Half-Hearted

God, IDeA(Interscholastic Debate Association) 2.

It’s bad enough that we didn’t break, but no one from our team broke…it’s just…wow.

It left me thinking of so many things, so many questions.

These past few weeks, ever since I got tabs of PSDC(Philippine Schools Debate Championship), in fact; I’ve been asking myself one question, to which I thought I would never be able to find the answer. I thought that it was all meaningless, and that I was driving myself to exhaustion for absolutely nothing.

I’ve been wondering why I even bother to debate.

I’ve been asking myself again and again why I even tire myself training, why I constantly sacrifice things for debate; for training, or for competitions.

Since PSDC, I was losing my drive. I was losing the motivation I had. I felt like nothing I was doing was paying off. Sure, occasionally, I gave a good speech, but it didn’t seem enough for me anymore. I wanted to move forward. I wanted to know that I could do something besides beating newbies. It felt so unfair that there were people who started debating later or the same time as me, and they were already so much better than me. It made me feel so incompetent, it made me feel as if this was the best I could ever be.

I’ve been training since PSDC, but since then, my efforts felt halfhearted. I felt so disheartened by everything that had happened. I was wondering why I couldn’t even push my arguments. I was wondering why I still had trouble reaching 7 minutes sometimes. I just kept asking myself why the hell my arguments still went around and around in circles. Why is it that I STILL can’t deliver a good prime speech?

I have now gone to my second IDeA 2. And well. I realize…

I’ve been an idiot.

All this time, I’ve been telling myself that I’m not improving. That I still suck, that I’m going nowhere. That no matter what I do, I can’t deliver speeches good enough.

But then, looking back at my speeches from the first IDeA 2 and the ones from yesterday…

I’ve improved a lot more than I could ever imagine.

I’m not that helpless first year who had terrible, monotonous manner anymore. I’m not the kid who needs to summarize every single time in a speech. I can finally take some POIs and not get rattled. Maybe I’m still not a veteran. I’m nowhere near a name to be feared. But I’m a lot closer to that when I compare the way I debate now to the way I debate then.

I guess, I’ve been lying to myself all this time.

I debate because of the thrill of it. The pure adrenaline rush when you just know you’re going to give a good speech. When I know that I deserve no lower than a first or a second, the best feeling is when you press “stop” on your stopwatch and go back to your seat, and you know you left a definite impact.

I debate because I know how hard it is to improve in it. I need long, hard training sessions that make me want to wrench my hair out in frustration.

And I guess, when I see that I’m not a total failure, there’s a bit of pride in it.

That’s why I just know when I finally reach that point where I can consider myself a name to be feared, I’ll know I deserved it.

Fine, right now, I’m terribly inconsistent. I can deliver a fairly good speech in one round and a god-awful speech in the next. I have trouble really pushing an argument to its limit. I even have trouble really dedicating myself to it.

So there’s no one to blame but myself.

But I’ve been a fool for thinking I’m not improving just because I’m not improving fast.

I’ve found my motivation again, despite not breaking.

I’m not wasting my time.

I’m doing something I love.

And despite what I thought before, I’m not doing it terribly.

So now it’s time to start doing it well.

I want to improve.

I want to be someone who will frequently get that after-a-good-speech feeling.

And so, that’s why I exhaust myself training and matter-loading and going to far-away places to compete.

Now it’s time to start doing all of it wholeheartedly again.