Day By Day Personal Essay

Day By Day

Claire Callahan

The average person thinks about things they could have said or done differently almost everyday. However, over the past year I have learned that I can’t go back in time and change the past. So I asked myself why I would waste time thinking about things I could have done. Instead I have chosen to take every day by day, every swing by swing and to take every race by race.

During swim season was the first time I noticed that I was constantly thinking about things I could have done differently. Whether it was a stroke, a race, or a turn. I remember a meet at Washington's pool, my stomach twisted and turned the smell of chlorine was strong even for me. Washs pool is my least favorite pool of all time. The walls a slippery, they use too much chlorine and the pool gets really shallow going to to turns. My first race was the 100 backstroke as soon as the official hit the buzzer we were off all of the knots in my stomach went away, until I went into my turn I had miscounted the amount of strokes to the wall and flipped to early which ended up getting me DQ'd from the race. As soon as the race was done I went to my coach I was crying he told me to shake it off because I had 3 more races to go. He said to take it race by race and that stuck for the rest of the season I only focused on the race in front of me not the ones from the past.

Golf like swimming, was no exception in fact I found that I thought about the previous shot more than the shot I was taking at that moment. The last meet I was at was the MVC meet on the 15th of May I wasn’t playing well and got it in my head some how that I was a horrible golfer and began thinking about all of the stupid mistakes I had made. My golf coach came over and asked what was going through my head when I told him, he said to get out of the past and start playing now. He told me to take the rest of the meet swing by swing not thinking about what I could have done, but what I should be doing now in the present.

Throughout the rest of the year I began to notice that I was doing the same thing with school. If I had a bad test in the morning the rest of my day, week and even month would go down hill. I thought back to what my swim coach said and I started to apply it to my everyday life. I began to only focus on what I could do today not what I should have done yesterday.

There is no way to change the past, so why think about it. Dwelling on the past doesn’t do anything, we can only impact today and prepare for tomorrow. We have to make the time we have count, so take every day by day and live life to the fullest.