Metacognitive Reflection #1

Okay, so I'm not really the athletic type.  My father is, and so is my sister - she's on the city's travel soccer team and the school's and she actually likes it.  I don't, really.  Not soccer, just physical exertion in general; I've been skiing since I was about five, but I'm not very competitive.   Anyway, this year my father found this really great cross-country place out in Embro and made the whole family members and next thing I know I've been signed up for the Nordic ski team, and I have to go to St. Mike's twice a week and be shown up by everyone there.  

I don't like being bad at things.  I don't have to be the best, but I dislike being the worst.  I'm not the best trumpet player or the best singer or the best skier, but I'm not the worst either.  (Actually, I am the best alto.  At central, anyway.)  I mean, I know most people don't like being the worst, but I just absolutely HATE the way the Senior Boys whiz by me at three times my speed with three times less effort.  But when I'm with my friends skiing, they're about as good as me.  I can deal with that; it doesn't make me feel stupid.  And if I'm alone, then I just love it.  

Unfortunately, there's sort of a catch there.  Without other people pushing me, I have no motivation.  (It's a good thing I got into this English course, and didn't have to stay with the online one.)  So even if I managed to make myself go out and ski, I'd stop every ten seconds for a breather and enjoy the scenery, then leave after a mere 45 minutes.  But when I'm racing, there's no stopping option.  When I'm racing, mostly I think about "how much farther?"  Then I kick myself for ever agreeing to it in the first place, and then I get resentful at my dad for forcing me into it.  He didn't at all, actually, but I have a really bad way of trying to please people and then passive-aggressively guilting them for it later.  Unfortunately, I do that to my father a lot.  I confuse him - but, I confuse myself, too.  Why do I continue to do it?  Perhaps because I need him to push me in the way that I can't push myself, but he could do that even if I wasn't mean about it.  

Inevitably, though, the race ends and I don't come in last - and I haven't thrown up while crossing the finish line yet, which is a plus.  No matter how hard the racing is, it comes to and end and I'm left with a feeling of accomplishment.  And now that WOSSAA is over, I somehow doubt I'll be invited to OFSSAA; so that's the end of the season for me.  And I'm going to miss it, as hard as it was.  And soon my father won't be there to push me (not in Belgium, anyway), as cliche as that sounds.  So I don't really know how to label myself in this situation - slacker with potential?  Someone who wants to care and go the distance, but needs help, perhaps.