New blog post on what is it like to participate in freediving competitions

So I have found myself a full-time job back here in Singapore since the 15th of June 2020. And while it pays my bills and I have good bosses, I still yearn to write every so often. It's like a part of my DNA. So I find pockets of time to write.

So here's an easy one I just did. It was easy because I converted a sharing I did into a blog post. So I already had my key five points and photographs selected and it was more of a conversion of speech into text and also rethinking some of my ideas.

Here is the article: 5 things you may not know about taking part in freediving depth competitions

I wrote it to demystify the freediving depth competitions. When we think of such competitions, we think of big names with big records. But did you know, we small names with no records can also participate in such competitions alongside these big names?

And it's not for your ego, but because these are GREAT learning opportunities where you can have an extended period of training. You also learn a lot from competing, things you cannot learn from just training. This is a small reflection I shared on my Facebook page:

Perhaps it was the way I was brought in up a society (Singapore) that cared very much about performance that I took competitions very seriously. It was very important to do well in them. Sometimes it even felt like it defined my worth - and I had to prove that I have got it in me.

I remember being very stressed before a competition dive and I met two competitors (I think it was Daniel and Pablo) who just did their dives. When they saw me being so stressed, they were amused and teased me that someone had died in the competition.

Basically they were implying that unless we had a chance of dying, there is really no reason why I should be that anxious, after all whatever performance I did is just a matter of meters and nothing more.
These people were diving way deeper than me and yet they took the competition in their stride and never felt the pressure that I was giving myself. That incident impacted me greatly and made me realise the limitations of my habits of thinking and how much I have to unlearn about my mindset about performance and whether I should allow it to determine how I feel about myself or an event.

So my hope for that blog post was that it would make more people curious about competing and consider competing themselves! :)