explanation necessary for this photo.

I feel like it's the first day of school. In about an hour, I'm going to leave to go to my first practice with this masters swim team I found! My friend Melissa and I are joining and I couldn't be more excited (I actually swam with her my freshman year of college when she was a senior - we're both getting back into it)! Got my suit, goggles, cap, and I'm ready to go. It actually is kinda freaking me out how into this I may become...I looked at some of the national top 10 times for my age group online and they are SOOO slow. I may actually have a chance of being good in this league!

First I need to actually get into shape though.

Oy, I hope I don't drown!!

<3, Charlotte

I've officially decided to come out of swimming retirement!

Me and Ryan Lochte at Nationals my senior year of high school (I look completelyyy different now which is why I haven't blurred this photo). Yes, I swam at this meet. Yes, this was before he was famous and there was a show making fun of him.

Not sure if I've mentioned this before, but I was recruited to college for swimming. High school would not have been the same if I wasn't a swimmer. My days revolved around waking up at 4:45am to be in the water at 5:45, and ending my school day with practice from 3:30-6pm. Tack on 6 AP classes to that equation and you have quite a busy schedule! My teammates were my family. It was awesome.

There was a whole other side of swimming though. Never feeling like I was good enough was a continuous problem that I battled (I started swimming when I was in 6th grade, considerably later than the average swimmer who starts when they are in 1st, so I was playing catch-up from day 1). My coaches also made the situation worse. They told me to my face that I would never swim D1 (WHICH I did, seriously messed up right?!) and they always pitted the girls on my team against each other. I was never good enough and never appreciated any of my successes because I was always focused on what I wanted to achieve next. Getting second at club state championships didn't matter to me - I wanted to go to nationals. It was a sick mentality, but that was all I knew. I always wanted to be one of the best.

Why did I stay with that program? All my coaches did was put me down and I always felt like I wasn't good enough. Because the girls on the team were my favorite people in the entire world. We all spent so much time together and knew each other to the extent that it was scary. We were basically sisters. And on top of that, my coaches were actually good at their jobs. We didn't swim THAT many yards a day but were one of the best teams in the state. We weren't burnouts like a lot of swimmers at our level. My coaches did know what they were doing, I will give them credit. They were one of the reasons I was able to catch up and be one of the better girls my age.

And then when I got to college, my coach was AWFUL. I got so slow. It was a disaster. I hated every stroke I took, and being a distance swimmer, that was a lot of strokes to hate over the course of a practice. I did not get a single best time at my championship meet at the collegiate level. Which was terrible considering I was at a D1 program and you are supposed to get a lot faster. I was completely miserable.

So sophomore year, I
quitretired. I just couldn't do it anymore. I never wanted to get into a pool again, and college was amazing without swimming all the time. I have no regrets about retiring AT ALL. If I would have swam, I would have missed out on A LOT. I never missed swimming a day in my college life.

But now that I am a real person, I have been wanting to get my life together. Working out has obviously been a complete fail (if you've been reading my posts, need I say more about this?!). And I've been feeling like I want to do something other than work and going out. It's just so unfulfilling to have my days be so monotonous, and hangovers are THE WORST now that I am apparently an old lady! And I am bad at all sports. Except for swimming.

So, I am officially coming out of retirement! I just emailed a team here in NYC that is reasonably priced. I want to race again. I want to succeed at something again. And I want to appreciate it this time around and know that I am doing this for me, not my terrible high school coaches. I am doing this because I want to, not because I have to.

This is the most excited I've been about something in awhile :)

<3, Charlotte