Jazz, bikes, grace, scholarships, and memories :-)

My life feels like it's been some sort of massive whirlwind of interconnected emotions over the past few days. In order of occurrence from Tuesday morning to Thursday evening:

Sleepiness, excitement, nostalgia, happiness, nervousness, disappointment, utter heart-is-falling-out-of-my-chest-feeling (this was while we were waiting for the daytime results at Iowa Jazz Championships), overwhelming joy, pride, tons of tears after playing my final performance at the Civic Center, chills, laughs, an accomplished feeling of winning state championship, restlessness (I couldn't get to sleep til 3:00 that night), more nostalgia, envy, fatigue, appreciation, more nostalgia, sadness, anxiety, super anxiety, 9.5/10 anxiety, fear, a little pain, joy, happiness, love, more anxiety, anger, negativity, exhaustion, soreness, laziness, happiness again, food (that's not an emotion but it feels like it is), more soreness, senioritis, laughs, more soreness again (for some reason riding a bike really strained my gluteus maximus), calmness, forgiveness, and then... out of nowhere... accomplishment.

These emotions are the long process of going up to state jazz, playing during the day, going to the awards ceremony, playing at the Civic Center, receiving 1st Place that night, waking up in the morning, going home, going to the school assembly, helping move furniture, having one of the best nights of my life learning to ride a bike, grudgingly going to school the next day, and coming home that night to find out that I received the $6,000 Pella Corp Scholarship.

Out of all of that, I highlighted the three emotions that stick out to me the most.

Disappointment. I was so disappointed at 4:00 in the afternoon when I discovered that I hadn't received an Outstanding Soloist Award. I don't know why, but at the time that devastated me. I had put a seemingly endless amount of time and effort into that solo, and I just felt completely bummed because I hadn't gotten it. And yet... looking back on that, it seems silly. We won the state championship! And besides, it's just the opinion of a few judges.

Love. I didn't realize it at the time, but the feeling of learning to ride a bike in the presence of some of my closest friends and two of the most caring adults I've ever known is going to stick with me for the rest of my life. These two could've given up supporting me after I failed the first 20 times, but they didn't. They could've stopped shouting words of encouragement or pushing me up every time I lost my balance, but they didn't.

Accomplishment. I know that money is not supposed to be the focus of life... but after putting hours and hours into a certain scholarship application that normally isn't awarded to the sons or daughters of employees that work in the factory part of Pella Corp, it's just nice to know that all of that hard work paid off.

So there's everything I've been feeling in the past 60 hours. Kind of incredible when you lay it all out like that... there's so many lows and highs, but they all group together for one of the best experiences of my life. :-)