By Crystal Smith Paul

---

How will you know if you don’t try? I maintain that we, as humans, don’t need to try everything to know or try to know everything.

I could have been an astronaut, like many of us said, when we were kids. Then I remember, everything happens for a reason/God knows best because I get claustrophobic and have tummy issues (Virgo sunniest). Plus, I maintain that I didn’t not try with Physics. Physics was a hard pass and with it, went any interest in a career in astronomy.

But!

If the endeavor is worth it to you, and we all need these moments and experiences of striving for something, you have to try. You won’t know how you stack up until you compete.

My First Taste of Competition Had No Rubric

My first taste of competition was without rubric or announcement but worthy all the same.

My gymnastics mates and I were locked in, high on adrenaline and discipline. We were second or third graders, ripe for instruction and eager to please. My little self found myself lost in the time spent inside the basketball gym of the red brick YMCA, surrounded with azalea bushes that bloomed in white and maintained dark green leaves all year. The back half of the gym was partitioned off by a ceiling-to-floor divider and outfitted in blue matted haven with bar, beam, floor, and vault stations.

I loved every part, except the prancing nature of the floor routines.

Vault was fun. The bars was second to floor and the beam I could pass on. Over time it became my most improved category in comfort and skill, but I tended to overthink it a lot, which is obviously the kiss of death (pun or any reference not intended) when you’re propelling above and beyond a five-inch-wide bar.

But my favorite part of class were the floor drills (very Virgo of me).

We’d make rows and start repetitious basics — front and back extension rolls, handsprings, walkovers, roundoffs — back and forth across the royal blue mat.

The Compliment That Changed How I Measured Myself

And like most children’s activities there was always an end of session show or “meet.” The older kids probably had meets but among the kiddies we had what could be called a review, at best.

Anywho, maybe this was my second or third “review” after a series of twelve sessions. The older girls were performing after my group. I had seen some of them many times before. Their lessons were after ours and they sometimes came to the gym early to warm up.

Like most little girls, I was impressed by the older girls. They were more skilled. Most of them could do back tucks. Their suede hand grips were caked with the white chalk used to help one’s grip on the uneven bars. They wore flesh-colored tights like in ballet and shiny, brightly patterned leotard sets with trim, half pants, and matching scrunchies.

So imagine the way little me almost fainted when I heard one of them say to the others that I was the best one in the kiddie class.

The compliment floored me, and made me realize that while you’re busy watching someone else, someone might be watching you!

I don’t remember how I did at that review but it was the first time I was very aware of whether I was good or bad at something and the first time I cared what others thought of my ability in my afterschool activity. Before that, good or bad wasn’t vocabulary we had. And I think we were better for it.

How Competition Can Ignite You — When You’re Measuring Against Yourself

After this compliment hit my ears like honey, I started to take gymnastics way more seriously.

Suddenly, I had a goal, a measure.

Luckily, I wasn’t measuring myself to the older girls but to myself.

They were old enough for me to understand my abilities at the time could never stack up to theirs. Age difference in the formative years meant months might as well have been half years or all 365 days.

My competitive spirit was ignited in the right spirit, by the only measure we can begin to control — ourselves.

Why Art Is Subjective and Comparison Is a Dead End

Because someone is always going to be better, or older, or something more than you. So sometimes when working on a goal, it’s best to not look around because you can’t control who’s there. All you can do is focus on the few steps ahead of you. Gymnastics forced that mentality — you could kill yourself if you didn’t take heed.

But writing reinforced it. Sometimes you don’t know where the story is going. You have to take it step by step.

There’s always a better writer, someone who got an award or an opportunity or a mention that you didn’t. But all of that is out of our control, no matter how good we are. Because art is subjective and forces you to get out there and see how you measure up.

---

Want more behind-the-scenes on the writing life? Subscribe to The Annex for free to receive my musings on writing, inspiration, and how it all gets done. And if you haven’t read Did You Hear About Kitty Karr? yet, grab your copy — it’s where the Blair House universe begins.