The Archer

Life often demands defining moments, and I've made my choice – to become a success story and proudly represent my country. Amidst the intense training, sweat, and tears, the joy of doing what I love is immeasurable. Nottingham was the ultimate opportunity to qualify for "Rio 2016," blending a European Championship and a quota qualifying tournament. More than a competition, it was a dream to explore Great Britain, a dream that materialized during this trip. I also agreed with the "Something Something" team to capture more footage for our documentary, adding an exciting layer to the experience. Our journey took us through Istanbul, a familiar yet vast airport, then to Birmingham, and finally, a cab ride to Nottingham. This trip stood out as one of the best experiences I've had. The picturesque beauty of England unfolded, even in the limited time I had. Nottingham, with its sprawling university campus and beautiful surroundings, proved to be captivating. The ab...

Like in the previous blog, again I begin by apologizing for not being able to write as often as I would like too. I absolutely miss this but I cannot seem to find enough time to sit down on my chair, think and write these blogs. However, that being said, I don't plan on stopping it. Actually, I have some more ideas to develop my blog or even create a new one (will keep you posted in this one). After Copenhagen I had a conversation with myself, if I was to continue my career as an archer I had to put my best effort, or stop competing and do it just as a hobby. I am telling you, it's not an easy conversation to have, you have to take a lot of things into consideration before coming to a final decision. At first I started thinking "was this all worth it?", an answer to a question like that ain't easy to come, you think of the time you spent, the good/bad you've done during this time and you try to come to a decision. One thing I kept in mind during this conve...

I want to begin this blog, by apologizing to you guys, I haven't been able to write that much lately, I don't have a lot of time and I cannot seem to find motivation to write, however, whenever I find the time and I start writing, I love it. I am also training for an upcoming important competition, that is taking a lot of time out of my schedule and work hasn't been easy either. I promise one thing though, I won't stop writing, I may delay blogs but I will keep em coming. Today my story goes to the beautiful Viking land. I want to share the story of my time in Denmark, taking part in the World Archery Championship there. 2015 was a big year, I had a lot of training and multiple international competitions and I have to admit I got tired a little bit by the end of the season. This Championship was at the end of the season, I was tired but I had to compete here because this is where the best athletes come and compete, you cannot miss a chance like this and that was the r...

Growing up, I dreamed about doing something to make my country proud. I always was good with sports, and deep down in my heart I believed that one day I will make it to the big scenes (no idea about the sport though, since I loved different sports at different times). Growing up, changing sports, figuring out what I want to do with my life was an important time in my life, however after I figured out my path I put my leg on the pedal and pushed it hard, tried to make my best effort to do something good. Going from competition to competition, made me better. It enabled me to look things from different perspectives, and once you do that you will eventually get better at things. For athletes who go form competition to competition and don't really have time to train their techniques, believe me I know your pain. You can develop bad habits in competitions, you adjust something according to the weather conditions, or you just do to many repetitive mistakes which then will change your t...

Studying, training and youth activities were enough activities to make my days full. I would always be busy, however I loved it. One thing that when I was younger I didn't really like was working a lot, I didn't mind to do one thing at a time but when it came to doing multiple things at the same time I didn't really enjoy it, growing up I started to enjoy it better and better everyday. And at 22 (this is happening in the year 2015) I learned how to live by doing multiple things daily. I felt I was growing as a man working on these things and I absolutely believe that everyone should do this at one point in their lives.  -Philosophy: Going back to high school, when I first started to learn Philosophy I felt how far the human mind has gone and how little to nothing we as individuals know. Learning about the worlds best philosophers, about philosophies. about world views developed from the greatest minds to ever live among us, make no mistake some of those minds have caused ...

I really worked hard those days, enjoyed it a lot and did improve a lot. Happy about improvements but tired. Training like that for months and months can take a toll on you. It doesn't matter how tough you think you are, eventually you'll need some rest, otherwise your body will fail you. I needed a holiday, I needed to go somewhere where I would be disconnected from my daily life and rest for a few weeks. I thought about what to do, where to go, how to spend my holiday. . . there wasn't anything that did it all for me. Hiking, however, was something lovely which I fell in love with very quickly. It was during these hikes that I would have time to relax, think about whatever is going on and most importantly rest. It is a bit counter intuitive to think that you rest during your hike, but for me it was a very restful activity. My archery season and training took a toll on me, not only physically but also psychologically. I was tired psychologically, I needed to stop for a l...

 Back from the World Archery Championship I came hyped. Willing to work harder and better than ever, with the new knowledge attained from the competition and from watching absolutely amazing archers perform on the big stage I was more confident than ever. Having the experience of shooting with the best of the best doesn't only give one confidence but it also gives knowledge of the sport, in such a technical sport like Archery where details do matter quite a lot you can learn a lot of things by being very observant. I always though I have good analytical skills, having a camera that can record with very high resolution doesn't hurt either, so what I did was very simple, I approached some of the best archers (tried to approach archers with very good skills, South Koreans are the best at that so yes a lot of S. Korean archers) asked them if I could record their shooting style and when I came back I started to study what it is that they are doing which makes them better than the re...

 - The time has come, with weeks and weeks of preparations I think I am ready, we fly in 2 days. Getting ready to travel is something that I don't enjoy doing, thankfully I have my mum who does my packing, otherwise I would suffer greatly. This was my first flight but I wasn't scared or anything like that, I was just excited. The day came and me and my teammates gather, the team consisted of 4 people: Agron Mala, coach and the team leader, Bardhyl Luzhnica, recurve archer and the founder of the sport in our country, Atdhe Luzhnica recurve archer and me as a recurve archer. We had a smooth travel from Prishtina to Instabul and a catch flight from there to Antalya for the 47th World Archery Championship.   Antalya is gorgeous!  I wanted to start by saying that because I was impressed at how good everything looked. To me pretty much everything seemed amazing, the food, the rooms, the surrounding area of the hotel, everything... Then came the shooting fields and most im...

February 2013, It was the middle of February, the January exams are finished and I could finally get the chance to breath some fresh air. The pressure of studying takes a toll on everyone, I wasn't the "hardest-working" student but still we all had to try our best. One effect that those times had on me was getting fat. I didn't get fat, fat but I did put 10 pounds on me in just a few months (taking that off wasn't quite fun). During the exam period, I really was craving for one thing and one thing only, I wanted to go back to archery and with the outdoor season coming I wanted to do my best. The Spring came quickly, the weather was getting better every day the days for me to start shooting outdoors were coming quickly. I have to mention that during those days we shot on straw targets that are very heave and they're very easily damaged by rain, that's why we didn't start shooting outdoors until the weather started to get better, we didn't want ...

The summer went by very very quickly, my love for archery kept growing day by day, but October came by and fortunately I got accepted into University. Getting a flat together with my best buddies wasn't that difficult, we had some relatives of ours looking for a rented flat for a few weeks before we went to the capital (in my country the biggest and the best University is in the public University of Prishtina). We got the flat, sorted our rooms and patiently waited for the lectures to begin. The beginning of the lecures: The lectures on my departments were given by some very good professors and I immediately started to enjoy some of them. Old English Literature was becoming one of my favorites, the lessons were interesting and they were presented in a good way. The course was created in such a way that we would get the 'theory' first about when some of these amazing works were written, by whom, why it was written, etc. After that we would get a chance to read some wo...

As mentioned in the last blog I came to find passion on shooting, it was something that made me happy. I couldn’t stop thinking about it, it actually helped me in other areas of my life as well, the focus and relaxation I got from it helped me with my school projects quite a lot since I could get into the “zone” of studying and shut everything else off. The experience was amazing as long as it lasted, sadly not to long. The club where I shot had financial problems and they just stopped doing it anymore, cannot say I wasn’t devastated but there was absolutely nothing I or anyone of us shooters could do. What’s done is done, but just the though that I wouldn’t be able to shoot anymore made me sad. Weeks went by, school was going fine but I felt a void in me, a void which could only be filled by sports, by doing something which gave me a higher purpose (of course school gave me a higher purpose but I also wanted something sport related since it was always my dream to be a world class a...

I believe some people are born with certain talents, that is especially true for highly technical sports. Trying different things after I quit football was a smart decision, I could see what I like and what I don't like, what suited me and what didn't, I could choose to be the athlete that I always dreamed of. Trying different things gives you perspective on life, I absolutely believe that the choices I made shaped me into a better man or at least a different man. There came a time when I came across a very fine sport, a very difficult but funny sport, I came across "Rifle Shooting". I got hooked on it on my second day of shooting. Until that point shooting was the hardest thing I've encountered in any of the sports I did, when I say the hardest I don't mean its difficult to shoot, I don't mean its physically very challenging, I mean it's difficult to be a good shot. I came across this wonderful sport in an interesting way. Waking up early as always...

There he was, a tall but very thin figure, pimples all around his face, long and thick hair, very uncomfortable on his body. Years went by very quickly. Now, he's a big boy, who just started high school on the good school of the city. Happy as he was to get accepted in there, he knew the difficulties of choosing that school but he chose that school so he had to work. Ugh, I should't have stayed up that late at night knowing that I have to wake up early. Gotta run, or else I'll miss my first class in the new school. 'Who has time to brush teeth, let's run' Entering a new class, full of new faces 'some of them looked interesting' it felt kinda strange. Feeling weird at that age is quite normal as I have come to understand latter in my life. Nevertheless, we started our classes rather quickly and things were going smooth. Talking about weird things, it was around during this time when I started noticing girls too and I have to say that's fun. ...

Silently I got up later than usually, I couldn't sleep until late last night, don't know why but these last few days I wasn't able to go to sleep like I always do. Whenever I close my eyes I can clearly see myself playing a very difficult match of football against a very fierce team in some sort of a tournament and we somehow lose. .Shaking my head is what clears my head but I am left with the thoughts. The big tournament is approaching us very quickly, its the second one that we're participating and our hopes are high. Last year we didn't do so well but this year we have done everything we were able to in order to be prepared. We expect great things! Again, again and again. . .I need you to be faster, the teams on the tournament won't go easy on us, we have to be smart and quick, we must play together as a team. I need you to give your all, 100% from each of you is going to win us the championship. We try even harder, for the fourth time in row we are tryi...

Growing up I didn't know how the world looked, the only access we had to the world was TV (no internet for us at those times). However, on TV we could see the world wide and clear (or at least I thought so). We would watch TV Shows where hosts would fly to some magnificent areas of the world and would explore, I always got chills from watching those kinds of TV shows. The idea of travelling the world always made me happy but I didn't get to travel outside my country until I turned 9. . . It was a gloomy day, since yesterday the weather looked angry at us. Strange thing since for the past few weeks we had scorching heat all around the country. My mom is packing up my clothes because I am travelling to Ulcin (Ulcinj, Montenegro) and I am thrilled about it. The feeling of having to leave my family back home for one week so I could go with my friends to the sea was something I cannot explain, at one hand I was happy I am visiting the sea for the first time in my life but on...

I solemnly swear that I am up to no good! This is my sixth blog and I am truly enjoying the experience of sharing pieces of my life on this platform as I am free to share them however I see fit and I also could also remember these stories to myself which also makes me feel good. I have already shared the feelings I have about books in these blogs. Today, however, I would like to focus my attention on a particular book that followed my young life and I still find myself thinking, plotting about future stories related with this book or just thinking different endings that the story could have. Previously I shared feelings about the first love of my life so following that logic, I named this blog "My Second Love" and I will try to thoroughly express the feelings I felt and feel about this part of my life. If memory still serves me right, I must have been around 12 when I read this book for the first time, my sister got it as a gift for one of our birthdays (either mine ...

Me as a young man, a dreamy man, loved to play and read, loved sports and stories, loved life. Loved the life we had, not an easy one but an interesting one. A life where a lot of things happened daily, when you would think one thing in the morning and change your opinion in the afternoon, just to change it later in the evening. Funny isn't it, life of a kid in the post war Kosova. Never mind that, my life at that time was quite calm, I would go to school early in the morning, come back do my homework and go out to play football. We loved every second of it ( playing of course ). "Ronaldinho is about to score another goal to secure yet another win for his team, he's been terrific since the moment he set foot on Barcelona, the things he done with and for the time are excellent" ' silence '. Electric cut right in the middle of a great game, damn -- this keeps happening again and again. . The small candle in the middle of the room was the only source of ...

Everybody across Europe loves it, we in Kosova aren't different. As young kids we all fall in love with it and continue to love it for years and years after. Our first great love is Football ! After the war in my country ended, families started to settle on their homes and started doing many different things to help in their kids development. I was quite lucky to live in a city at that time, since the opportunities that it gave us were substantially higher that kids who lived in villages. Among the great things that we had was the football club. The club re-started its activity on the first summer after the war and started accepting young footballers on their football academies soon after. I started playing football for my local team "Drenica" when I was 7, and it definitely was my first great love. Training was a very fun activity and I can truly say that from training to be a football player I have learned a lot of things about human bodies, especially mine. (When...