The Archer

 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. ...