Weird Things Seen Around NYC: Tourist fails

It's called a BACKpack for a reason, bro. Also nice shoes.

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

New post idea: Weird Things Seen Around NYC

Living in NYC, the biggest city in the world, we are fortunate to be able to see sooo many people each and every day. This also means that we see a ton of WEIRDOS every day, too.

SO, I have decided I am going to try to add a new post category to this blog - "Weird Things Seen Around NYC". In my 3 mile round-trip walk to and from work every day, I'm bound to see AT LEAST one weird thing a day! I'll take a picture of it and upload it here so everyone can see :)

This is an example of a weird thing I would post. I actually hope I see this guy again!

This is going to be fun!

<3, Charlotte

Errands

You failed me and I can NEVER forgive you!

As I eat my $3 slice of pizza I just picked up and sit down to write this post, I must address one thing that I think everyone should know about when entering the real world: ERRANDS.

Errands - something that makes me feel like I am becoming my mother and realize that I, in fact, am an actual adult. When you're little and your mom says that she has spent the day running errands, you roll your eyes and honestly can't believe it took that long. Well, now I can wholeheartedly admit that that was a very wrong thing to do.

Friday night, I got home to my apartment after what felt like an INSANELY long day. I went into my room only to find that my stand-alone hanging rod had completely broken and all my clothes were on the floor. WHAT A NIGHTMARE! And the entire weekend I didn't have time to run and get a new one. I had to deal with picking my clothes up OFF MY FLOOR when looking for a new outfit. Never in my life have I felt poorer than I did at that time.

Last night I was obviously busy swimming and developing my new extracurricular life plan, so I didn't have time to go get 2 new hanging rods then (yes, I got 2 this time since obviously one FAILED MISERABLY at the job it was supposed to do!). Tonight, my entire evening was dedicated to walking to Bed, Bath & Beyond and getting them. Yes, my entire night was dedicated to only running ONE errand!! How sad. Real life is hard all the time!

And let me tell you, if you think that carrying 2 packs of standing hanging rod kits for 15 blocks is easy, you thought WRONG!

So now that my new super-cool double hanging rod has been assembled and my room's order has been restored, I am off to get some much needed sleep! PHEW.

<3, Charlotte

Keep the pictures. They don't change, but the people in them do.

Very suitable to this situation.

Last Friday night, I was SUPER excited. I was going out with some of my college friends that I hadn't seen since graduation. It was going to be so much fun!

I've basically patched things up with Chloe. It's just in her personality to act the way she was acting, but I think she has come to terms with everything and we are totally fine now. I am so happy because we are at a very good place in our friendship!

I was going to go out with Chloe and our other friend Lisa. How it basically works is Chloe and Lisa are like best friends, and then I just hang out with them a lot. I'm more of a floater, so the idea of having a best friend scares me - and I've had best friends before and it ALWAYS ends up blowing up in my face. I am just a more hang-out-with-everyone kind of girl. So our little situation is perfect.

We also had friends coming in from out of town. One was staying with Chloe, the other with Lisa. Lisa had mentioned to me earlier in the night that she was irritated that our friend was staying with her because that meant she couldn't bring anyone home or go home with anyone. (Seriously, girl needs to get a GRIP. Not going home with someone for ONE NIGHT won't kill you!)

Anyways, what ended up happening is that Lisa and the friend she was staying with stayed out later than the rest of us, but then Lisa ended up ditching the friend, leaving him stranded in NYC all alone! (He is not from here either, so imagine how scary that would be). He called Chloe and apparently they tried calling Lisa over 15 times and she didn't respond. Everyone had to sleep in Chloe's poorly air-conditioned apartment and didn't find each other and end up getting home until 5am. HOW AWFUL.

The worst thing is that the next day, Lisa didn't even acknowledge that anything had happened or was wrong! She even texted me asking if I was going out that night and didn't address the other situation with anyone. I mean, CLEARLY she saw the 15 missed calls and knew that she had ditched our friend. But not acknowledging it and even doing that in the first place DEEPLY CONCERNS ME. And Lisa and Chloe even had plans to have coffee last night and apparently Lisa canceled it at the last minute. She OBVIOUSLY knows she did something wrong and doesn't want to talk about it. I am still in disbelief that that happened and don't even know what to think! I feel like since we've graduated, Lisa has changed for the worse - self-involved people are never fun to be around.

SO. MUCH. DRAMA.

This is why I prefer to be friends with guys.

<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