Slumping

Oh, hey there.

So, yeah I haven't written for a while! Life's busy after all, but life's good too. A lot has happened in the past few months! For starters, the blog was featured in the January issue of the Patriot Post:

Woo hoo, publicity! But I probably proceeded to kill that publicity by not writing for two months.

A lot of the times, life gets in the way. My most recent post is describing the busy time I will have doing robotics. Well, it was a busy time indeed. After six weeks of long days after school and on weekends, we successfully made out robot. Indeed, it is something to be proud of. We compete in the FIRST Robotics Competition and went to the Orlando regional two weeks ago. It was an awesome experience, as always, and our team came out ranked 7th out of 61 teams, giving us the highest position we have ever gotten. We got picked for the 4th-seeded alliance, but unfortunately lost in the quater-finals. Watch us in the following matches at https://www.youtube.com/user/FirstRoboVision

Match #

2 (win)

18 (loss)
24 (w)
33 (w)
43 (w)
54 (w)
68 (w) with 30-point climb
82 (l)
91 (w)
Q2-1 (l)
Q2-2 (w)
Q3-3 (l)

Well that was awesome, and we'll be back on the field in two weeks at the South Florida regional hoping to win it all. It's in Ft. Lauderdale, so if you want to check it out let me know, I've got the details. Or if you want a webcast link, I can also get you with that.

So, one of the objectives of this years FIRST Robotics Competition was to climb this runged pyramid. The highest level merits a 30-point climb. Our robot is fully capable of this, but little problems kept inhibiting our ability to complete this in almost every match. But we got it in match #68, and got it in style:

There we are, barely hanging on by the lip of the hook. But that's in the 30-point zone. Refs and officials were telling us how they were just hoping it didn't fall. But from the backside of the field, we couldn't even see the precarious position. But it was enough.

And well folks (here comes the inspirational part), sometimes just enough is enough. Sometimes we get busy and neglect a lot of things. Juggling multiple responsibilities and duties becomes a burden too heavy to bear sometimes. We scrape by doing the essentials, but other things fall by the wayside. And for many, including myself, not doing everything leads to discouragement, which leads to doing less, and more discouragement. It's a generally downward-facing cycle.

You're doing enough. Don't get discouraged when some things don't work out perfectly, because things will work out. Sometimes just enough is enough. Come close to God and follow the way. If you put in your best effort, you're doing enough.