Replying to Quitting

I've been a skier my whole life. When I was 4 years old my parents put me on these crazy wodden sticks and sent me down a snow covered hill. In my 18 years of skiing I have experience a whole lot, in fact - I can credit skiing for literally every aspect of who I am as a person right now.

Up until the whole park industry came around I was a weekend warrior with a distant dream of maybe going to the olympics for mogul skiing, but it was only a dream, never taken seriously - even to myself. I still just skied because skiing was fun. After the begininng of park skiing though, something changed in not only myself, but in a lot of skiers as well.

Becoming a professional skier (and having the opportunity not only to make it as a name, but also make it as a living) acutally seamed doable. For three years of my life I competed every chance I got, traveling as far as vermont, colorado, and british columbia to fight for a chance of having a career in our sport called skiing. By the end my my highschool life I came to an understanding with myself that I do not have what it takes to become successful in the ski industry (at least as an athlete anyways - as for my future, it is unknown to me)

What this thread is about (and maybe it should actually be a blog, more then a thread, but here it is) is about a select few of my friends who like me came to the realization that they do not have what it takes to become a professional skier. But unlike me - to them it ment the end of their skiing life. Quoting one friend "I realized that there is no future in skiing for me, so I had to understand that and move on with my life" He was 19 or 20 when he said this. Since then he has lived in Toronto, living life like the rest of society says life should be lived, only going skiing a few days a year, if that. Not because skiing was no longer fun - but because skiing was no longer viable as a carear path.

Now, I haven't been around for very long (born in 84') my knowledge of the world is very limited. But I feel confident in saying that until the park world came around making enough money to make a living from skiing was a huge rarity that more happened to the lucky few (schmidt and plake for example) then something that someone could set out to accomplish and do so like it's possible now. And this is another assumption, but back in those days (you know - any day before 1997) people wern't skiing to become a professional skier. they were skiing because it was fun, and therefor it was good.

Why did everything change? With the creation of the ski industry as it is today (using skiers to sell products instead of models and tech jargon) we now seam to have a ever growing number of teenage kids who are debating weather they should quit because they can't get a 270 on and therefor suck and not only give up the dream of ski stardom, but also give up on skiing and move on with their lives.

As to why I think this might be more appropreate as a blog is because I think threads are more of a discussion and blogs a statement, and I'm not sure how to open this to discussion. What I guess I'm writting this for is to make you all realize that being able to do a switch 10 isn't more important then having fun. Don't lose sight of WHY you started skiing and why you still ski. If you take life to seriously you will die full of regrets (at least I assume so anyways).