Ever since the Nintendo Wii came out, my husband has been begging for one. It seemed like every time I turned around he was trying to figure out how to get a Wii into our house. He even suggested getting one for Christmas. Each and every time, I refused. I hate video games. My excuse was that I think they rot children’s minds. After a while another, probably more plausible, reason came out – I’m terrible at video games, and I didn’t see the point of getting a Wii when I would just stink at it anyway and not be able to enjoy it with everyone.

Well, that all changed on Sunday! My in-laws just bought a Wii, and invited us over to celebrate my mother-in-law’s birthday and play with the Wii. I told my husband I’d try it. Well, really, I whined “Fiiiiiiine, I’ll tryyyyyyyy it but I’m not gonna be any gooooooooood at it!” after he begged me to give it a chance.

Um…

We played for THREE HOURS.

And I LIKED IT. In fact, I’m rather good at it! We bowled, we fenced, we shot archery, we rode jet skis, we wakeboarded…and my husband and I enjoyed beating the tar out of each other in the swordfighting waaaaay too much! And I enjoyed beating him at said swordfighting way too much… My arms and shoulders are so sore today – it feels like I went to the gym and lifted weights for an hour instead of playing video games!

And it felt REALLY good to find my competitive spirit! A lot of people who know me, or knew me a long time ago, probably have no idea that I have even a speck of competitiveness in me. I sure didn’t! But I was fierce with that Wii.

That’s one of the things I’m discovering on this journey I named my blog after – you’ll never find the things you love doing unless you try new things, even if they’re scary. And it’s been way too long since I’ve tried new things, due to a fear that I’d be terrible at it. But if I hadn’t gotten over that and tried the Wii, I wouldn’t have had so much fun!

I’m starting Jazzercise this week, too. I gave that a shot several weeks ago and loved it – even though that very morning as I was sending my husband off to work I was nearly having a meltdown over it. I just knew I wasn’t going to be able to keep up and I just knew I was going to have an asthma attack and everyone would be staring at me! My husband didn’t laugh at me – he simply told me “You are NOT going to have an asthma attack, and you’ll keep up just fine. This is your first time – don’t be so hard on yourself.”

Yeah, I shouldn’t be so hard on myself! I don’t have to be perfect at everything I try. But if I don’t try anything at all, I’ll never find the things I love to do.

So that’s two new things for me this week – Jazzercise and a Wii. Well, the Wii will come later when we have a bigger family room. Until then we’ll just go invade my in-laws’ house and play with theirs.