Gabriel Mbamaonyeukwu

Final Draft

There’s this saying that says “Life doesn’t end when you die..Life ends when you give up.” Most people in this world would give up in life as soon as they don’t get their way in life. In other words, their plans and what they want in the future don’t go according to the way they want it. Ever since covid hit, there has been time and time again where I would want to just give up on the biggest goal I want to accomplish, and that goal is to run in the olympics. Ever since covid I’ve found myself almost quitting because I lost my motivation, I barely had access to the outside world, and I was trying to stay safe on my end.

As a result of losing my motivation, a lot of things happened in the process. For one, I became so lazy that I couldn’t get out of bed most days, for two the gym was closed for that period of time, and for three I gained so much weight than I expected which was unbelievable. I was too impatient at some point during the time because I was too eager to get back out there and run. I tried to hold myself together because if I don’t I would fall apart from my goal. As the days go by, months of us being indoors during quarantine, my mentality of staying in shape and also everything I know and learned and background I know about Track and Field started to fade away little by little. At this point it looked like my dreams were about to be over, my years of practicing all gone. There was nothing at all that could change my mind.

Since all this was happening with the outside world and what was going on, I barely had access to it. I wasn’t able to go practice or even go on a jog on my own. Life was just completely different and stressful. At the middle of quarantine was when I slowly started feeling relaxed about everything, meaning being too comfortable staying home in bed, watching TV, not staying in shape. There would be a time where I would try doing workouts at home but I would stop half way and just go lay down or play video games. It was getting hard by the day trying to get back to my old self.  

On the other hand, I was trying to stay safe at home and not do anything risky to get sick from covid because I have people in my family that are elderly and I don’t want them to get sick. I was being considerate of the people around me that I sacrificed going out to go run/limiting my going out in general, I didn’t want to risk it at all. To be honest, staying at home for that long period of time was a hard transition for me as a young student athlete because I’m used to moving around alot so quarantine hit differently. As a result of all this, I got used to staying at home and not doing anything and it became part of me to the point where I got too comfortable with my surroundings.

Finally, since all this craziness is over and the cases of people getting sick from covid dropped, I’ve been trying to push myself more than ever to get back to the way I was, gaining my motivation back, and getting in shape. Although it’s a hard transition, I know in me that I still got it to keep on trying to get back to the best possible shape I could get in. I will always keep this saying that says “Life doesn’t end when you die..Life ends when you give up.” to keep me motivated not to stop half way.